Confused about resuming at a block (surface scan)

[Louiscar]

As per title I am somewhat confused by the resume instructions when doing a surface scan.

The instructions I refer to is to stop the process after noting the current block and then resume from that block next time.

I have been looking at the block information as this has started scanning and they seem to be random, certainly not sequential. Eg. 9337 > 9502 > 5693 > 3231 > 1361 etc/

So I'm confused about how HDS will resume if I say start back on 1361. Are these blocks actually in order and I shouldn't worry or are they random as it appears?

[hdsentinel]

Thanks for your message and sorry for the possible confusion.
Generally when the surface test started with the default settings, all sectors tested in sequential order, so the sectors (and possible errors) reported in sequential order.

In this case, yes, a good option to restart from a specific position is to specify the last tested block number and start a new test from there, as described at

https://www.hdsentinel.com/kb/category/ ... drive.html

However, if you selected the "Random test" option (you used Disk menu -> Surface test and in the new window opened the Configuration tab and under the Sector Order section the "Random test" option selected instead of the default "Sequential test" option) then as expected, the sectors tested in random order and in this case, possible problems are also detected and reported in random order, in the order as the test processes the hard disk drive.

In this case, I'm afraid it is not possible to limit a particular area of the disk drive to be tested. More precisely, you can still limit on this Configuration tab to process only a part of the disk drive by "Limit testing to specific data blocks" (in any order) but then there is a good chance that some blocks (outside this range) not tested by the previous random test too.

I'd recommend to start the default sequential test - as then you can any time start a new one from a specific position - just to make sure that all sectors would be surely tested.

[Louiscar]

Thanks for the explanation Janos,

I actually was doing a reinitialize disk operation and in the end I think I realised that what you may have been talking about it using the percentage of disk done when it's paused.
The blocks shown below were still jumping all over the place but the graphic showed it all being done in sequence with the grid filling up from top to bottom.

In my case I paused at around 52% so I deducted 52% from 9999 and started at the block 4799.
This seemed to work and just now as I speak the pendings have all been cleared and the disk is showing 100#% again.

I've replied to the email directly. I had done both but posted here in case.

regards
L