Test Failed By Electrical Element

[simplysexyxo]

Hi. What does this mean. What are the implications?

[hdsentinel]

This means that the internal electrical element (so not read/write heads, servo/seek element) of the drive reported error, usually this is related to the internal cache memory.

Interesting to see that the Health is 100%, so would be nice to examine the complete status of the drive.
Please use Report menu -> Send test report to developer option, may give some additional ideas, thoughts.

[simplysexyxo]

Thanks. I sent the report. Just want to if this is going to negatitvely affect performance or more inportantly whether my stored data will be safe

[InquiringMind]

I've encountered a similar issue with simple/extended tests on 5 x Samsung 470 SSDs (which are part of a RAID-0 array), though in this case it was a read element that failed. 2 x Corsair C300 SSDs (in the same array) manage to complete simple/extended tests without any problem. Any reason to be concerned about this?

[hdsentinel]

Generally the hardware self tests run "inside" the disk drive, performed by the disk internal firmware.
If the SSD generally does not show error at all, then alone this error does not mean a serious problem: as mentioned in the Help ( https://www.hdsentinel.com/help/en/62_testfaq.html )

"In some cases, these hardware tests (Disk -> Short self test, Disk -> Extended self test) are not available, not supported or they result in an error quickly even in relatively low number of problems. No further information is returned about the result, for example it is not possible to list the sector(s) which are damaged. In such case, an appropriate software testing method is required."

Maybe you can try a Disk menu -> Surface test -> Read test. This will probably show a warning that the drive can't be locked for exclusive use (which is normal, because of the running OS and apps) but you can still continue to proceed. This will test the data area of both drives (as they are in RAID 0 configuration) and reveal if there is any issue - or confirm that things are fine.

Personally I'd also probably try to open the Disk menu -> Device Specific Information page. This attempts to read further details, eg. the internal error log of the drive, internal self test log and so. Depending on the RAID configuration/RAID controller, this may be not possible, as most RAID controllers do not allow using these "extra" functions.

Also if you use Report menu -> Send test report to developer option, it is possible to check the status of the drives, this may give some more ideas, thoughts. Not sure, but it is possible that the RAID controller itself (as this may affect the operation and functionality and may prevent independent testing of the drives this way) or something else.
If you can't use Report menu -> Send test report to developer option (if the system is offline), then you can open Configuration -> Send test report page to create+save a such developer (test) report for manual sending.
(the Report menu functions are different: these are user-level reports, these contain the current status of the drives only, but not the additional "raw" response which can give more thoughts).

[InquiringMind]

Maybe you can try a Disk menu -> Surface test -> Read test. This will probably show a warning that the drive can't be locked for exclusive use (which is normal, because of the running OS and apps) but you can still continue to proceed. This will test the data area of both drives (as they are in RAID 0 configuration) and reveal if there is any issue - or confirm that things are fine.

Actually, I did try this - and then all hell broke loose...

I received warnings about difficulty gaining exclusive access to both C: and D: drives (does a read-only test really need exclusive access?) but decided to proceed after closing down all applications. I then got a system tray alert (exclamation mark in yellow triangle saying "Hard disk error") which kept popping up. The read test took several seconds to start (reporting a stack of errors) and then zipped through giving all red blocks. I aborted the test but couldn't do anything further - no programs would run and even shutting down from the Start Menu didn't work (just returning to the desktop).

So I powered off and rebooted - the RAID card then reported that the array was missing one of the drives so I booted up from a backup partition, and ran the RAID management software from there. That reported that data was still held in the controller cache and would need to be imported, and showed one drive as being offline. I brought it back online and ran a chkdsk /f on both drives (which ran without any reported errors).

I then rebooted again and the system started up as normal - so no damage seems to be have been done. Given that my pagefile was on another drive (a ramdisk, but that discussion is probably for another thread) I'm surprised that a read test could be so disruptive (I use imaging software called Drive Snapshot for backups, and that can read active system partitions without any drama) so maybe the warning message needs to be beefed up?

I'll try running a read test from my backup partition (*gulp* another HDSentinel install against my count...) to check that all is OK with my main ones, but everything seemed to work OK.

...If you can't use Report menu -> Send test report to developer option (if the system is offline), then you can open Configuration -> Send test report page to create+save a such developer (test) report for manual sending.
(the Report menu functions are different: these are user-level reports, these contain the current status of the drives only, but not the additional "raw" response which can give more thoughts).

Would such reports need to be sent to the info@... email address?

[hdsentinel]

Sounds really weird and really sorry for the possible troubles. Of course a simple read test is the safest method as it does nothing else just reads all sectors as available for the OS (including the partitions and also unpartitioned area). This should never ever cause any troubles of the operation of a drive (or the array or the RAID controller itself) - except there may be some issue which was there, just may remain unnoticed. A relatively frequent issue is related to cables, connections, power-cable adapters (4-pin -> SATA adapters) or power cable splitters or so - as they may cause temporary issues and can result that (especially a relatively intensive disk operation) the drive may disappear (vanish) from the system.

> Would such reports need to be sent to the info@... email address?

Yes, please, I'd check the actual status and the "raw" response of the RAID controller, to verify what could happen - and is there anything to change/improve or worry about in the current situation.

[InquiringMind]

Quick update - repeated the read test while running from my backup partition (so nothing was using the disks under test) and encountered the same problem (failed tests and the drive taken offline from the RAID array).

Since this issue now seems different from the original problem, I'll be creating a separate thread for it.