Two different readings

How, what, where and why - when using the software.
hydrod
Posts: 2
Joined: 2012.02.26. 20:58

Two different readings

Post by hydrod »

I've got Hard Disk Sentinel Pro, my LapTop problem is that my C drive starting reading 39% health, so I got a new hard drive and cloned the old hard drive to it. I checked it with an external USB to SATA plug in. The new hard drive read 100% (no problems) ok! I switched drives and started up the computer, now the new hard drive is reading 43% health ???
Ok I took out the new drive and hooked it up to my desk top computer where it read 100% I then checked the old hard drive and it's reading 100% (what the) anyway, I put the old HD back in the computer and its reading 39%!

My question is: Am I doing something wrong or is the the copy of Hard Disk Sentinel in my LapTop nuts, Yes I've got V.4.0 in both computers
User avatar
hdsentinel
Site Admin
Posts: 3128
Joined: 2008.07.27. 17:00
Location: Hungary
Contact:

Re: Two different readings

Post by hdsentinel »

Can you please check if Configuration -> Advanced Options -> Health calculation method
is set to the same on all systems? This determines how the health is calculated (please see Help -> Appendix -> Health calculation for details).
It is recommended to use the "Analyse data field (default)" setting in all cases.

The best would be if you can use Report -> Send test report to developer option about the affected hard disk (maybe when you see the lower health value) then I can check the actual situation and may advise.
hydrod
Posts: 2
Joined: 2012.02.26. 20:58

Re: Two different readings

Post by hydrod »

I just sent in the Report, but bear in mind that on two hard drives, both Seagate Momentus 5400.6 500GB I get that both drives are going bad, but tested on another computer with the same program (Hard Disk Sentinel) V4.0 both check out to be 100% ???????
Both computer programs are set the same. (Never changed anything on eather computer)
User avatar
hdsentinel
Site Admin
Posts: 3128
Joined: 2008.07.27. 17:00
Location: Hungary
Contact:

Re: Two different readings

Post by hdsentinel »

Thanks for the disk report.

I examined the situation and it seems the disk really has some problems as reported in the text description:
"There are 62 bad sectors on the disk surface. The contents of these sectors were moved to the spare area."

It means that as the drive performed operations (for example the cloning you mentioned), it may find 62
sectors which need to be re-allocated: the drive marked the original sectors as bad (to prevent
use of them) and put the information to the spare area instead. All further reads/writes are redirected
to the spare area.

After this procedure and if the disk status is stable, the surface tests show only green blocks:
it means the drive is stable and there are no (further) problems, no further re-allocation required.

(for more information about "bad sectors", please click on the "?" next to the text description
or check http://www.hdsentinel.com/faq.php#health )

In this case (as the surface test confirmed that the drive surface is now correct),
you can manually acknowledge the reported problems in Hard Disk Sentinel,
to clear the errors reported from the text description and restore the health to 100%.
That way the software will no longer display these problems, just reports any
possible new problems, errors (in the future).

To do this, please open the S.M.A.R.T. page of the hard disk in Hard Disk Sentinel.
Locate the attribute(s) marked with yellow exclamation mark (!) and check the
number reported the text description. Please enter the same value but with negative sign
to the "Offset" column in the appropriate column.
In this situation, please locate "5 Reallocated sectors count" and specify "-62" in the offset column.
Shortly the health will be restored to 100% and the reported errors will be cleared from
the text description.

Note that this is done only for this system. So if you put the hard disk to an other system,
the software will report the real (non-modified) status of the hard disk.
In general, these errors can't be cleared from the drive itself.

I wonder when you put it back to the other system (or used the USB-SATA converter)
how it could be reported as 100% (if there were no such "offset" used on that system but
I assume there was no such setting used).

If possible, please try to send a report when this same hard disk is connected by the
USB-SATA converter to the other computer, where you saw 100% status.
In some very rare situations, it is possible that the USB-SATA converter provides
incorrect/modified values. It would be nice to check and confirm if this is the case
or if there is anything which can cause the difference.

The best would be if we can examine the situation with the other drive also you mentioned
(by checking two different reports: when it is shown as 100 % and when it is showing problems).
Do you use the same USB-SATA converter for this hard disk also?
This is why I suspect that there may be an issue related to that.

Ps. I sent e-mail also with this answer.
Post Reply