Hello,
Recently I received a couple used hard drives, and HD Sentinel has been wonderful in helping test and revive them. I am having a issue with a particular hard drive that I received though.The drive in question is a 1 TB hitatchi drive that was made in 2009. When I received the drive there were already about 100 bad sectors, but no other problems with SMART.
I was able to discover and fix a few additional bad sectors (thanks!), but am having trouble with a specific one. The issue is that HD Sentinel keeps discovering the same bad sector over and over, but hasn't marked it bad and reallocated it yet despite the numerous surface tests I have done on it including multiple write and reinitialization tests.
Looking at the log it is the same two sectors towards the end of the drive
5/26/2013 7:37:57 AM ! Error: 121 The semaphore timeout period has expired., Sector: 1865802000
5/26/2013 7:38:32 AM ! Error: 121 The semaphore timeout period has expired., Sector: 1865802000
5/26/2013 7:39:08 AM ! Error: 121 The semaphore timeout period has expired., Sector: 1865802000
5/26/2013 7:40:08 AM ! Error: 121 The semaphore timeout period has expired., Sector: 1865804000
5/26/2013 7:41:02 AM ! Error: 121 The semaphore timeout period has expired., Sector: 1865804000
5/26/2013 7:42:03 AM ! Error: 121 The semaphore timeout period has expired., Sector: 1865804000
I even ran a test using another program on a linux live CD and it gave errors on the same sector.
Other than this sector the drive now seems fine, a short self test passes fine, while an extended self test ends ups failing near the end. And I have been able to copy a lot of data to it and use it fine.
My questions:
1) Any reason why HD sentinel hasn't reallocated these sectors yet? Is it possible to manually reallocate these sectors using HD Sentinel or any other program?
2) Knowing that a specific sector is a problem: is it possible to partition around it? Do any programs allow you to assign a partition to certain sectors?
3) I have also run a check disk test or two on the drive, would this help Windows discover the bad sectors and not use them?
Any way I go forward with this drive I am not going to be using it for mission critical data and I will understand if I loose some, would just like to avoid loose as much as possible.
And as for replacement it seems to be out of warranty and hasn't met the threshold.
Thanks for all your hard work!
Bad sectors not being corrected
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hdsentinel
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Re: Bad sectors not being corrected
Thanks for your message and question.
As you could see, Hard Disk Sentinel forces the hard disk to verify the problematic sectors and re-allocate them if required, by replacing the problematic sector with an other sector from the spare area.
This procedure (the reallocation) may require higher amount of time, depending on the actual situation and the hard disk itself.
In some cases (as you can see) the reallocation would require too much time - and the hard disk controller (and its driver) terminate the operation because of a timeout (then this is the error reported by the hard disk controller and displayed in Hard Disk Sentinel).
With other words, it is possible that connecting the hard disk to an other controller (or by trying different USB adapter/enclosure) may allow the reallocation operation to be completed on this hard disk.
Personally (because the error is related to a very specific position, the end of the hard disk) I'd also make one partition which is smaller than the actual capacity, but then the complete addressable area on this partition is 100% error free.
You do not need any special software or similar, just move the mouse over the block marked with red color in Hard Disk Sentinel and then in the bottom you can quickly check the MB position of that block. Then right click on "Computer", select Manage -> Disk Management and create one partition from the beginning with size a bit less than the MB position of the problematic block. In this situation, you may get a total of about 911000 MB (from the total of about 953000 MB) usable space.
Similar situation (but with more problems) is described at Support -> Knowledge base -> Hard Disk Cases -> Bad sectors ( http://www.hdsentinel.com/hard_disk_cas ... ectors.php ) where the end of the hard disk problematic - and even after repairing the problematic sectors, the disk test showed that further areas are harder to read and utilise (which may indicate that it will fail and better to avoid using, by creating a such partition).
Chkdsk is not really usable in this situation. Maybe sounds surprising, but chkdsk does not check (and fix) the actual hard disk problems, but checks (fixes) the logical drive (partition) only.
If you are interested, please check http://www.hdsentinel.com/hard_disk_cas ... ectors.php
for more details (not really same problem - but illustrates how chkdsk and Windows can't be used to diagnose/repair actual hard disk problems).
As you could see, Hard Disk Sentinel forces the hard disk to verify the problematic sectors and re-allocate them if required, by replacing the problematic sector with an other sector from the spare area.
This procedure (the reallocation) may require higher amount of time, depending on the actual situation and the hard disk itself.
In some cases (as you can see) the reallocation would require too much time - and the hard disk controller (and its driver) terminate the operation because of a timeout (then this is the error reported by the hard disk controller and displayed in Hard Disk Sentinel).
With other words, it is possible that connecting the hard disk to an other controller (or by trying different USB adapter/enclosure) may allow the reallocation operation to be completed on this hard disk.
Personally (because the error is related to a very specific position, the end of the hard disk) I'd also make one partition which is smaller than the actual capacity, but then the complete addressable area on this partition is 100% error free.
You do not need any special software or similar, just move the mouse over the block marked with red color in Hard Disk Sentinel and then in the bottom you can quickly check the MB position of that block. Then right click on "Computer", select Manage -> Disk Management and create one partition from the beginning with size a bit less than the MB position of the problematic block. In this situation, you may get a total of about 911000 MB (from the total of about 953000 MB) usable space.
Similar situation (but with more problems) is described at Support -> Knowledge base -> Hard Disk Cases -> Bad sectors ( http://www.hdsentinel.com/hard_disk_cas ... ectors.php ) where the end of the hard disk problematic - and even after repairing the problematic sectors, the disk test showed that further areas are harder to read and utilise (which may indicate that it will fail and better to avoid using, by creating a such partition).
Chkdsk is not really usable in this situation. Maybe sounds surprising, but chkdsk does not check (and fix) the actual hard disk problems, but checks (fixes) the logical drive (partition) only.
If you are interested, please check http://www.hdsentinel.com/hard_disk_cas ... ectors.php
for more details (not really same problem - but illustrates how chkdsk and Windows can't be used to diagnose/repair actual hard disk problems).
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someone060
- Posts: 2
- Joined: 2013.05.27. 23:47
Re: Bad sectors not being corrected
Thanks for the response,
I don't think it is possible for me to use another controller with my setup. Sorry for forgetting to include my current setup, which is as follows: my motherboard: http://www.asrock.com/mb/overview.us.as ... 20Extreme6 with a i5-2500k in it. As for hard drives there is my normal SATA Western Digital hard drive with windows 7 on it with no problems, and the drive with troubles as secondary: a 1TB Hitachi HDT721010SLA360 internal hard drive connected via a SATA cable. Also attached via SATA is a dvd drive.
I went ahead and created a partition before the bad sectors, and I gave it even more buffer space before the sectors. Is there a way to see what sectors the partition is on? And there is a way I preform a surface test just on the good partition area?
I don't think it is possible for me to use another controller with my setup. Sorry for forgetting to include my current setup, which is as follows: my motherboard: http://www.asrock.com/mb/overview.us.as ... 20Extreme6 with a i5-2500k in it. As for hard drives there is my normal SATA Western Digital hard drive with windows 7 on it with no problems, and the drive with troubles as secondary: a 1TB Hitachi HDT721010SLA360 internal hard drive connected via a SATA cable. Also attached via SATA is a dvd drive.
I went ahead and created a partition before the bad sectors, and I gave it even more buffer space before the sectors. Is there a way to see what sectors the partition is on? And there is a way I preform a surface test just on the good partition area?
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hdsentinel
- Site Admin
- Posts: 3128
- Joined: 2008.07.27. 17:00
- Location: Hungary
- Contact:
Re: Bad sectors not being corrected
Yes, I was not sure how the hard disk was connected (eg. directly to motherboard or via USB).
You can use the Disk -> Surface test and click on VIEW any time (and click on the surface map) in Hard Disk Sentinel to check the actual contents written to a particular sector on the hard disk. By knowing the total allocated capacity of the partition, you can easily calculate the number of sectors occupied by that, just multiple the total MB (you can see in Windows -> Disk Management, where you created the parition, NOT by checking the total/free capacity of the logical drive) with 1024 x 2 (as these are 512 byte sectors, addressable by the OS).
For example, if you allocated 900000 MB, then the size of the partition is approximately 900000 x 1024 x 2 = 1843200000 sectors.
If you prefer to test only this area, this is also possible very quickly: just open Disk -> Surface test in Hard Disk Sentinel and before starting the actual test, you can use the Configuration tab to specify disk testing options, for example the First block / Last block to be tested.
(each blocks contain 1/10000 part of the complete surface, Hard Disk Sentinel displays the proper number of sectors occupied by each block. For a 1 TB hard disk, each blocks contain around 95 MB or 195000 sectors depending on the actual hard disk model).
You can use the Disk -> Surface test and click on VIEW any time (and click on the surface map) in Hard Disk Sentinel to check the actual contents written to a particular sector on the hard disk. By knowing the total allocated capacity of the partition, you can easily calculate the number of sectors occupied by that, just multiple the total MB (you can see in Windows -> Disk Management, where you created the parition, NOT by checking the total/free capacity of the logical drive) with 1024 x 2 (as these are 512 byte sectors, addressable by the OS).
For example, if you allocated 900000 MB, then the size of the partition is approximately 900000 x 1024 x 2 = 1843200000 sectors.
If you prefer to test only this area, this is also possible very quickly: just open Disk -> Surface test in Hard Disk Sentinel and before starting the actual test, you can use the Configuration tab to specify disk testing options, for example the First block / Last block to be tested.
(each blocks contain 1/10000 part of the complete surface, Hard Disk Sentinel displays the proper number of sectors occupied by each block. For a 1 TB hard disk, each blocks contain around 95 MB or 195000 sectors depending on the actual hard disk model).