Hard Disk Monitoring

A few questions to the author of the program HDS.

1. Checking each sector on hard drive for bad (unstable) sectors and resolving the issues with area having bad sectors is not only time consuming but cumbersome as well.
Can the program determine what exact letter of the disk partition contains unstable sectors. For example, in my case it will be L:\\ (365 GB)
This will speed up the scanning of huge TB disks and fix problems more quickly with unstable sectors.

2. How to quickly and safely erase only the free space disk on which the unstable sectors are located without having to scan the entire large disk (TB).

3. The disk may be, for example, an unstable sector (but during scanning - the number of logical, unstable sectors (parameter 197) can be increased when attempting to read and increasing the number of RAW read errors Read Error).
Some programs - cause this problem. Unfortunately, I could not check it in the HDS 5.30 PRO program, not to drastically and unnecessarily increase the number of unstable sectors near the place where they already occur.

Thanks for your message and question.

> 1. Checking each sector on hard drive for bad (unstable) sectors and resolving the
> issues with area having bad sectors is not only time consuming but cumbersome as well.

This sounds interesting. Do you have other ideas about how to detect and reveal problems - without scanning the drive?

Generally scanning the complete disk drive is the only proper way to reveal possible problems and detect the actual location of the sectors which are not readable - and then attempt to repair them.
This is exactly what the Disk menu -> Surface test -> Disk Repair test does.

I'm afraid without performing a complete scan, we have no information about the actual sector number(s) which require repairing.

> W urządzeniu \Device\Harddisk2\DR2 wystąpił zły blok. (Disk; ID: 7)

Windows may notice and record problems in the event log (which can be also detected by Hard Disk Sentinel if you enable the Configuration -> Advanced options -> Monitor Windows Event Log for problems related to disks and storage.
But we have no details, information about the actual location, possible sector(s) which are damaged - unless we perform a complete scan.


> Can the program determine what exact letter of the disk partition contains unstable sectors. For example, in my case it will be L:\\ (365 GB)

Not only the letter, but also the proper file, folder and position in the file.
Hard Disk Sentinel automatically shows this information, exactly to determine which partition, folder, file may suffer from damage.

> This will speed up the scanning of huge TB disks and fix problems more quickly with unstable sectors.

No. This does not speed up the scanning, as this requires to perform complete scan, exactly to reveal such weak / pending sectors.


> 2. How to quickly and safely erase only the free space disk on which the
> unstable sectors are located without having to scan the entire large disk (TB).

If you prefer to erase the free space - the easiest way is to begin filling the partitions with other files (ideally with zero contents).
Hard Disk Sentinel does not focus on erasing free space but can erase complete drive by using the Disk menu -> Surface test -> Write test (or to perform industry / government standard erase, use the Reinitialise disk surface test).


> 3. The disk may be, for example, an unstable sector (but during scanning - the number of logical, unstable
> sectors (parameter 197) can be increased when attempting to read

Yes. This is completely normal and in some situations this is even expected. This is exactly the purpose of the complete disk scan: to REVEAL such problems which are ALREADY there on the disk surface, just not yet detected. But any file operation targeting the affected sector would detect it.

Sorry for the possible confusion, but I can confirm that of course NOT the test (or a read operation) causes the problem with a sector: it just reveals the problem (the damaged sector) which may not yet known/detected and can otherwise (without the test) remain hidden for very long time (until the sector accessed, read or written).


> and increasing the number of RAW read errors Read Error).

This is completely different attribute and reflects different kind of information ....


> Some programs - cause this problem.

Generally any file operation (even a simple copy, move or system startup) can cause that new pending / weak sectors detected if the operating conditions of the disk drive is not stable. For example if the drive does not receive enough power, then data recorded - but after some time, the drive may not able to read back. So accessing the corresponding sector (or the file which saved on the sector) by any means may result in increasing weak sector count.
This is not problem / fault / limitation of the running application of course.

The complete surface scan in Hard Disk Sentinel (Disk menu -> Surface test -> Read test) designed to reveal such issues (or confirm if the disk status is perfect, there are no such issues).
The Disk menu -> Surface test -> Disk Repair function in Hard Disk Sentinel designed to do the above plus repair the found issues immediately (and showing the probably affected files on the actual partitions).

I'm afraid there is no better, more stable, robust, effective - and faster solution possible.
You may limit testing to specific data blocks in Hard Disk Sentinel of course to perform partial testing/repairing (so then it will not scan the entire surface).