Hard Disk Monitoring

Greetings

Believe me or not but yeastarday i completly resurrected an inacessible Western Digital 1TB Caviar black simply disassembly the logic board and spraying on it a WD40 contact cleaner. Problem of this drive was that contact between the logic board and the hard drive chassis were so oxidated. Drive generated a huge number of reallocated sector (more than 1000) before becaming completly unaccessible. Spraying WD40 on the board and on the contacts revived it. perfectly. It's not phisically damanged on platters or head, reallocated sectors were caused by current fluctuations on oxidated contacts.
Drive is perfect, indeed i did a full "repair scan" with HD Sentinel and no weak or bad sectors found.

My question now is: how to reset "fake" reallocated sector count? Can reinitialization of the surface with HD sentinel (called low level format) wipe the reallocated sector counter? The drive works like a charm but i don't want to see the SMART stuping warning on Windows or Linux. Even the BIOS is telling the the drive is failing at boot.

I know that HD Sentinel can write to SMART values with a negative offset but i don't understand if this is simply a virtual "hack" to tell HD sentinel to not consider smart readings or if it can really reset counters. My plan is to use this drive on a Synology NAS Machine and even on the NAS i have the SMART warning thing.

I'm searching the best way to reset reallocated sector count, other counters are ok. Is a drive wipe with HDD Sentinel enough?

Thank you very much for your support.

Anyone?

Yes, WD40 can make some wonders, helped lots in cleaning contacts

No, I'm afraid Hard Disk Sentinel (and any software in general) can't help in this area: no software can remove/clear/restet _completely_ the error counters and give a false "excellent" status when the drive previously had lots of problems.

> Can reinitialization of the surface with HD sentinel (called low level format) wipe the reallocated sector counter?

No, of course not: the reinitialization does not clear any counter, just focuses on the data sectors.

The purpose of the reallocation is exactly to replace sectors from the data area by sectors from the spare area. So ideally when all such sectors replaced, all further reads/writes targeting the original sectors are redirected to the spare area.
So ideally the data area seems perfect: disk tests may not find any more problems and the disk seems really useful. But this does not mean that the drive is perfect, especially if the amount of reallocated sectors is high (and the health is low) because the spare area may have no (or just less) space for possible further reallocations. This is relatively rare, disks with high number of reallocated sectors usually produce new and new issues with time.

Yes, Hard Disk Sentinel Pro has function to correct the error-counters, clear/reset the counters by using the "Offset" function. This is "virtual" as you wrote.
I can confirm that the software in general and the offset function designed for the current installation: to (after diagnosing the hard disk, after revealing and stabilizing, repairing problems) acknowledge the reported status, correct the error-counter(s) of the hard disk to prevent displaying issues related to the past and be notified about possible new problems only.
This is possible only before the health is 1% or more, but not possible when the error-level threshold (0% health) already reached.

And the offsets do not prevent alerts issued by the system BIOS as they affect only how Hard Disk Sentinel detects/reports the status.

I'm afraid it is not possible (by any software) to completely clear / reset the error counters and show failing hard disks as perfect or older hard disks as brand new.

If you prefer, please use Report menu -> Send test report to developer option, as then I can check the actual status of the hard disk (would be nice to see).

Hello and first thank you for your support hdsentinel.

But i read somewhere that some people using Blancco Disk eraser (that is reported that writes even on reallocated sectors) and Seagate unit after a complete wiping found the reallocated sector count back to 0. This with Seagate units. No idea if this will work with WD units; that's what i'm asking to you: can HDD sentinel write even on reallocted sectors with Hard Disk reinitialization procedure as Blancco Hard Disk eraser? If it's not you should implement this feature as Blancco did.

Thank you.

Excuse me, but I need to confirm that it is not true.

That tool does NOT clear / reset reallocated sector count also for *any* type/model/brand of hard disks: it performs overwrite of disk sectors, similarly as Hard Disk Sentinel can do by the write tests.

Both software can overwrites all sectors (clearing data), including the sectors in the spare area when the original bad sector is reallocated and the spare sector used instead.
But that tool does NOT delete reallocated sector count (or any other attribute) in any ways.

What you may read that previously the hard disk drive reported bad sectors in chkdsk, which are completely different than reallocated sectors.
Those "bad sectors" are not reallocated, not replaced by the hard disk drive with spare sectors. So they do not appear in the "Reallocated sector count" attribute.
Instead, those "bad sectors" are still used and can cause lots of problems: these are detected and reported by Hard Disk Sentinel as "WEAK sectors" because they are still used.
And yes, usually the Disk menu -> Surface test -> Reinitialise Disk Surface function in Hard Disk Sentinel (and sometimes complete overwrite by other tools) can fix these, clear them without any problems and this way the drive is repaired, with no bad sectors at all.

This is exactly described at Support -> Frequently Asked Questions -> What is a weak sector? How to repair weak sectors?
( https://www.hdsentinel.com/hard_disk_ca ... ectors.php )
As you may read, this describes exactly that the problematic sectors are still used (they displayed as red on the disk surface map), chkdsk may report them (incorrectly) as "bad sectors" - and these can be fixed without problems by the disk test function of Hard Disk Sentinel - without using offsets, because the "reallocated sector count" attribute never report these.

Your situation is different - as the sectors on your disk are really reallocated, really replaced by the spare area.
Of course that tool can't reset/clear the count of reallocated sectors, it's overwrite/clearing function can't do more than the write test of Hard Disk Sentinel.

Please read here:
https://linustechtips.com/main/topic/75 ... ors-count/

They mention "dban" that is the light version of Blancco Disk eraser.

Is it possibile that after a zero fill wiping the drive do a self test and rescue the reallocated sectors? At least with Seagate unit with some types of firmware.

Thank you.

Also please see the comparison chart here:

https://dban.org/

In the Blancco disk erase column it's wrote: Remapped Sectors and hidden area!
So it seems that Blancco writes even on remapped sectors.

Sorry but of course no....

They write that they can overwrite (erase) the spare area by special disk commands.
But they *never* write that they can erase/clear/reset the reallocated sector COUNT attribute itself.

Please check their manual, which describes that they may able to overwrite the original bad sector during disk wipe, not "only" the reallocated spare sector (which replaced the original bad sector and used for all reads/writes and wipe). But this does not mean that the amount of bad sectors (the reallocated sector count attribute) will change/cleared/reset in any ways.

But I'd recommend to contact them directly - as they may explain better the functionality of their tool

Hello hdsentinel.

I'm glad for your support.

You are right: HD SENTINEL "wiping" does not reset SMART counters but i write to inform you that i successfully resetted all smart counters of my WD1001FALS 1TB with WDR 6 utility (Western Digital Repair Tool) you can find on HDD Guru Forum. I resetted also the G-LIST (the list of reallocated bad sectors).
This tool is developed only for WD drives and works only on x32 OS and it can reset SMART counters directly through SATA interface without other expensive tools (Seagate are another way of service mode).

Now HD Sentinel reads my drive as 100% health without any hack and without annoying BIOS Smart messages. I know that my drive is perfect because bad sectors where caused by current fluctuations on oxidated contacts. I will never do the same thing on a problematic hardware damaged drive!

Can you please use Report menu -> Send test report to developer option?
Would be nice to see the current, complete status of the drive. Ideally would be excellent to see the original (previous) status too and check the differences, but it's not possible .... Thanks!

I just sent the report. Please let me know if you find something wrong with my drive (WD1001-FALS).

I temporary linked the drive to my PC, usually this drive is linked to a Synology NAS.

Thank you very much.