Hard Disk Monitoring

Hello, I recently bought 10 used 1tb hard drives. I wanted to check if the drives are in working order so I can archive all of my photos and videos and everything. I will not be using these hard drives often, my intent is to just fill the hard drives with photos and videos, then leave it in a box somewhere, maybe in the attic. I would like to do a deep and full analysis into the hard drives to make sure they are 100% healthy and will not just die.

Please correct me if i did my testing wrong, My first step was to:

1) Perform a surface test, more specifically (reinitialize disk surface). I did the reinitialize disk surface with the default configuration settings (Is that okay?).

2) After confirming that all of them passed (There were a few that were still suspicious, I will show later) I did a few random seek tests and they all went through

3) Then I did an extended self-test just to be sure and they all passed

I seemed to have done everyhting correctly and they all passed their tests but something inside me is still worried. Some of the drives had a few slow sectors here and there but, one of the drives had a long line of slow sectors. I will post a folder with all the tests that I have done on my google drive and share it here. The drive I am most concerned about is the 'Samsung 787' it has that long line of slow sectors and the Toshiba drives performed very weird. Can you please check if the hard drives are usable for important information? Please ask me for more information if needed, thank you I also have issues with trying to use the 'repair drive' in surface test, i get an error 'error 5 access is denied' even though the hard drive is unmounted. What even is there difference between 'reinitialize' and 'repair drive'?

Thanks for creating this very useful software, it is the best!

Thanks for your message.

Generally the Support -> Frequently Asked Questions page -> Hard disk health is low or recently changed or I just installed a new (used) hard disk. How can I perform a deep analysis?
( https://www.hdsentinel.com/faq.php#tests )
describes the combination of tests to be used to verify/confirm if the hard disk drive is working correctly - or reveal/stabilize problems.

What you wrote is completely perfect and enough: this way you performed both reads/writes and internal hardware self test too.

If the surface test(s) do not report yellow/red blocks, then things are fine. Some darker green blocks (slower areas) are completely normal and acceptable.
I'd worry only if the dark green area would be really dark and big and there may be red/yellow spots near
(just like on this image: http://www.hdsentinel.com/help/hu/img_6 ... rface3.gif )
then some (or more) of such blocks will likely fail in the future.

But if there are no yellow/red spots, then everything is perfect and you do not need to worry.

If you prefer, you can send the resulting image in e-mail to info (at) hdsentinel (dot) com and use Report menu -> Send test report to developer option, so I can check the results (and the complete status of the drive) and can advise. (I'm afraid I can't check the attachment, so it is better to send in e-mail and use Report menu -> Send test report to developer option).


> I also have issues with trying to use the 'repair drive' in surface test, i get an error 'error 5 access is denied'

This sounds interesting, as that should never happen - except if you may try to run multiple Disk Repair tests: only one Disk Repair test should be running at any given time.
Other tests can be started on multiple drives at the same time, but the Disk Repair (as it is specifically designed to repair ONE drive) should be started on one drive only.

> What even is there difference between 'reinitialize' and 'repair drive'?

Generally the Reinitialize performs complete erase and stabilizes all sectors (if required). It is best to clear all possible data and reveal/stabilize sectors.
The Disk repair is generally a read scan and performs repair specifically on unreadable sectors only. The Disk Repair is only required if the previously reported some (relatively smaller number) weak sectors and you want to focus on stored data. So in this case, the Disk Repair test is not really applicable.

Please check the description of each tests when you select the Disk menu -> Surface test function for complete details.

Thank you so much for your reply. I am so sorry for not replying for such a long time. I will send an email of the pictures and will try and send the report. Thank you for creating this software and thank you for responding quickly.