Hard Disk Monitoring

Hi,

Win 10 x64 Pro Dell T7500

I have an boxed external Seagate 2TB which has been showing a red 9%.

I reformatted it and did a HDDS Surface test where no errors were found.

I still see the 9% showing. What steps do I need to do to get this back to normal please? I thought I already had.

Many thanks

oz

Hi,

The tests generally examine the status: reveal and stabilize problems with the disk drive - but the Health of the hard disk may not automatically improve back: for this, you'd need to manually clear the error counters on the S.M.A.R.T. page to acknowledge the previous (now fixed) problems to be notified about possible new issues only.

Please see this page from the Support -> Frequently Asked Questions section:

https://www.hdsentinel.com/faq_repair_h ... _drive.php

As described, the tests only the first part before clearing the reported errors.

If you use Report menu -> Send test report to developer option, it is possible to check the actual situation and give step-by-step details based on the actual S.M.A.R.T. values.

Many thanks.

I will follow through your suggestions.

I may be way off the mark, but I assumed if the errors were 'fixed' then the drive ( the good sectors) would be back to a new normal so it could be still used rather than having to turf it when maybe most of it would be okay. As i said this is from a 'know nothing' person, just an assumption.

Appreciate the program and the help.

I completely understand - but no, things do not work this way.

Yes, there are problems (for example weak/pending sectors) when things work as you wrote: those weak/pending sectors usually related to the operating environment (cables/connections/power source) and these could be usually completely fixed by the surface tests. Such sectors usually automatically restored to normal state so the Health % automatically improves and the problems disappear from the text description.

But other problems (for example but not limited to bad sectors) are not reset by the drive itself: the proper self-monitoring (S.M.A.R.T.) attributes still contain these values for the lifetime of the drive, exactly to suggest that there were bad sectors and the spare area used instead of them.
Those bad sectors no longer (re)used by any ways (even after reformat, reinstallation etc) - so ideally yes, the tests will show the drive as working: all sectors could be read/written (because the spare sectors used instead of the original bad sectors). But we can't automatically assume that a hard disk drive with more/less bad sectors (especially if it's Health % is relatively low) is "perfect" and works similar to a really perfect hard disk drive always showing 100% Health.

This is why after the test completes, we can decide what to do:
- replace the drive (especially in a mission critical envrionment)
- after understanding the situation and possible risks, keep using the hard disk drive and acknowledge these previous problems by manually reset/clear the counters to be notified about possible new problems/degradations

These described with more details at different sections of the Support -> Frequently Asked Questions page.