Hard Disk Monitoring

Seagate Barracuda 500 GB.

The overview on this disk stated:

There are 49 bad sectors on the disk surface. The contents of these sectors were moved to the spare area.

Health 50%

Estimated remaining lifetime 335 days

I ran the Surface Scan on this disk and Reinitialised the disk surface. After about 6 hours it had finished. Unfortunately, nothing has changed and Hard Disk Sentinel still reports 49 bad sectors health 50% 335 days life left.

If I run the Disk Repair on this disk, will it actually repair and fix those bad sectors? After the test, will state:

"The hard disk status is PERFECT. Problematic or weak sectors were not found and there are no spin up or data transfer errors."

Performance 100%
Health 100%
Estimated life more than 1000 days.

Is this possible please?

Thanks for your message.

Yes, I can confirm that it is (not only) possible but in ideal situation, it is completely normal and expected.

As described on www.hdsentinel.com and this forum, generally the bad sectors detected and reported in the text description are no longer used by the hard disk: they are already reallocated.
The spare area is used for all reads and writes targeting those bad sectors, instead of the original sectors. This spare area is originally reserved, so the bad sectors (and the health decrease in general) does not affect the usable capacity.

Ideally, when all such sectors revealed and fixed by the drive then following surface tests (even the surface test in Hard Disk Sentinel) ideally shows no problems. This is good, as this way you can be sure that the original (bad) area does not contain important data and can't risk data loss.

The purpose of the Reinitialise Disk Surface test is NOT to remove/hide the previously reported bad sectors. The purpose of the test is to ensure that
- possible other, additional (previously undetected) bad sectors should be detected and the above mentioned reallocation should happen for them too (so in worst case the amount of bad sector could increase)
- verify/stabilize possible weak sectors (which are very common)
- confirm that the drive is now stable after all bad sectors are reallocated

If this is true, so the test does not show problems (no yellow or red blocks) then after the test, it is possible to _manually_ acknowledge the previous issues: as those sectors no longer used and can't cause further problems, they may be ignored to restore the Health %, remove them from the text description in the current installed version and be notified about possible new problems only.

This is described on Support -> Frequently Asked Questions -> How to repair hard disk drive? How to eliminate displayed hard disk problems?

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

It shows that the disk test is the first part - and the second part of the solution is (after ensuring that the disk drive is stable) to manually clear/acknowledge the error counter.

If you use Report menu -> Send test report to developer option, it is possible to check the actual situation and send step-by-step details about how to do.

Sorry for the late reply about this post, but I did read it on the 7th.

I would just like to thank you on a thorough, precise and clear explanation on all this. I did go to the link FAQ Repair Hard Disk and read through it and studied it.

After adjusting those parameters in the SMART menu, the hard disk status is now perfect and running 100% in performance and health. However, I will keep an eye on it via HDS.

Many thanks again.