I look after a number of Windows XP PCs and a couple of them have started reporting a bad block in Event Viewer.
When I test the drives with HDSentinel it doesn't find any errors. What would cause Windows to report a bad block when there's actually nothing wrong?
Windows Event Viewer vs HDSentinel
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Re: Windows Event Viewer vs HDSentinel
Windows and its disk testing methods (chkdsk, scandisk) checks possible problems with the logical drives (partitions) and the actual file systems on that.
It may be surprising but in some cases these problems reported there (causing file system corruption or even problems logged to the Event viewer) are independent from the actual hard disk status - but related to other factors causing damages. This can be power or data cable issues, weaker power supply, general system instability, general overheat (not really high temperature of the hard disk but the high temperature of the motherboard / chipset), memory issue or even overclocking.
In most cases, these cause problems for the hard disk (for example weak sectors, communication problems) which are detected by Hard Disk Sentinel - but in some cases the drive does not actually record the problems.
If you have the opportunity, I'd recommend intensive testing in an other computer with the recommended methods: http://www.hdsentinel.com/faq.php#tests
in an other computer - to verify (in a completely different environment) if the hard disk is really perfect, to check if the issue is related to the actual configuration.
Also if you can use Report -> Send test report to developer option (and send screenshots about the Event viewer logs to info@hdsentinel.com ) that may help to check the actual situation.
For further information about how Windows (chkdsk) can mis-understood problems and does not really fix them, you may check http://www.hdsentinel.com/hard_disk_cas ... ectors.php
(not really this issue as then Hard Disk Sentinel would report the weak sectors. But shows that sometimes the Windows alerts may not be related to actual physical hard disk problems).
It may be surprising but in some cases these problems reported there (causing file system corruption or even problems logged to the Event viewer) are independent from the actual hard disk status - but related to other factors causing damages. This can be power or data cable issues, weaker power supply, general system instability, general overheat (not really high temperature of the hard disk but the high temperature of the motherboard / chipset), memory issue or even overclocking.
In most cases, these cause problems for the hard disk (for example weak sectors, communication problems) which are detected by Hard Disk Sentinel - but in some cases the drive does not actually record the problems.
If you have the opportunity, I'd recommend intensive testing in an other computer with the recommended methods: http://www.hdsentinel.com/faq.php#tests
in an other computer - to verify (in a completely different environment) if the hard disk is really perfect, to check if the issue is related to the actual configuration.
Also if you can use Report -> Send test report to developer option (and send screenshots about the Event viewer logs to info@hdsentinel.com ) that may help to check the actual situation.
For further information about how Windows (chkdsk) can mis-understood problems and does not really fix them, you may check http://www.hdsentinel.com/hard_disk_cas ... ectors.php
(not really this issue as then Hard Disk Sentinel would report the weak sectors. But shows that sometimes the Windows alerts may not be related to actual physical hard disk problems).