Unreliable software

[gjb]

I have your latest version of the standard software. 4.30 standard.

When I first installed the software it identified one of my 8 eight drives has having bad sector issues and at 20% reliable state. The application did not identify any other errors to any other drives. I then removed the identified hard drive from the system and rebooted the system. When doing this, and not adding or changing any of the other drives, the application now shows a another prior drive as having multiple bad sectors, when this drive was found to be 100% error free prior to my removing the first drive and rebooting the system.

I also took the first drive, which I removed from this system, to another system, performed a full scan on it and the windows environment found no errors on the drive. I then used the manufactures scan tools and it found no errors on the drive.

How can I determine if your application is even functional???

[hdsentinel]

Thanks for your message and excuse me for the confusion.

The best would be to see the actual status of the hard disk(s). If you can use Report -> Send test report to developer option, it is possible to check the actual situation and advise about the drives.

The "bad sectors" reported in the text description are no longer used by the hard disk: they are already reallocated.
So the spare area is used for all reads and writes targeting those bad sectors.
This means that disk surface tests (even the tests in Hard Disk Sentinel or the tests of the manufacturer and especially the test of Windows) does not access those sectors, but tests the remaining data area and the spare area. 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.

This is why the detected and reported bad sectors can NEVER cause problems, regardless of their position (if they are on the beginning of the disk) because
that problematic area is never used any more. The questions are:
- are all bad sectors replaced with the spare area?
- are there other problems which can cause damages / data loss?
- is the number of bad sectors high enough to consider replacement or even warranty replacement?

For more information about these "bad sectors", please click on the "?" next to the text description (the text area describing the issues) and check
http://www.hdsentinel.com/faq.php#health

For more information about the tests should be used to perform complete verification of the hard disk, to reveal and fix possible problems, please check:
http://www.hdsentinel.com/faq.php#tests

It is possible that the 2nd drive with problems reported seemed perfect previously - as the problem(s) may affected less frequently / unused area of the hard disk. This is why it is always recommended to use the tests of Hard Disk Sentinel (as described on the link above) to reveal all possible problems.
This is almost the same as you should use the full scan of your antivirus after installation.
Otherwise some problem(s) may remain un-noticeable until they can cause serious problems. Exactly this situation described at http://www.hdsentinel.com/hard_disk_cas ... ectors.php

[gjb]

I think you miss understood my concerns/confusion.

I have 9 disk drives on my computer. Using your software 1 drive was showing up with 20% reliable, bad sectors, spin up errors, etc.

I removed this drive from the system, took it to another system without your software and ran the various manufacture test. Nothing was shown as having an error on the drive your software stated had multiple errors.

The other confusing part, is when I powered up the original PC, now with 8 drives, your software identified another drive, made by a different manufacture as having the same issues, but it showed it as perfect when the 9 drives were in the system.

How can this be?

[hdsentinel]

This can happen only if there is a problem with the hard disk controller driver and it provides incorrect status information about the hard disk(s) when Hard Disk Sentinel tries to access the hard disk status. It is possible that the driver provides an invalid information about the very first drive accessed (which is actually independent from the hard disk).

Hard Disk Sentinel has numerous "filters" to prevent such invalid information displayed. But in some cases the driver may still provide a status information which seems accurate - even if it is not.

This is the only possible way - because of course Hard Disk Sentinel surely does not display the status information of the old drive for the other drive (if the old drive is no longer used in the system). This can't happen by any means.

To investigate the situation, I'd ask to please use Report -> Send test report to developer option now, when the old drive (which was problematic) is not connected. Also please use Report -> Send test report to developer option when that hard disk is connected in this system (or in the other system you tested).
This way it is possible to compare the reported information about both hard disks, verify the hard disk controller (and its associated driver, which may require an update from Support -> Driver Zone) and check what could happen.

The best would be if a Report -> Send test report to developer option could be used when the affected drive is also connected to this system. This way it is possible to check and compare the reported information for the problematic drive and the other drive (which was perfect but seems bad when the affected drive is not connected).
So more reports would help more to investigate the situation and check what happened, what caused confusion.