Unusual disk test patterns - Help!

[Skee]

Dear people,
my iPod has developed a lot of bad sectors. 133 to be exact according to HDS READ TEST. My goal is to remap (or heal) these so that I can copy songs to my iPod without it freezing. The way things are now I can only use my iPod HDD up to the first bad sector that appears, after that it locks out, which means I can effectively use 3-4 Gb of my 80Gb HDD or the space before first bad sector. So I stumbled upon HDS and I would love it, if it does what it says it does. So let me describe my situation, as you read you will understand my confusion and my problem.
First test I did was "REINITIALIZE DISK SURFACE". What happened was it ran until lets say 15%, all light green squares, then the dark green started and every next square for 5! days was dark green. So, one appears, and every one that follows was dark green. This was not iPod problem and I will show that as I write further. I have no pic for this one but just imagine all bright green then all dark green, going that way it would take HDS around 18 days to finish the job so I quit thinking that something was not right.
The next test I did was "READ" test. It took me around 15 hours and it was complete and successful and believable. For this I have no pics also but there was 133 bad sectors, all around the table, others were mostly light green. Oh and there were two line clusters of bad sectors. All great and reasonable considering my iPod is 6-7 years old. So READ TEST showed 133 bad sectors, all around and two lines of them, everything else was green!
After that I decided I was gonna go "REINITIALIZE DISK SURFACE" again regardless how long it takes. But this time, to prove my point that it is not my iPod if there was the same thing again, I chose the Butterfly test order. And this is what happened! Again the same issue, though not exactly the same, it is the same principal behavior as the first time. This test is running now and this is the picture. I will get to the bottom of my situation after this pic.



If you take a closer look at the image you will see that it is all green up to the same square/block above and bellow. After that block/blocks everything is either dark green or yellow or red. This is in no way consistent with the READ TEST (it had red squares where some light greens are now) and it is symmetrically problematic from above and bellow. Also it is not the same as the first "REINITIALIZE DISK SURFACE" test, but the behavior is! All green then all problems! I know there is no way that light green squares will appear until the end for sure! No light green block for days now, and READ TEST showed there were around 90% light green. And also they will continue in the same pattern up to the end which is to be in around 15-20 days. This is not the same as READ TEST nor is it the real state of my HDD. Or am I wrong? Maybe I should wait?
So. What triggered this behavior? It is NOT! possible that all beginning blocks are bright green and all the next are either dark or yellow or red, or is it? Should I wait 10-15 days more to see? Should I try SAFE MODE if some other process is bugging me? Lock drive option is ON.
I hope you understand my problem. I have no issues with waiting I am on this for weeks now. My worries are that I will wait for 20 days and the bad sectors problem will not be solved. Am I doing something wrong? This table pattern looks very symmetric and logical not chaotic (and believable) as the READ TEST table did.
So please share your thoughts and advice with me. I love your software!

[hdsentinel]

Dear Skee,

Thanks for your message and the details, yes, I completely understand the situation and agree that the best would be to force the hard disk drive in the iPod to reallocate the problematic sectors: to improve the usability of the drive.

The problem is that when the hard disk finds one or more of the problematic bad sectors, then it automatically enters to its recovery mode which slows down the speed and allowing more time to access the sectors. This is designed to allow recovery of data from the damaged disk surface.
Generally, this is why you saw the symmetric pattern when you started the butterfly test: until a problem found, the drive could operate with high speed - but when it found the first issue, then it started working slowly.

The bigger problem is that the errors appear in non-consistent areas of the drive and there are many damaged (yellow) blocks appear on the disk surface map, which would indicate that the corresponding blocks seem working - but only after one (or more) retries. These may also fail later.
And if problems detected in completely different areas of the drive (not only the same positions on both tests), it indicates that the hard disk has such damages (small, even microscopic dust or material flying inside) which can scratch the surface at various positions, causing troubles. Maybe the yellow blocks are related to these, that's why after some time they seem working.

Personally I'd not really trust this hard disk for storage but I completely agree that the best would be to use it in your iPod (as it may not contain life-critical data). Maybe the best would be to use at least with limited capacity - if we can surely isolate the problems and find the disk surface (least partially) usable.

As the Reinitialise Disk Surface test would take really long time on this hard disk, personally I'd try to perform

1) Disk menu -> Surface test -> Write test to check how long it can work (with good/acceptable speed)
2) Disk menu -> Surface test -> Write test but before starting, on the Configuration tab, select the "Sequential backward test" (and then uncheck the default Sequential test) to check how long it can work on the end of the disk surface (with good/acceptable speed)

This way (and if you then run a Read test the same way) you can check how big areas of the complete surface may be still used, especially if these Read tests will not show damaged (yellow) or failed (red) blocks in the area previously tested by the Write tests.
Then maybe the device can be partitioned for this area to be used.

I'd suggest to save the resulting images in sequence after the tests, as they may help to examine the situation with more details.

Ideally, the Reinitialise Disk Surface (and in some cases even the Write Test) should force the drive to re-allocate all bad sectors and improve the usability of the hard disk drive in general - but I suspect this hard disk may have already developed as many bad sectors which makes this harder or even impossible.
That's why I suspect the best would be to use without "touching" the problematic areas, however, it is possible that with time new and new problems will occur on the areas which may now seem usable. This is especially true if the drive may have the mechanical problems (dust / material) and the hard disk will used in a such portable device as an iPod.

[Skee]

That is, bar none, the best customer support response I ever read, thank you. Very human and very professional.
You cleared so much.
So far the REINITIALIZE test found 354 bad sectors. The READ test found 133, I guess that's normal. If the REINITIALIZE test manages to isolate bad sectors I will wait around 10-15 days, 'cause I am in this for around 5 already. It seems at the end there should be around 1000 bad sectors compared to thousands of good ones. That is 6-7% HDD bad overall, ~90% usable, much, much better than stopping and freezing at 10% while copying songs.
This regular yellow block pattern remains a mystery, because it is almost every second! Does not seem random at all.
The iPod HDD drives bad sectors were sporadic all over the table, I think this is due to mechanical reasons like dropping it, carrying it in my pocket, bumping to things in a car...
I understand there are no guarantees with a disk this old, still I will wait. That is also because I tried WRITE test and yes it too tends to slow down, and sometimes on different places so I would not be able to get proper info on where to partition the disk.
No important data but songs
And if this goes through successful and HDS reallocates the bad sectors you will give me your address so I can order you a big barrel of beer for the team If not, well I gave it a month, I could buy a new one.

This is the latest image

Will post back, regards,
Skee