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How to check for bad sectors

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88V8
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How to check for bad sectors

#401583

Postby 88V8 » April 4th, 2021, 10:22 am

In another topic, there was reference to a bad-sector check for HDD.
Despite having bought an SSD for our (only) computer, I haven't installed it yet. Given that the HDD is nine years old it seems a good idea to run a check.

There is a lot of freeware that I don't necessarily trust.
Found this method from Norton using the Command line https://support.norton.com/sp/en/us/hom ... /v76078023

Is this a good idea?

V8

Midsmartin
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Re: How to check for bad sectors

#401586

Postby Midsmartin » April 4th, 2021, 10:34 am

In Windows, go to a command prompt and type

Chkdsk /r X:

Where X is the drive letter.
On a large drive this will take a very long time indeed. So long that I do this test much less often than I used to. Probably don't bother unless you see suspicious symptoms.

If it's the os drive it will reboot to run it, and results are logged in the event viewer application log with source "wininit".

You could also download manufacturers diagnostic. Seagate seatools and the Western digital ones are fairly agnostic about the makes of drive they'll check, and will both do short (a few minutes) or complete(many hours on a large drive) tests of the drive to test.

Breelander
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Re: How to check for bad sectors

#401619

Postby Breelander » April 4th, 2021, 12:41 pm

88V8 wrote:In another topic, there was reference to a bad-sector check for HDD.
Despite having bought an SSD for our (only) computer, I haven't installed it yet. Given that the HDD is nine years old it seems a good idea to run a check.

There is a lot of freeware that I don't necessarily trust.
Found this method from Norton using the Command line https://support.norton.com/sp/en/us/hom ... /v76078023

Is this a good idea?

V8



Running anything on an HDD that actually writes to the sectors to test them can push an HDD over the edge if it is near to failing. Before running any such test I would first read the drive's SMART data to see if any problems have already been detected. The manufacturer's diagnostics can do that, but I prefer to use CrystalDiskInfo, preferably the portable version that needs no install.

https://portableapps.com/apps/utilities ... o_portable

Any raw value above zero for 'Reallocated sector count', 'Pending sector count' or 'Uncorrectable sector count' is a sign of poor health. No such signs, then it is safe to run a surface test (but as the drive is in good health it probably won't find anything).

Age is not the most important factor in whether a drive is about to fail. Power on hours is more significant. CrystalDiskInfo can tell you that too.

xeny
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Re: How to check for bad sectors

#401779

Postby xeny » April 5th, 2021, 9:06 am

88V8 wrote:Despite having bought an SSD for our (only) computer, I haven't installed it yet. Given that the HDD is nine years old it seems a good idea to run a check.



Why not start by imaging the HDD onto the SSD? That way you've at least got a backup if you discover something nasty. It's not as if discovering the HDD is failing is going to give you a way to fix it.

With regard to drive health, I'd second the recommendation of CrystalDiskInfo, although I tend to download the .zip file version from the people who write it and keep a copy on a USB drive. https://crystalmark.info/en/software/crystaldiskinfo/

fisher
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Re: How to check for bad sectors

#401811

Postby fisher » April 5th, 2021, 10:57 am

I use CrystalDiskInfo for monitoring drive health. It is very good.

I use HDTune to thoroughly test the sectors of a drive. There is a free version that can be downloaded here: https://www.hdtune.com/download.html. Scroll down past HDTune Pro, to download the free version.

fisher
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Re: How to check for bad sectors

#401821

Postby fisher » April 5th, 2021, 11:21 am

Breelander wrote:Any raw value above zero for 'Reallocated sector count', 'Pending sector count' or 'Uncorrectable sector count' is a sign of poor health. No such signs, then it is safe to run a surface test (but as the drive is in good health it probably won't find anything).

Age is not the most important factor in whether a drive is about to fail. Power on hours is more significant. CrystalDiskInfo can tell you that too.


Non zero values for "Reallocated sector count" aren't necessarily an issue as long as the figure is stable and doesn't keep rising as you use the drive. It is the count of bad sectors that have been found, marked as bad and reallocated to a special reserve area. A drive can have this happen and still work perfectly as long as it does not keep reoccuring. It does, however, need monitoring in order to cehck it doesn't keep increasing. I would look at the values using CrystalDiskInfo then run a full scan using HDTune and then use CrystalDiskInfo again to check the value hasn't increased.


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