Formatting a hard disk and handling of suspicious bad sectors
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From: Rod Speed on 15 Feb 2010 14:08 Man-wai Chang to The Door (24000bps) wrote: >> Get one of the many utilities that will write zeros to the entire HD, >> then repartition, then reformat (the high-level format). >> The other way to get a newly formatted HD is to buy a new one. > How could I tell the utility not to retry a bad sector to save time? Use a utility that does not do that. > I want it to mark a sector as bad when it fails to read it on the FIRST TIME (aka, NO MERCY)! Not possible and that wouldnt work anyway, you will always get some retrys with modern very high density drives.
From: "nobody >" on 15 Feb 2010 16:04 Man-wai Chang to The Door (24000bps) wrote: >> And elsewhere, and more commonly, it's called a "high-level format", as >> opposed to a "low-level format". Were M. Toylet to put that phrase into >> xyr favourite WWW search engine, xe would find lots of information on >> the subject. >> > > Yes, but why can't customers do a low-level format again AFTER YEARS of > use? Why should customers rely on SMART? > > "SMART" is far more able to detect (and correct/reallocate) bad sectors than any software is. The controller on a newish hard drive with SMART has more "brains" than an old 486, and the code is written specifically for the drive series. The old software (even the debug commands) were generic. Methinks you are a control freak... ;}
From: Yousuf Khan on 15 Feb 2010 17:41 Man-wai Chang to The Door (24000bps) wrote: > When I right-clicked a hard disk in Window$ and hit Format, was it the > hard disk controller that took over to format a particular sector on the > disk? Or was it the OS? It's an OS-level operation. It doesn't extend out to beyond the partition borders, and partitions are organizational constructs maintained by the OS'es. If there is a separate partition maintained by a different OS, it won't be touched. Today, a format is simply rewriting the file allocation and directory information on the partition. A long format might involve a cursory read-test of the surface of the disk before finalizing. > I wanted to reduce the fault tolerance level of the formatting process > such that it would mark a sector as bad when there was one single > read/write failure. > > Right now, the Format process would retry again and again for long time > when a bad sector was hit. I don't want the process to retry, and just > mark it as bad. As others have mentioned, just run a disk wipe utility on the partition. Disk Redactor is a free-ware freespace wipe utility that runs under Windows. It even has a feature to do just a write test on the disk, if you don't want to actually wipe the freespace. Yousuf Khan
From: Yousuf Khan on 15 Feb 2010 17:50 Man-wai Chang to The Door (24000bps) wrote: >> And elsewhere, and more commonly, it's called a "high-level format", as >> opposed to a "low-level format". Were M. Toylet to put that phrase into >> xyr favourite WWW search engine, xe would find lots of information on >> the subject. >> > > Yes, but why can't customers do a low-level format again AFTER YEARS of > use? Why should customers rely on SMART? SMART is actually quite useful these days, but it requires that you get the modern disk monitoring software that can interpret it for you. A good one is Hard Disk Sentinel, but its most advanced SMART disk testing features require a registration fee. But its overall disk health report is completely free, and that's all you really need. Other good ones seem to be HDScan (completely free), and Seatools (free from Seagate, but requires a Seagate or Maxtor drive to be installed on your system, but it'll work with all other makes of drives, as long as you have at least one Seagate in there). SMART does its own internal disk testing that is quite thorough. Yousuf Khan
From: Arno on 15 Feb 2010 18:57
In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage "Man-wai Chang to The Door (24000bps)" <toylet.toylet(a)gmail.com> wrote: >> And elsewhere, and more commonly, it's called a "high-level format", as >> opposed to a "low-level format". Were M. Toylet to put that phrase into >> xyr favourite WWW search engine, xe would find lots of information on >> the subject. >> > Yes, but why can't customers do a low-level format again AFTER YEARS of > use? Why should customers rely on SMART? There really is no need for that feature anymore. Reading the complete DISK (e.g. bu long SMART selftest) and then doing one complete overwrite serves the same purpose. One problem is that a real LL format requires the disk to expose its internal structure and encoding of secotrs, IDs, etc. over the interface. While in the old days this format was standardized and the connection between disk and controller actually had analog signal lines, today disks are far more complicated internally with ZBR, advances error correciotn, no-ID sectors, etc.. This means writing working formatting software would be a nightmare. Not even the disk itself carries that around. In addition, you would also need to write the servo information, and AFIAK most (all?) modern disks cannot write that at all because their heads are not suitable for it. On the other hand, what purpose did LL format serve? Not rally any, besides adjusting the disk to the controller, e.g. by selecting MFM or RLL. Defect mapping was not done in LL format, but the verify read afterwards. You can still do that. But today disks will do the defect management themselves, because it did cause numerous problems, e.g. that OSes were unable to dynamically handle defects. Incidentially, with advanced magnetic coatings, you do not need to format the disk during its lifetime, it will not lose data due to weakened magnetization, except in areas with surface defects. And these need to be mapped out permanently, another reason to let the disk do it. So, you do not need to rely on SMART. But you do need to rely on the disks own defective secor management. And one way to do a complete check is a long SMART selftest and then a complete overwrite. However you get the same effect by doing a complete read and then a complete overwrite. I have done this. Arno -- Arno Wagner, Dr. sc. techn., Dipl. Inform., CISSP -- Email: arno(a)wagner.name GnuPG: ID: 1E25338F FP: 0C30 5782 9D93 F785 E79C 0296 797F 6B50 1E25 338F ---- Cuddly UI's are the manifestation of wishful thinking. -- Dylan Evans |