Formatting a hard disk and handling of suspicious bad sectors
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From: Jonathan de Boyne Pollard on 16 Feb 2010 05:18 >> >> 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? > Were you to put the phrase "low-level format" into your favourite WWW search engine, you would find lots of information on that subject, too.
From: Arno on 16 Feb 2010 11:29 In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage Yousuf Khan <bbbl67(a)spammenot.yahoo.com> wrote: > Man-wai Chang to The Door (24000bps) wrote: >>> There's always little errors happening with modern drives, e.g. line >>> errors. There could be 100's of these per minute. If it weren't for the >>> fact that the drive's own electronics understood this situation, under >>> your system we'd be marking perfectly good sectors bad for no reason. >> >> Like I said: No mercy! The data is more valuable than a tiny tiny spot >> on a disk platter. > But that's just it, it's not errors on the recording medium, it could be > errors of timing and other things. The error only occurs because > something is too busy or some cluster on the disk didn't rotate around > fast enough for the head to read it the first time. Also on reading modern disks start before the headas have completely settled. That frequnetly makes ECC use necessary after a seek and occasionaly a second read. Errors from this do not indicate any problem with the disk, this is just a performance optimization. >>> It sounds like you're frustrated with one particular drive that may be >>> giving you these errors. I'm sure if you analysed it with SMART tools, >>> you'll find that this drive may actually be failing and it's slow >>> because it's run out of spare sectors to replace. The best way to find >>> out is to post the SMART report right here on the newsgroup and let the >>> experts here take a look at it. A utility called Everest will save a >>> file with this info in it, which you can then copy'n'paste here. >> >> I understood. Same "no mercy" policy when it comes to the reliability of >> the whole disk drive! > I'd say get the report of that drive posted here, and we can tell you > what's going on with it. Indeed. 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
From: Arno on 16 Feb 2010 09:11 In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage Yousuf Khan <bbbl67(a)spammenot.yahoo.com> wrote: > 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? I >> want it to mark a sector as bad when it fails to read it on the FIRST >> TIME (aka, NO MERCY)! > There's always little errors happening with modern drives, e.g. line > errors. There could be 100's of these per minute. If it weren't for the > fact that the drive's own electronics understood this situation, under > your system we'd be marking perfectly good sectors bad for no reason. > It sounds like you're frustrated with one particular drive that may be > giving you these errors. I'm sure if you analysed it with SMART tools, > you'll find that this drive may actually be failing and it's slow > because it's run out of spare sectors to replace. The best way to find > out is to post the SMART report right here on the newsgroup and let the > experts here take a look at it. A utility called Everest will save a > file with this info in it, which you can then copy'n'paste here. I second that. In fact I used to do timed surface runs to find drives with problems in a cluster environment before moving to smart. This was pretty reliable. Defective drives take significantly longer to read data than others (If they do not fail at it directly). 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
From: Rod Speed on 16 Feb 2010 12:21 Jonathan de Boyne Pollard wrote: >>>>> Oh yes ... I remember DOS ... and floppy disks too! >>>>> Most of today's disks are way too big to do a DOS format without first setting up lots of logical partitions. >>>> Wrong. You can format the entire drive with one partition if you want. >>> ... as long as one is prepared to use partition types that most >>> versions of MS/PC/DR-DOS won't be able to cope with. This, of >>> course, was M. Bryce's point. And even then that is presuming that >>> one's disc is below the 2TiB limit, beyond which one has to do >>> things like switch from the MBR partitioning scheme to the EFI >>> partitioning scheme, which no version of MS/PC/DR-DOS at all can >>> cope with. >> Modern versions of Win handle [partition types that most versions of MS/PC/DR-DOS won't be able to cope with] fine. > "Modern versions of Win" are not DOS, of course. What was being disucssed was using DOS just for the format of the drive. >> No it was not [M. Bryce's point]. > I'm confident that if asked xe would state xyrself that it was. Your confidence is completely irrelevant. > What xe wrote wasn't particularly unclear. It wasnt unclear that what was being discussed was JUST using DOS for the format of the drive. >> Only fools run dinosaurs like that. > Whether it's foolish to run MS/PC/DR-DOS is besides the point. No it is not. > The premise is that one is, and the consequence of the premise is that it's difficult to handle today's disc sizes > with MS/PC/DR-DOS, given their comparatively small partition size limits No such limit exists with JUST using DOS to format the drive. > and the 2TiB limit of the old MBR partitioning scheme (the only partitioning scheme that they understand) itself. That isnt relevant to the drive he wants to format.
From: Robin Bignall on 16 Feb 2010 16:24
On Mon, 15 Feb 2010 17:50:19 -0500, Yousuf Khan <bbbl67(a)spammenot.yahoo.com> wrote: >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. > Another piece of software that will give you a SMART readout is Speedfan, even if you use it occasionally only for that purpose, not to control/monitor fans. It is free. -- Robin (BrE) Herts, England |