HDD problem?

  • SpinRite v6.1 Release #3
    Guest:
    The 3rd release of SpinRite v6.1 is published and may be obtained by all SpinRite v6.0 owners at the SpinRite v6.1 Pre-Release page. (SpinRite will shortly be officially updated to v6.1 so this page will be renamed.) The primary new feature, and the reason for this release, was the discovery of memory problems in some systems that were affecting SpinRite's operation. So SpinRite now incorporates a built-in test of the system's memory. For the full story, please see this page in the "Pre-Release Announcements & Feedback" forum.
    /Steve.
  • Be sure to checkout “Tips & Tricks”
    Dear Guest Visitor → Once you register and log-in please checkout the “Tips & Tricks” page for some very handy tips!

    /Steve.

  • BootAble – FreeDOS boot testing freeware

    To obtain direct, low-level access to a system's mass storage drives, SpinRite runs under a GRC-customized version of FreeDOS which has been modified to add compatibility with all file systems. In order to run SpinRite it must first be possible to boot FreeDOS.

    GRC's “BootAble” freeware allows anyone to easily create BIOS-bootable media in order to workout and confirm the details of getting a machine to boot FreeDOS through a BIOS. Once the means of doing that has been determined, the media created by SpinRite can be booted and run in the same way.

    The participants here, who have taken the time to share their knowledge and experience, their successes and some frustrations with booting their computers into FreeDOS, have created a valuable knowledgebase which will benefit everyone who follows.

    You may click on the image to the right to obtain your own copy of BootAble. Then use the knowledge and experience documented here to boot your computer(s) into FreeDOS. And please do not hesitate to ask questions – nowhere else can better answers be found.

    (You may permanently close this reminder with the 'X' in the upper right.)

Akin

Akin

Member
Oct 22, 2022
12
1
Greetings all!

Sorry for the lame title, but for the life of me I can't remember what the problem was called.

It was on a podcast episode some time back. HDD manufacturers were using some kind of lame tech that made their allegedly high-performance HDDs suck. Western Digital was doing it along with some others, and apparently even some of their Black line of HDDs had the problem.

I need to buy a new HDD, and I've been buying WD Black HDDs for many, many years, so I want to get a new one... but I want to make sure that I get a good one.

Does anyone remember what the issue was actually called? If I could figure that out, I could search around a bit more and make sure that I get a drive without it...

Thanks!
 
SMR - Shingled Magnetic Recording
There was some discussion on SMR on Episode #800, Jan 05, 2021.

www.notebookcheck.net

Western Digital, Seagate, and Toshiba have been using slower technology in some recent hard drives without telling customers

Western Digital, Seagate, and Toshiba have been in the news recently for using SMR technology in drives without advertising them as such. In the case of Western Digital and Seagate, it consisted of substituting SMR drives into product lines that didn't previously use the technology, impacting...
www.notebookcheck.net www.notebookcheck.net
 
Last edited:
Ahh, yeah, that was it.

Thanks!

Now, to find out if the drive I was looking at has it or not... thinking about that Black 10tb HDD...
 
Also, don't go with a hybrid drive - part SSD and part HDD. I think those were a boondoggle and often the SSD part would be too small and would bottleneck large transfer performance. And the SSD piece wears out fast.

May your bits be stable and your interfaces be fast. :cool: Ron
 
When I try to boot my acer laptop with an older HGST 55Gb drive (spare) installed (which I hope to re use) I get a message indicating the hdd is password locked... I have no idea what the pw may be and cannot get a into bios or boot menu. Tried to initialize the drive with Windows 10 disk management and tried formatting with mini-tool partition wizard, with diskpart which reported an error finding the volume... Any advice will be much appreciated! ;-)
 
Tim said:
hdd is password locked
Click to expand...
Sounds like a previous computer's BIOS applied some sort of a lock to the HDD. I believe there is an ATA command which can override the drive lockout by wiping it clean, but I don't know which, if any tools, support invoking it. Hopefully someone who has some actual experience with this type of problem will post something helpful.
 
Try wiping the drive with Darik's Boot and Nuke (DBAN).
sourceforge.net

Darik's Boot and Nuke

Download Darik's Boot and Nuke for free. A hard drive disk wipe and data clearing utility. Darik's Boot and Nuke ("DBAN") is a self-contained boot image that securely wipes hard disk drives (HDDs). DBAN is appropriate for personal use, bulk data destruction, or emergency data destruction for...
sourceforge.net sourceforge.net
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

Tazz
The DiskMantler - hdd destruction
Replies
1
Views
349
Hardware
PHolder
P
J
Can this HDD be imaged?
Replies
19
Views
2K
Hardware
SeanBZA
S
R
SSD vs HDD
Replies
16
Views
2K
Hardware
PHolder
P
owlig11
3-2-1 backup, what other media do you use besides HDDs?
Replies
11
Views
2K
Hardware
doopy
D
Top Bottom
Back