I have seen OS written bad blocks, which come from the OS timing out, and writing a bad block table entry, while the drive itself also reallocated the block with a hidden spare. That is fine, as this just is the OS doing it first, as modern drives hide all this, but the bad block table in the partition area is still there for legacy reasons. Full format with surface scan, which will also wipe that bad block table as it finds the bad block good, will fix it.
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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.
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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!
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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.)
I'll admit that I haven't read each post in this thread, just skimmed some. But, I adopt a tinfoil hat philosophy of tossing drives once they start throwing errors, reallocating sectors, or making any physical noise (if relevant) that's unusual. Of course, I'm not fond of losing $ 100 - $200 for a drive. But, I'm even more not fond of losing 1 - 2 TB of data.
May your bits be stable and your interfaces be fast.
Ron
May your bits be stable and your interfaces be fast.
RonI'll admit that I haven't read each post in this thread, just skimmed some. But, I adopt a tinfoil hat philosophy of tossing drives once they start throwing errors, reallocating sectors, or making any physical noise (if relevant) that's unusual. Of course, I'm not fond of losing $ 100 - $200 for a drive. But, I'm even more not fond of losing 1 - 2 TB of data.
May your bits be stable and your interfaces be fast.
Backups, always.
In my case, the stack of drives I have are from a NAS system, specifically, synology. I can't speak for other NAS brands, but synology throws error messages a little prematurely, imo. I've had errors appear in synology that state the drive has bad sectors and that it should be replaced immediately. Since the data in question is part of a raid6 (again, in my scenario) AND I have a backup of the data in two additional places, I decide to roll the dice and leave the drive in the NAS. Years later, that drive has never thrown another error (at least synology hasn't given me an error for that drive) and it is still in operation as we speak.
If you replaced a drive each time synology threw an error, I guarantee you that you would change your opinion on tossing drives.
I've also had drives, in a synology NAS, that simply stop responding and appearing in synology. The array immediately goes into error mode and I replace the failed drive. In all my attempts with that drive, I was not able to get it to come back online. That's when I'm glad I have a raid and happy to have backups because not all drive errors can be ignored. I had no warning with this faulty drive, it just failed and I never got it back online.
Bottom line is, if your data is important/priceless/etc, make sure you don't only have a single copy of the data.
I've scanned 8 drives since the start of this thread. My results so far
1 drive that SR can't process.
3 drives had a single unrecoverable sector (red completed box)
4 drives completed the scan with no errors (green completed box)
0 data loss because of these drives being in a raid array and the data is backed up and offsite.
What you pointed out is interesting. I don't have any experience with raid or NAS so I can't comment to much on that. It looks like SR is doing you some good. If a drive starts reallocating lots of sectors, I think I'd still be very suspicious of it.
May your bits be stable and your interfaces be fast. Ron
May your bits be stable and your interfaces be fast.
Ron
