VOGONS


First post, by RaiderOfLostVoodoo

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The uncorrectable sectors on the 40GB ones are just phantoms. I used all the diagnostic programs on UBCD (HUTIL, Vivard, etc). None could fine any broken sectors. After performing the tests the Power On Hours jumped from 3k to 407k. So SMART is claiming that this drive ran 24/7 since the 70s. Interesting!
I've been using this drive in my ISA test system for some time now and installed Win98 multiple times. No issues so far, expect from the wrong SMART values.
My suspicion is, that the firmware might be broken. But I can't find a source that seems trustworthy. Can anyone help me out?

The 160GB one definitely has broken sectors in the first few hundred Megabytes. Every program found them, but none could remap them. My suspicion was that the drive ran out of spare sectors. But nope, it didn't. I don't understand why I can't remap the sectors. Any ideas how to fix them?
Some people might suggest to just throw it away, but I never throw away HDDs that still work. I've build a few low end office machines and give away HDDs with reallocated sectors as a freebie. Newbs don't like to buy PCs without HDDs. They want a machine that's ready to use. Of course I tell them to backup important data and buy a SSD as soon as they can spare the cash. If they don't, that's not my problem anymore. I would like to give away pristine HDDs, but I can't. Most PCs I buy come without an HDD because the seller "dOeSn'T kNoW wHaT's oN iT, sO hE kEePs iT". -.-

Last edited by RaiderOfLostVoodoo on 2022-04-28, 05:38. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 1 of 11, by chiveicrook

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From my experience it's really hard to find software that correctly reads and interprets all values from SMART. Best to look at raw values and compare with manufacturer's datasheets for the drive if available.
It's quite likely that 63798 is not in hex at all but in, for example, BCD. Could be 63798 hours which is definitely possible.

Anyway, on most of my drives once a sector is marked internally as uncorrectable by the drive it won't show up on any normal scan again. Depending on manufacturer sometimes they can still show up in advanced diagnostic done via official manufacturer's tool.
I've never had a samsung drive so I'm not sure about their tools. The only drives with failed sectors that I have are Seagates, which require advanced scan from seatools to correct broken sectors, which after correction stop appearing anywhere (they only show up in incremented broken sector count in smart).

Reply 2 of 11, by RaiderOfLostVoodoo

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chiveicrook wrote on 2022-04-27, 11:15:

It's quite likely that 63798 is not in hex at all but in, for example, BCD. Could be 63798 hours which is definitely possible.

You're ignoring the fact, that it jumped from 3k to 407k.

chiveicrook wrote on 2022-04-27, 11:15:

Anyway, on most of my drives once a sector is marked internally as uncorrectable by the drive it won't show up on any normal scan again. Depending on manufacturer sometimes they can still show up in advanced diagnostic done via official manufacturer's tool.
I've never had a samsung drive so I'm not sure about their tools. The only drives with failed sectors that I have are Seagates, which require advanced scan from seatools to correct broken sectors, which after correction stop appearing anywhere (they only show up in incremented broken sector count in smart).

Yeah, I also have a few Seagate disks with bad sectors. SeaTools worked fine on those.
But HUTIL (the Samsung tool) didn't work on this disk and neither did other tools.

By the way, I found a screenshot which I took a few months ago:
PP50bQC.jpg
It's from Vivard I think.

6252933 sectors =
3201501696 Bytes =
3126466.5 KBytes =
3053.18 MBytes =
2,98 GBytes

I could create a 3GB partition and delete it afterwards, as a workaround. But the buyer will probably forget about it and might try to use all the space at some point.

Reply 3 of 11, by Tiido

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Bad sectors do not show up in normal tests because they have been reallocated and only begin to show up when spare sectors run out. When a drive first encounters a sector it deems bad it will attempt to read out all data and place it into a spare sector, and that bad sector is marked out and next time it is accessed the spare sector is accessed instead, reallocation count is increased. Uncorrectable count reflects how many of the reallocated sectors are damaged beyond any use.
Drive specific tools can show the bad sector in its original position as they know how to talk to the drive to get the normally hidden things.

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Reply 4 of 11, by dr_st

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RaiderOfLostVoodoo wrote on 2022-04-27, 09:19:

Some people might suggest to just throw it away, but I never throw away HDDs that still work. I've build a few low end office machines and give away HDDs with reallocated sectors as a freebie.

Seems reasonable. I retire HDDs with reallocated sectors to old, rarely used systems, and monitor them. As long as the count is steady, things are OK. Once it starts going up, I take this as a sign of impending doom, and get rid of the drive.

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Reply 5 of 11, by pentiumspeed

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Yes recycle these hard drive that says uncorrectable or errors in the SMART read out. I had one that had uncorrectable of 4 count render PS4 unusable.

Not worth using your time trying to save them. I had gone through so many like this and learned the experience.

Cheers,

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Reply 6 of 11, by Tetrium

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chiveicrook wrote on 2022-04-27, 11:15:
From my experience it's really hard to find software that correctly reads and interprets all values from SMART. Best to look at […]
Show full quote

From my experience it's really hard to find software that correctly reads and interprets all values from SMART. Best to look at raw values and compare with manufacturer's datasheets for the drive if available.
It's quite likely that 63798 is not in hex at all but in, for example, BCD. Could be 63798 hours which is definitely possible.

Anyway, on most of my drives once a sector is marked internally as uncorrectable by the drive it won't show up on any normal scan again. Depending on manufacturer sometimes they can still show up in advanced diagnostic done via official manufacturer's tool.
I've never had a samsung drive so I'm not sure about their tools. The only drives with failed sectors that I have are Seagates, which require advanced scan from seatools to correct broken sectors, which after correction stop appearing anywhere (they only show up in incremented broken sector count in smart).

If this is the case, this would be easy to test since it's already a mere 2 hours from turning to either 63800 or 6379A 😜

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Reply 7 of 11, by pentiumspeed

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I use gsmartcontrol to read out the SMART values. Only in few seconds. BTW, you cannot "repair" a hard drive with surface defects by marking them bad. The defects grows and corrupts other data locations.

And scanning takes time (hours) and not worth the trouble.

Cheers,

Great Northern aka Canada.

Reply 8 of 11, by chiveicrook

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Actually, managed to find info that spinpoint 0411 models count in minutes. (https://www.truenas.com/community/threads/omg … 492/post-326383)
The tool used converts this number from hex to hours and it shouldn't.

EDIT: fixed some wrong info

Reply 9 of 11, by rasz_pl

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mhdd/victoria a lot more capable than seatools (can only write all zeroes).

For the second drive dont delete the first partition, name it "bad sectors" and mark as invisible, afaik no OS will try to mount it

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Reply 10 of 11, by RaiderOfLostVoodoo

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chiveicrook wrote on 2022-04-27, 20:16:

Actually, managed to find info that spinpoint 0411 models count in minutes.

The count jumped by 404k within a few hours. Even if it's 404k minutes, that would still be 280 days.
I still think something isn't right with the firmware.

Tiido wrote on 2022-04-27, 15:49:

Uncorrectable count reflects how many of the reallocated sectors are damaged beyond any use.

The uncorrectable sectors were definitely NOT reallocated. Just tried to install Win10. After copying the installation files to the HDD, setup was complaining because some data was missing.
If a create a 3GB dummy partition, it works.

rasz_pl wrote on 2022-04-28, 00:13:

For the second drive dont delete the first partition, name it "bad sectors" and mark as invisible, afaik no OS will try to mount it

Good idea. DAUs (=dumbest assumable user) need to be protected from themself.
Partition doesn't get mounted and is only visible in the partition manager. But the name disappeared after making it invisible. 😒
Anyway: One machine more ready for service.

dr_st wrote on 2022-04-27, 17:32:

Seems reasonable. I retire HDDs with reallocated sectors to old, rarely used systems, and monitor them. As long as the count is steady, things are OK. Once it starts going up, I take this as a sign of impending doom, and get rid of the drive.

From my personal experience, HDDs start to get noisy when they're close to death.

pentiumspeed wrote on 2022-04-27, 19:36:

BTW, you cannot "repair" a hard drive with surface defects by marking them bad.

I'm well aware of this. It's more like patching it up than repairing it.

pentiumspeed wrote on 2022-04-27, 18:42:

Yes recycle these hard drive that says uncorrectable or errors in the SMART read out. I had one that had uncorrectable of 4 count render PS4 unusable.

Not worth using your time trying to save them. I had gone through so many like this and learned the experience.

Not an option. I don't have many drives without bad sectors.

Reply 11 of 11, by chiveicrook

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RaiderOfLostVoodoo wrote on 2022-04-28, 05:37:
chiveicrook wrote on 2022-04-27, 20:16:

Actually, managed to find info that spinpoint 0411 models count in minutes.

The count jumped by 404k within a few hours. Even if it's 404k minutes, that would still be 280 days.
I still think something isn't right with the firmware.

Disregard the 404k count and look at the raw data. Jump from 3k to 404k hours as the tool reports it (it treats raw data as if it were simple hexadecimal number of hours) would be equivalent of going from somewhere around 999 to 63798 (it actually does seem to be BCD encoded minutes since in the thread I linked user reported increment from 6542159 to 6542160 instead of 654215A). Around 40ish days. The counter likely overflows after some time.
Weirdly, it should be impossible for the tool you use to report anything between 2457 and 4096 hours.

Anyway, the main point I'm trying to convey is that it's impossible to draw conclusions from these values without reference. Some drives store power on hours simply as hours in hex, some use BCD, some use minutes or even half-minutes (yes, weird as it sounds). Other times this value should actually be read in a split fashion for example the first two bytes could be hours and the other two could be minutes.

RaiderOfLostVoodoo wrote on 2022-04-28, 05:37:

The uncorrectable sectors were definitely NOT reallocated. Just tried to install Win10. After copying the installation files to the HDD, setup was complaining because some data was missing.
If a create a 3GB dummy partition, it works.

In the dos days I remember that a full format (without /Q and with /C to retest those already marked bad) would mark clusters which are on bad sectors on a filesystem level and make them safely unusable. Not sure how modern windows format handles it but if it's the same this could be a way out. While not the best approach (a quick reformat would be potentially dangerous I guess) it could be used to actually create a usable partition encompassing the whole drive.