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 Post subject: Marking just SLOW blocks as files
PostPosted: July 26th, 2014, 13:36 
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Location: EARTH
Huy guys)

Recently I've been playing again with a damaged harddisk and found out a bit annoying that although most (even free) dedicated tools do make manufacturer-minded controllers relocate BADs, if EraseWaits fails, then such software is pretty useless against just SLOW (say, 250+ms) blocks. Sometimes MHDD.cfg is of help, however, wasting valuable G-list space for pennies sucks, let alone when there's no room there.

I really doubt I'm the first and the only to encounter slowpokes, so perhaps I'm just unawarely mistaken and there've been plenty heaps of relevant utils for years and you could gracefully name a piece of software which could MARK SLOW blocks as "occupied" ("reserved") via files with HIDDEN/SYSTEM/READONLY/whatever attrs?

The logic is quite straightforward: if there's a (free) SLOW block then MARK and reserve it as a file (or files), so the system would SKIP such. Indeed, a similar approach is no snakeoil and even might complicate the things if used carelessly (e.g. overfragmentation), yet if one does realize why, how and what for, then it's a good thing.
Preferably, for windows; ambiguity implied)

Hopefully it would be useful for others too.
TY


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 Post subject: Re: Marking just SLOW blocks as files
PostPosted: August 3rd, 2014, 18:31 
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Joined: March 14th, 2014, 11:06
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Hi there)

Does soft-remapping via a file system seem a bit tricky, yep?
Perhaps, I just stated my question wrong or something, because the idea is quite trivial and the only possible nuance it might have had to do with is implementation: (1) a file_, (2) fileS, (3) $badclus or (4) a combo.

The primary goal is to defeat SLOW blocks/clusters (e.g. over 200ms for reading and over 300ms for writing) by marking them as 'occupied' or 'soft-bad'. In general, it's but an interim measure, yet it seems quite useful and suits my needs. On the other hand, as a side effect, it may virtually 'extend' G-list, what is also quite handy in a way.

So, I would like to know how to realize the idea or which software can do it.
If it happens there's no such software, then I would like to learn why.

Anybody knows?
TY


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 Post subject: Re: Marking just SLOW blocks as files
PostPosted: August 3rd, 2014, 21:50 
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Joined: December 4th, 2012, 1:35
Posts: 3844
Location: Adelaide, Australia
http://www.dposoft.net/rbd.html ?

Quote:
Repartition Bad Drive 1.01... free
Repartition Bad Drive is free utility from Abstradrome which is intended to isolate unrecoverable bad sectors from partitions. If HDD Regenerator reports that bad sectors cannot be regenerated, then the hard drive contains unrecoverable bad sectors. Although we do not recommend using such hard drives*, however in some cases the hard drive may contain unrecoverable bad sectors, but work stable. If you want to use such hard drive to store NOT important data**, you should isolate bad sectors from data. Repartition Bad Drive utility is intended to repartition bad hard drives in such way so that the bad sectors will be isolated from partitions. The only requirement before repartitioning is that your hard drive should NOT contain any useful data!***

* If your hard drive contains unrecoverable bad sectors, replace it as soon as possible. In no circumstances store any important information on the hard drive which was not regenerated successfully and contains unrecoverable bad sectors!

** For example, to store files downloaded from internet, which can be re-downloaded even if the hard drive fails, or to store ISO images of your DVDs, to avoid inserting DVDs each time you need to use them. In other words, to store any NOT important data that can be easily restored even if the hard drive completely fails.

*** If applied to a hard drive, Repartition Bad Drive will destroy all data on that drive!

If you have already copied all data from your bad hard drive, you can use the Repartition Bad Drive free utility to isolate bad blocks:

1. Download the program and start it (no installation is required!)



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 Post subject: Re: Marking just SLOW blocks as files
PostPosted: August 6th, 2014, 5:17 
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Joined: March 14th, 2014, 11:06
Posts: 61
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Thank you, HaQue.

Let's see. So, this is a free tool from a strange HDD Regenerator's (a tool to 'recover' bad blocks which are still there) author, right? Not sure about the "Bad Drive" functionality, but ain't it's still about semi-automatic re-partition?

I believe it's a different approach, however, a testrun won't harm a dying device. Much.
Well, going to refresh my obsolete cpp skills...


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 Post subject: Re: Marking just SLOW blocks as files
PostPosted: August 13th, 2014, 4:09 
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Joined: March 14th, 2014, 11:06
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Ok, I did play for awhile with Repartition Bad Drive and I can admit it's actually more user-friendly for those who don't know or care LBA/MB ratio (which should be multiplied or divided by and what) and one is not required to list safe-truncated begin-end blocks to manipulate partitions. Unfortunately, it just DOESN'T do alignment (e.g. 512 x 8), NOR works under WinPE/XP/7/8 or whatever that runs from usb/flash/sd. At first I thought it was something about IDE/SATA, but nope; then I though it was a wrong usb port a 'bad' flashdrive/iso--wrong again. Only stationary full-fledged system (be it XP/7/8) works fine with it. Rather strange feature...

So far, if there's no KNOWN software to mark bad/slow blocks as "occupied" then... Perhaps, there's something wrong with such an approach? May be there's something one should be aware or even refrain from doing this?

TY


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 Post subject: Re: Marking just SLOW blocks as files
PostPosted: August 13th, 2014, 16:58 
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Joined: August 13th, 2014, 16:13
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Location: Netherlands
NRA wrote:
So far, if there's no KNOWN software to mark bad/slow blocks as "occupied" then... Perhaps, there's something wrong with such an approach? May be there's something one should be aware or even refrain from doing this?

If slow sectors exist outside the Plist, the drive is losing reliability. You can hide them in software, but probably more slow (or just bad) sectors will pop up in other places. I would not store valuable data on such a drive.

Should you still want to write such a tool, here are some pointers:
NOTE: In first 2 cases, the input is not in LBA but cluster number within partition

Good luck,
Erik


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 Post subject: Re: Marking just SLOW blocks as files
PostPosted: August 14th, 2014, 3:10 
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Location: Adelaide, Australia
IMHO time doing this would be much better spent on other things. I think this would be like treading water. All that will result is helping an ailing disk limp along possibly a little longer, with the problems it has hidden away. With falsh chips in the TB size coming out pretty soon, I personally wouldn't be spending weeks learning and coding this kind of tool.

But I typically do similar things that take my fancy, so I am not judging at all!! :)


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 Post subject: Re: Marking just SLOW blocks as files
PostPosted: August 14th, 2014, 18:18 
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HaQue wrote:
I personally wouldn't be spending weeks learning and coding this kind of tool.

I think it would be a worthwhile exercise, if only to familiarise oneself with the inner workings of NTFS. In that respect I find the "katyscode" URL very interesting, even though she herself says that her work has now been supplanted by various free tools. However, her analysis is primarily concerned with clearing the $BADCLUS metafile rather than adding bad clusters to it. Clearing BADCLUS is something that you would want to do after cloning a bad drive to a good one.

Still, isolating bad clusters doesn't appear to be that hard to do. What if you were to create a single-cluster file and then edit its MFT record to point to a particular bad cluster? You could then run CHKDSK against the drive to repair the file system. Presumably this would repair the BITMAP.

Edit: The following URL may be of interest:

Resetting the bad sectors list after cloning:
http://web.archive.org/web/201006130114 ... =ntfsclone

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 Post subject: Re: Marking just SLOW blocks as files
PostPosted: August 17th, 2014, 18:03 
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I forgot to mention Makebad:
http://files.hddguru.com/download/Software/Makebad/

I suspect that it works by using the ATA Write Uncorrectable Ext command to flag a specified sector as unreadable. Windows then adds it to $BADCLUS.

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