A few questions about HDDScan

[willemmerson]

This is an amazing program, I just have a few questions:

1) Is the HD scan (i.e. the one with the map) as reliable as the long self test? I have noticed that it is faster than the self test, why is this if it is doing essentially the same thing?

2) Is it possible to read the SMART error log file, like you can in smartctl, so you can see exactly where the bad sectors are?

3) I have read you can't fix bad sectors in HDDscan, but by doing a read verify test and noting where the bad sectors are (or reading error log in smartctl), then erasing just those blocks you can force a reallocation and fix them...or is this not a good idea? Thinking about it I suppose you will lose the data in that bad sector rather than trying to recover it.

[BlackST]

1) different tests for different things
2) no.
3) reallocation is a transparent and automatic process during r/w operations unless the drive is told not to do it. Sometimes errors are just ECC problems, rewriting ( or erasing = writing zeroes ) recaluclates ECC and the block is OK again.

[willemmerson]

How is the long self-test different?