Samsung HD501LJ - Intermittent clicking but still 99.9% good

[11101775]

Hello everyone.

I've visited your forum from time to time over the years to do research or to try to learn about how/why a HDD I had failed, but I find myself here today because I would like to ask a question.
While I am an IT professional, this is not my specific area of expertise.

I have a Samsung HD501LJ 500GB hard drive that makes a clicking sound every now and again.
I can't complete a Ghost backup of the drive, as Ghost fails as it tries to read those sectors.
This drive is the system drive, and Vista x64 will boot up with no problems, and it appears that I can access everything that I need.

I am scanning it right now with Active@ Hard Disk Monitor:


I would like to be able to mark the sectors as bad so I can complete a Ghost backup, as I would prefer to not have to rebuild the system from scratch.

I do take responsibility for not having checked the backup, as it hasn't successfully completed in over 6 weeks. Shame on me.

Should I simply migrate all the files off of the drive and bite the bullet?

CHKDSK doesn't seem to be able to mark the bad sectors so they can be skipped over. Can someone recommend a (hopefully free) tool that I can use?
For some reason, the utilities I've tried can't read the SMART information. Is that normal?

Thank you for your time, and I look forward to your explanations.

[N.C.]

Check your PM!

Janos

[drc]

Use something else to make a byte-level image. Then you can still dump it onto a new drive and go. Ghost just isn't very tolerant of errors.

[BlackST]

The problem is elsewhere. In any case it is going to develop problems but you can't do much. Backup and replace by simply moving the files and forget the ones that make drive click. I have a solution for these 'unstable' T166s but I am too far.

[11101775]

So why can't CHKDSK mark the sectors as bad?

Also, why can't anything seem to read the SMART info off of the disk?
Is that normal, or do these drives not support that?

[11101775]

Use something else to make a byte-level image. Then you can still dump it onto a new drive and go. Ghost just isn't very tolerant of errors.

Any recommendations?

[pcimage]

Media Tools Pro

CopyR

dd_rescue

(My preference in that order for s/w only solutions)

Or shell out $3500 a piece for some Deepspar Imagers, like I did!!

[Starling]

If you can access everything you need just copy data and thrash the drive.
It's about to die completely.

[N.C.]

yes, you can image the disk with any sw, the selection is not too important.
The important is, you not have a proper diagnose, and any of the imaging sw can kill a defective drive, depending on the problem....

Don't leave the drive alone while imaging, and shut down immediately, if something strange happening, before the head crashed or damaged.

Janos

[BlackST]

Wait. It's not going to crash out of the blue : I cannot speak openly here, the drive HAS some problems but maybe it's not in critical conditions. But backup, backup, backup... It's a pity you are at the opposite corner of the world, I'll had your drive recertified 100% (obviously if there is NO evident physical problem)...

[Starling]

Why bother if it's still under warranty?

[pcimage]

yes, you can image the disk with any sw, the selection is not too important.
The important is, you not have a proper diagnose, and any of the imaging sw can kill a defective drive, depending on the problem....

Don't leave the drive alone while imaging, and shut down immediately, if something strange happening, before the head crashed or damaged.

Janos

Exactly, that's why I use DeepSpar. Sure it's expensive, but it's exceptionally configurable, especially with "image by head" which I use on all suspect/weak drives,as they tend to work for longer without switching heads. Again, it's down to experience as to how to configure the imaging procedure.

Sadly, the "image by head" procedure doesn't work on Seagate drives due to the lack of serial interface support on DDI, so I have to use DE/PC3000 for that, which has the tendancy to overwork drives in that process, IMHO of course.

[BlackST]

S. It's Samsung not Seagate!

[dick]

As you don't appear to have the required pro tools to carry out a recovery there are free Windows tools which might help you to achieve your goal.
I'm sure by now you have backed up your important files so you can pretty much do what you want to make it cloneable with Norton Ghost.

Have you tried scanning the drive with MHDD or Victoria?
Maybe there is a chance you can remap those bads and after you should be able to clone the drive.
Also if you really have to use Ghost you can adjust the settings to allow copying when there are errors on the disk.

Another way to copy the drive would be to use the free utility Unstopable copier by Roadkill. It's not an imaging tool but purely a file copy utility. Once all files in the partition have been copied if the drive is not still bootable it is possible to make it so. In fact check out his site for other freeware cloning tools which would help you.

[pcimage]

S. It's Samsung not Seagate!

So it is!

As it happens, head mapping isn't supported by DDI on Samsungs either, yet. Although Deepspar say it should be implemented soon.

[BlackST]

May I laugh? While waiting, there are other solutions.

[pcimage]

ha ha

Yep, I know there are other options, but none seem to be anywhere near as quick as DDI for head map creation.

[Starling]

Samsung had 3 years. No?

[pcimage]

Head map support for 3 years?

Don't think so. From Deepspar user forum Jan 2009..

"We have released a B-version of the DeepSpar Disk Imager (DR Edition) supporting imaging by heads. So now you can select particular heads while imaging drives. The DDI currently supports drives of the following vendors: Fujitsu, Hitachi Native (DK23), IBM-Hitachi, Maxtor, Toshiba and Western Digital, Quantum. We are working on Samsung drives at the moment. Seagate drives will unlikely be supported since it would require hardware changes to the DDI to access a serial terminal connection of the drive"

As far as I know there's been no further updates.

(This is DDI, not PC3000/DE I'm talking about btw)

[Starling]

I'm talking about Samsung warranty