I know this is usually not something that's done. If you have bad sectors just leave them for dead, right?
But given the circumstances surrounding their appearance, and that it has been running with them for a very long time without any more popping up despite heavy usage, I want to see if there's any possibility to force those to be re-checked.
I suppose such functionality, if available at all, would be only accessible with internal Toshiba tools, or some pricey DR product, but I still have to ask.

I believe HDDSuperClone can handle soft bad sectors.

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Try http://www.puransoftware.com/DiskFresh.html

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I'm afraid I wasn't clear enough about this in the original post, but I'm actually talking about relocated sectors: 144 of them to be precise, according to SMART.

I believe they appeared when it slid off from a precarious balance and dropped a few inches/centimeters onto other stuff on my desk while active. Not too violently, but still not HDD-friendly... So it seems reasonable that this would cause sector relocation, but since they are so few and it's been a long time since, and no new ones have appeared despite a rather heavy use, I was thinking that perhaps they aren't damaged beyond repair.

I was hoping there would be a way to make the disk re-evaluate those relocated sectors, which sounds to be a job for specialized tools.
The tools you've linked seem like they access the disk at the LBA level, so I suppose they won't be able to see the original sectors, but only spare area where those 144 have been relocated, and since those are fine, no repair will done. Unless my assumptions are wrong, of course.

I'm not interested in backing up, either, as I have nowhere to. I just want to re-evaluate the relocated sectors if possible at all.

This tool can do it, but it's not free:

https://drevitalize.com/

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A backup a day keeps DR away.

Thank you. I'll see about that.
It lists the ability to clear reasignments and SMART data for Toshiba drives both ATA and SATA, but doesn't explicitly list USB/3. I wonder if it'll work with that too.

Isn't this sw something like hdd regenerator?
Hdd regenerator overwrites "generated" sectors with some piece of code from some cached fw modules as i remember, that means it destroys portions of users data.
Does drevitalize overwrites regenerated sectors?

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All I know about DRevitalize is what is on the web site. It states that it uses VSCs to clear the G-list, SMART, and password. For some drives it can perform a Format Unit command.

https://drevitalize.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/DRevitalize.pdf


The surface scan feature is something else. I don't believe this claim:


It sounds like SpinRite, which is useless for any drive produced in the last 30 years.

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A backup a day keeps DR away.

Well, it seems that the demo version of the 3.x release of DRevitalize still available in the software's site freely offers the reallocation list clearing feature.
I'm trying that on some old spares which have no data and then pass a write/read test to see if they stay good or reappear.
If that works, I'll try to find a way to maybe backup the 3TB external disk before it gets the same treatment.
The program's interface is a bit weird.

If you just want to "refresh" your data, have a look at DiskFresh:

http://www.puransoftware.com/DiskFresh.html

I don't think it really serves any purpose these days -- drives perform background scanning to preemptively detect and rewrite or reallocate weak sectors.

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A backup a day keeps DR away.

Yeah, I took note of that one when you linked it before. I've used the similar HDDregenerator too, also mentioned here. It did seem to return some "stuck" sectors (so to speak) to normal working order in a couple of old disks from the 00's. I've also used victoria's DDD routine (which fills sectors with 55AA and then AA55, I believe) on newer disks with some use where the first pass showed a certain deal of latency while the second time everything was all fine, or, at least noticeably better.
Just now I've completed a pass where there were a few difficult areas, and then I rechecked those and they are now fine.
I'm no expert, but these SEEM to do something in some cases at least. That, or it was faking it the whole time, which seems doubtful.

You're probably right that, given the features of modern disks, their builtin checks probably deal adequately with most of these problems automaticaly, but, perhaps, sometimes there's a benefit in hammering those sectors into shape a little bit.

I suspect that HDD Regenerator, SpinRite and maybe DRevitalize use the obsolete ATA READ LONG command to read problematic sectors. This has the potential for insidious data corruption.

https://www.deepspar.com/blog/Read-Ignoring-ECC.html

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A backup a day keeps DR away.

Really ,
Have you actually verified this brother ,If it can do this then they surely know VSC for drives

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This software is often discussed at Ru.Board, so I guess it can do what it claims, at least in regard to VSCs.

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A backup a day keeps DR away.

Well, I've cleared defect reallocation lists from 2 disks already and, superficially it seems to work:
The SMART reported reallocated sector count is reset, and, presumedly, the actual allocations are too.
But I have no idea whether that's the case.
The full disk scans come clean and the reallocation count stays at 0...
Either it has worked and the sectors have been fixed, or just the defect count has been reset, while the actual reallocations are still in place.

Any ideas on how I could tell what the case is?

Also, on an very old used 20GB laptop IDE Toshiba disk I was given, which happens to have the upper shell partially bent/crushed, but still works fine, the procedure did clear the 24 reallocated sector count from SMART, but also other SMART attributes like power-on hours, power-cycle counts, and a bunch others. Perhaps the command had a different meaning back then.

You need to dump the G-List firmware module.

Some introductory info here (the web site is currently broken):

http://www.hddoracle.com/viewtopic.php?f=45&t=751

A lot of good info here:

https://forum-ru--board-com.translate.goog/misc.cgi?action=printtopic&forum=84&topic=4111&_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en-GB&_x_tr_pto=op&_x_tr_sch=http

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A backup a day keeps DR away.

Ah, the terminal. Someone else also told me about that in another thread I recently started for a Seagate disk.
I undertand those terminals use RS-232? I do have one of those ports in this motherboard, but, from what I've been able to gather, I can't connect that directly because of different signal levels, so I need a converter for TTL, it seems, although I didn't get confirmation for that. I'm guessing that's the same in Toshiba's case?

You can do a lot via ATA, too. I haven't followed the whole thread at ru-board.com, so I can't help you.

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A backup a day keeps DR away.