bad sectors.

[ulao]

I was wondering if anyone out there could give me a do dont list on these damn things. I seem to attract them, and I dont know why. I have heard of software bad sectors as well. I have on the order of 5 TB's of data. two 2TBs three 1TB's. I dont have any issues recovering bad files but its getting really annoying. I get the idea of " the more data the more prone to problems" but surly you can have some data on a drive longer then 3 years? It seem my shelf like is about that. I mostly have WD, if that matters. I also enable S.M.A.R.T. I tend to leave my drives on 24/7 for uploading to users. Is that bad ( leaving a drive spinning for so long )? My box does get hot, and I added a few fans to ventilate the heat better, Is this a contender? Perhaps there is a posting pout there on the net about this very issue?

I just downloaded HDDscan to see if I can gather some info as I have another drive acting up. I have never used this app but I here its good. I know when the problems starts, the drive starts to get slower and slower. Could this be a virus? I have always held the opinion bad sectors could not be created via software but this "software bad sectors" I read about has me concerned.

HDDSCAN:
Heat says ok thus for under use.
S.M.A.R.T. says " not enough storage is available" huh? I have 60 gig available. ( 1tb drive )
The scan ( pending results ) Will add this in when complete.

[Vulcan]

S.M.A.R.T. says " not enough storage is available" huh? I have 60 gig available. ( 1tb drive )

FYI that is a Windows error message (not related to SMART) and is nothing to do with available disk space, but you'll need to do some Googling to see the range of reported possible causes (Windows troubleshooting is off-topic). Also, your term "bad sectors" is ambiguous, especially since you say you have no problems recovering "bad files".

Until you provide the raw SMART data from whichever disks you have problems with, any suggestions will be guesses... If you're having problems running HDDScan on your system, you can use the Windows porting of smartmontools to collect the SMART data. If you want to use it, you should get the latest version of HDDScan from hddscan.com to use on drives >1TB (last time I checked, the version hosted here was an older version which didn't work correctly on >1TB disks).

[ulao]

Also, your term "bad sectors" is ambiguous, especially since you say you have no problems recovering "bad files".

- Recovering them from back ups

I can not test S.M.A.R.T with WDdiag either so I'll have to report back if I get it to work.



BTW: The surface test says
Bad block found, start LBA : 5537024

Could I some how erase just this section and map the sector as bad? I'm told the drive pretty much should do this on its own.

I'd still like to know if there are some good guidelines for drive maintenance to prevent general drive problems.

[ulao]

Arr, I hate forum edit times outs! I just though about this. Will S.M.A.R.T work with Esata? I know I can open the external drive and remove then and test it.

[Vulcan]

I can not test S.M.A.R.T with WDdiag either so I'll have to report back if I get it to work.

Did you really mean you were trying to "test S.M.A.R.T"? I just recommended to collect the SMART attribute (raw) values - not run any tests.

Could I some how erase just this section and map the sector as bad? I'm told the drive pretty much should do this on its own.

It'll be much easier to understand what's happening if you collect the SMART attribute values first, but yes, you could zero-fill the disk (i.e. overwrite every block on the disk), then any blocks currently blocks already recognised by the disk as unreadable, will be tested when being written and may be reallocated. Of course you lose all data on the disk in that process. If you don't collect the SMART attributes values before and after doing that, then you'll never know what difference it made to the disk, and further useful diagnosis will be reduced or prevented - your choice.

I'd still like to know if there are some good guidelines for drive maintenance to prevent general drive problems.

Have you checked the disk vendor websites (especially Seagate & WD) for their recommendations?

Not what I would call maintenance, but perhaps you mean something different to me? One example of a (what I would think is a non-maintenance) way to prevent drive problems, is to ensure that drives have good quality power. Poor quality power can cause all sorts of problems (including writing data which cannot subsequently be read). There are many more possible suggestions, but without you providing that SMART data to show which if your drives are affected, and in what way, I'm not going to waste time on hypotheticals which may not apply in your case. Of course other readers may have a different view...

[ulao]

Did you really mean you were trying to "test S.M.A.R.T"? I just recommended to collect the SMART attribute (raw) values - not run any tests.

Well I can't get any S.M.A.R.T. info at all but yes I just wanted to get the raw data.

I was right about eSata, I emailed the maker of the drive and was told that they dont support a method of gaining S.M.A.R.T. access. I'll see if I get time to remove the drive(s) ( two 500 gb in RAID ) and see what drive it is and what the values are. Apparently there are some 3rd party tools that read SMART info from external drives like eSata but I can not find one.

[labtech]

Make sure you label the drives and place them back in the unit in the original order/set up. Failure to do so may lead to problems.

[Vulcan]

@ulao:

I was right about eSata, I emailed the maker of the drive and was told that they dont support a method of gaining S.M.A.R.T. access.

FYI you can't take that as a general truth - it might be true for that vendor (whoever that is), but I've read the SMART data from eSATA-attached disks. It's just SATA. In fact, you've probably explained the reason for some of your problems (for the first time), below...

I'll see if I get time to remove the drive(s) ( two 500 gb in RAID )

You never mentioned that the disks were in an external RAID config until now!!! That's why you couldn't gather the SMART data - many people here would have told you this, if you'd given the full info about this earlier Now knowing that your config is more complex than you originally described, this changes lots of things IMHO.

<hat tip> to labtech - good point about the drive order