Data Storage - Some questions concerning defective sectors on an internal HD

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Some questions concerning defective sectors on an internal HD

Bernd Stelter

2007-06-15, 1:14 pm

I bought a 300GB internal Maxtor drive in autumn 2005.
It's not the system drive, I use it only for storing large files under
XP and Linux.
It's formatted as FAT32 with Linux mkdosfs (but I don't think that the
high level formatting is relevant here).

Today I looked into the Windows event protocol and recognized, that on
18.09.2006 chkdsk found 12 KB of defective sectors on this drive (I
think this was one of these Autochk disk checks that XP
does sometimes after booting). Today, chkdsk /r found the same 12
defective sectors, so at least there
is no new damage in the last 9 months. I downloaded the Maxtor (=Seagate
today) diagnostic tool (for Windows) and ran
the simple (=no risk for data) tests, and at least the two more
comprehensive tests failed, so I'm quite sure that chkdsk tells the
truth.

I have several questions in context with this problem:

1) The help page of the Seagate tool offers the possibility to "repair
sectors in most cases" with the DOS version of the tool.
I always thought that you can't really solve a hardware failure by
software, but only sidestep it.
Is it really possible (for any tool) to repair sectors in most cases or
do you think this is only another expression for
"doing a low level format and making the defective sectors invisible to
a high level formatting program"?

2) Perhaps I could save the data on several slower drives and then do a
low level format.
But now that Windows chkdsk has marked these
sectors as defective they won't be used for storing (even not when
writing with Linux on the disk (?)),
so I would not see any advantage in a low level formatting.
Am I right with this?

3) I have warranty from my computer store on the drive (and also the
warranty from Maxtor), but can I claim without reasonable doubt that
with 12KB of defective sectors that drive is defective (in your opinion,
of course different countries may have different judges) ? Or do you
think the store owner could argue that this one time event may have been
caused by other
reasons (but I find no other critical events near this date in the
application event protocol) and that I should wait until new defective
sectors occur?

And a similar question:
If you were me, would you change the drive, or would you think that 9
months without new defective
sectors is sign enough that the other sectors are sane?
After all it would be very annoying to lose a 1GB-movie by some KB of
defective sectors.

4) (Sorry if a little bit off topic here)
Why doesn't XP tell me what it does and, more specifically, that it
does a chkdsk after booting?
I disabled the bootsplash Microsoft Logo
but all I'm seeing when XP starts are some driver loading messages and
then a black screen with a blinking cursor in the upper left corner,
finally (sometimes after hours when chkdsk is at work) the blue welcome
screen.

How can I configure XP to proceed as with Win9x (=DOS) scandisk, that is
telling me that it is checking this or that drive, how far it has gone
with this, asking me if I want to do the suggested changes or, at the
very least, tell me afterwards with a popup that it has found defects
and has changed something?

Thank you in advance
Bernd

Al Dykes

2007-06-15, 1:14 pm

In article <4672AF66.94EF4158@yahoo.de>,
Bernd Stelter <bernd30deREMOVESPAMBRAKE@yahoo.de> wrote:
>I bought a 300GB internal Maxtor drive in autumn 2005.
>It's not the system drive, I use it only for storing large files under
>XP and Linux.
>It's formatted as FAT32 with Linux mkdosfs (but I don't think that the
>high level formatting is relevant here).
>
>Today I looked into the Windows event protocol and recognized, that on
>18.09.2006 chkdsk found 12 KB of defective sectors on this drive (I
>think this was one of these Autochk disk checks that XP
>does sometimes after booting). Today, chkdsk /r found the same 12
>defective sectors, so at least there
>is no new damage in the last 9 months. I downloaded the Maxtor (=Seagate
>today) diagnostic tool (for Windows) and ran
>the simple (=no risk for data) tests, and at least the two more
>comprehensive tests failed, so I'm quite sure that chkdsk tells the
>truth.
>
>I have several questions in context with this problem:
>
>1) The help page of the Seagate tool offers the possibility to "repair
>sectors in most cases" with the DOS version of the tool.
>I always thought that you can't really solve a hardware failure by
>software, but only sidestep it.
>Is it really possible (for any tool) to repair sectors in most cases or
>do you think this is only another expression for
>"doing a low level format and making the defective sectors invisible to
>a high level formatting program"?
>
>2) Perhaps I could save the data on several slower drives and then do a
>low level format.
> But now that Windows chkdsk has marked these
>sectors as defective they won't be used for storing (even not when
>writing with Linux on the disk (?)),
>so I would not see any advantage in a low level formatting.
>Am I right with this?
>
>3) I have warranty from my computer store on the drive (and also the
>warranty from Maxtor), but can I claim without reasonable doubt that
>with 12KB of defective sectors that drive is defective (in your opinion,
>of course different countries may have different judges) ? Or do you
>think the store owner could argue that this one time event may have been
>caused by other
>reasons (but I find no other critical events near this date in the
>application event protocol) and that I should wait until new defective
>sectors occur?
>
>And a similar question:
>If you were me, would you change the drive, or would you think that 9
>months without new defective
>sectors is sign enough that the other sectors are sane?
>After all it would be very annoying to lose a 1GB-movie by some KB of
>defective sectors.
>
>
>4) (Sorry if a little bit off topic here)
>Why doesn't XP tell me what it does and, more specifically, that it
>does a chkdsk after booting?
>I disabled the bootsplash Microsoft Logo
>but all I'm seeing when XP starts are some driver loading messages and
>then a black screen with a blinking cursor in the upper left corner,
>finally (sometimes after hours when chkdsk is at work) the blue welcome
>screen.
>
>How can I configure XP to proceed as with Win9x (=DOS) scandisk, that is
>telling me that it is checking this or that drive, how far it has gone
>with this, asking me if I want to do the suggested changes or, at the
>very least, tell me afterwards with a popup that it has found defects
>and has changed something?
>
>Thank you in advance
>Bernd
>

Go to the Maxtor website and look for support. There will be a way to
enter your serial # and find if your drive is still within their
warrranty.

In any case, download their drive test software and run it. If it
returns a failure code, replace the drive. The test is read-only and
won't affect your data.

Maxtor's warranty process works fine. On that website, you give them
the serial # and the error code. They issue an RMA number. They will
end you a new disk drive, you copy your data over, if you can, and
then send the old disk back.

You need to give them a credit card # in case you don't return the old
drive.

If you keep the drive, teh test software has full read-write
confidence tests, but, I'll replace any didk I can, if it's on
warranty.

--
a d y k e s @ p a n i x . c o m
Don't blame me. I voted for Gore. A Proud signature since 2001

Maxim S. Shatskih

2007-06-18, 7:14 am

> How can I configure XP to proceed as with Win9x (=DOS) scandisk, that is
> telling me that it is checking this or that drive, how far it has gone
> with this

Enable the boot logo back.

>, asking me if I want to do the suggested changes

It cannot ask. It will just apply any changes.

More so: this is about system drive only. Non-system drives can be CHKDSKed on
a fully booted system.

--
Maxim Shatskih, Windows DDK MVP
StorageCraft Corporation
maxim@storagecraft.com
http://www.storagecraft.com

Bernd Stelter

2007-06-18, 7:14 pm

Al Dykes wrote:

>
>
>
> Go to the Maxtor website and look for support. There will be a way to
> enter your serial # and find if your drive is still within their
> warrranty.

Yes, I did this and it IS within their warranty.

> In any case, download their drive test software and run it. If it
> returns a failure code, replace the drive. The test is read-only and
> won't affect your data.

Yes, that is what I meant with the cited "Seagate diagnostic tool" (Seagate
has bought Maxtor
and does not provide separate Maxtor drive test software).
I tested the drive and it showed a "failed" (and no additional information)
for two different types of comprehensive tests.

> Maxtor's warranty process works fine. On that website, you give them
> the serial # and the error code. They issue an RMA number. They will
> end you a new disk drive, you copy your data over, if you can, and
> then send the old disk back.
>
> You need to give them a credit card # in case you don't return the old
> drive.

>
> If you keep the drive, teh test software has full read-write
> confidence tests, but, I'll replace any didk I can, if it's on
> warranty.

Yes, but if even the read tests fail, I think that read-write tests would
also fail. I would have to save the data on several smaller and older
drives (whose sanity is also questionable) and this wouldn't be worth the
effort.

Greetings
Bernd

Bernd Stelter

2007-06-19, 1:15 pm

"Maxim S. Shatskih" wrote:

>
> Enable the boot logo back.

Thank you.
I always thought that the Microsoft logo would hide the system messages (like it
does in
Linux), but apparently this is not the case.

>
> It cannot ask. It will just apply any changes.

That's a step back in comparison to scandisk, IMHO.

> More so: this is about system drive only. Non-system drives can be CHKDSKed on
> a fully booted system.

Yes, but regarding my event protocols, it seems that after a "dirty" shutdown
(e.g. power failure) it checks
also one or several other drives.

Greetings
Bernd

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