Question What is up with my hard drive ?

[Dreamevil55]

Earlier this year, I upgraded my old intel system to Ryzen. My old system had just 500GB of Internal storage. That Western Digital HDD is really old. Having 2x1TB of external storage, I didn't really need internal storage much except for OS. So anyway, it was working just fine on my old system. So I decided to use that HDD as just simple storage of my new system as the OS would be on SSD. So after assembling the new rig, the hard drive was incredibly slow. I decided to watch some TV show located on my HDD, and it took like forever to open. So I thought, yea, normally this would mean a dying hard drive or bad sectors ..I messed up something during re-installation. I was careful, with static cables n all. Then I thought, must be the SATA cable that was faulty, or the mobo SATA slot is faulty. Changed cables, moved around slots..nada. So then decided this old HDD is not worth the headache anymore, bought a new Seagate 2TB and it's working fine. So it's not the cables or the slots. So I just kept the old possibly broken HDD attached for no reason.

So a few days ago, I tried to access that HDD because it has some files I need. As I know it works, just really really slow. Then decided to run some diagnostics to see what is actually wrong before I throw this away. 21 hours in, HD Tune Pro Error scan is not even 50% done, found 3 errors so far. It's not supposed to be this slow. Anyway, here are some screenshots. I have no idea what the heck in going on. Any way to save this by creating partitions ignoring the bad sectors ? What is actually wrong ? SATA port is dead on the HDD ?

Mobo: MSI B450m Bazooka Plus
PSU: Silverstone Strider Essential 700 80+ Gold

 

[CountMike]

According to those pictures, disk has some bad sectors or weak sectors caused by most probably bad cable/connections or power (most common cause of CRC errors).

 

[Dreamevil55]

According to those pictures, disk has some bad sectors or weak sectors caused by most probably bad cable/connections or power (most common cause of CRC errors).

Well I did try various cables, ports. It's a new PSU, the other Seagate HDD is working like a charm. Nada.

 

[Satan-IR]

What's the PSU? HDDs are (as I'm sure you know) among main victims of fluctuations in voltage/current by PSUs. Although, if another drive is not showing these symptoms the power issue might be moot.

I had a similar situation a lot of CRC errors which stopped increasing after changing the SATA cable. Those red blocks indicate bad sectors. Pending sectors is no good news too, means the drive can't read the data to move it to reserve sectors.

I'd say copy any necessary files elsewhere as the drive might fail anytime.

 

[ElectrO_90]

And this is exactly why I recommend Hard Disk Sentinel - it's not just numbers, but tells you what's wrong in English = download and use it.

 

[Satan-IR]

That's my first choice too when it comes to checking storage drives and getting an approximate estimate of how long the drive would last.

If memory serves right HD Sentinel also started to check SSDs in an accurate way in terms of trim and lifetime predictions sooner than the others. Back in those days some of the other software would just show wrong values for SSDs.

 

[Dreamevil55]

What's the PSU? HDDs are (as I'm sure you know) among main victims of fluctuations in voltage/current by PSUs. Although, if another drive is not showing these symptoms the power issue might be moot.

I had a similar situation a lot of CRC errors which stopped increasing after changing the SATA cable. Those red blocks indicate bad sectors. Pending sectors is no good news too, means the drive can't read the data to move it to reserve sectors.

I'd say copy any necessary files elsewhere as the drive might fail anytime.

It's Silverstone ST70F-ESG. Mentioned already. Anyway, I did swap couple of different SATA cables, but to no avail. Not a power issue as the other drive is fine I suppose. I'd throw it out if it's of no use anymore but trying the best to save the poor fella seems ideal. I thought of partitioning the good sectors away from the bad sectors to use it normally until it completely passes away. There are nothing important on it.

I'll give HDD Sentinel a try as others above have mentioned. It's been 25 hours, and the error scan processed about 279 GB lol.

 

[CountMike]

As it's possible that it's caused a SW error, try to safe erase disk and format it again.

 

[Satan-IR]

It's Silverstone ST70F-ESG. Mentioned already. Anyway, I did swap couple of different SATA cables, but to no avail. Not a power issue as the other drive is fine I suppose. I'd throw it out if it's of no use anymore but trying the best to save the poor fella seems ideal. I thought of partitioning the good sectors away from the bad sectors to use it normally until it completely passes away. There are nothing important on it.

I'll give HDD Sentinel a try as others above have mentioned. It's been 25 hours, and the error scan processed about 279 GB lol.

Yes, sorry I don't know why I missed that last line.

Well cable change didn't affect it and, apparently, there are problems on the drive surface so it's probably a failing drive. Otherwise I'd check if MSI has issued newer SATA controller drivers as some CRC errors are caused by a faulty controller or problems in the drivers.

I guess you could try to separate the bad sectors by partitioning and, thus, preventing the head trying to read those areas. Mind you I think the head/actuator would still move there and try to read those pending sectors nonetheless; until they are confirmed and flagged as bad sectors.

I think what CountMike said is worth a try. Although those red blocks/bad sectors and pending sectors are most probably physically there. Using another software like HD Sentinel would confirm that I suppose.

 

[helpstar]

scan it with the wd tool eventually update is firmware if available

 

[USAFRet]

scan it with the wd tool eventually update is firmware if available

4 years later....