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Introduction |
If you are evaluating a hard drive, this guide will show you how to do basic tests to detect common problems. ***''While these tests are not perfect, mostthey will detect MOST issues can be detected.''*** | | | Common drive problems include: | | | * High hours (Wear and tear, increased failure risk) | | * Reallocated sectors | | * Pending reallocated sectors | | * Hidden problems | | === Why should used hard drives be checked? === | ***''Most failures are sudden and without warning, if not known in advance due to lack of symptoms.''*** If the machine is havinghas problems and the issue is caught early, thisit will give you time to move everything and replace the drive before it fails. While SMART can only do so much, it plays a major role in doing this since the data can give red flagsbe used to catch a failure before it occurs. | | ***''IMPORTANT NOTE: Some hard drives have known problems (Ex:E.g., Seagate 7.01/7200.11), while others fail due to lower quality standards. In other cases (Ex:such as the WD Blue/Green drives), these aren't problematic BUT are more at risk of failure after ~5 years due to them being binned lower than say, a WD Black drive. These even when working should be wiped and replaced!While you can often reuse lower end drives such as the WD Blue series, they are not the best for reliability after accumulating thousands of hours over 3-5 years.''*** | | | === Guide notes === | * ***''While Parted Magic can be legally redistributed legally perunder the GPL, I will not point to these downloads as I cannot verify their authenticity. The ONLY source I trust is the Parted Magic website.''*** | | * ***''These tests are not 100% accurate. Some problems can (and do) slip past these tests.''*** | | === A word about bad sector remapping: === | * ***''While''*** [link|https://support.wdc.com/downloads.aspx?p=2|WD|new_window=true]***'',''*** [link|https://www.hgst.com/support/hard-drive-support/downloads|HGST|new_window=true]***'', and''*** [link|https://www.seagate.com/support/downloads/seatools/|Seagate|new_window=true] ***''offer diagnostic tools, they doWILL NOT CORRECT MAJOR FAILURES ON THE HARD DRIVE. However, for SMALL issues like a few dead sectors, this can "patch" the problem but not work on drives with serious problems oran excessively bad high sectorsamount. For SMALL amounts, this will work; but once you exceedDrives bordering on ~100 (most common drive reservereserved amount) you willwill often lose capacity and data in such a way it is unrecoverablewhen the sectors are patched.''*** | * ***''IMPORTANT: If you can do so before testing, backupback up your system's data. This, as it can cause your drive to fail if it dies during testing if something is too far gone to correct. Drives withDO NOT FIX THE DRIVE IF THERE ARE EXCESSIVELY HIGH SMART errors SHOULD NOT BE FIXED; backupERRORS. Back up the data, replacetransfer the data, and wipe the badold drive., and replace it!''*** |
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