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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, they will detect MOST issues.''*** | | | 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 has problems and the issue is caught early, it will give you time to move everything and replace the drive before it fails. While SMART can only do so much, it plays a majorsignificant role since the data can be used to catch a failure before it occurs. | | | ***''IMPORTANT NOTE: Some hard drives have known problems (E.g., Seagate 7.01/7200.11). In other cases (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. 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 under 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.''*** | | ** ***''($15 single download w/o updates, $13 monthly/$49 yearly for subscriptions).''*** | | * ***''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 WILL NOT CORRECT MAJOR FAILURES ON THE HARD DRIVE. HoweverIf the issue is minor, for SMALL issues likeit may be patchable, but if the drive has a few deadlot of bad sectors, this can "patch" the problem but notwill likely be unfixable, and the drive will have to be replaced. Most drives with an excessively high amount. Drives bordering oncap the spare sectors at ~100 (common reserved amount) will oftenbefore you lose capacity and data when the sectors are patchedfail SMART.''*** | | * ***''IMPORTANT: If you can do so before testing, back up your system's data, as it can fail during testing if something is too far gone to correct. DO NOT FIX THE DRIVE IF THERE ARE EXCESSIVELY HIGH SMART ERRORS. Back up the data, transfer the data, wipe the old drive, and replace it!''*** |
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