Re: "Repair" hard disk with bad sectors by reading and rewriting same data?

"Percival P. Cassidy" <[email protected]> wrote:

> I have HD Sentinel Pro on a couple of Windows machines,, but i don't 
> know what a Windows machine will make of an ext4-formatted drive.

Supported operating systems:
https://www.hdsentinel.com/compatibility_os.php

Linux is supported.

https://www.hdsentinel.com/eula.php

Apparently, for personal use, the trialware version doesn't expire.  I
don't know what they mean by "may be extended".  Maybe you have to renew
the registration, or the trialware version cripples itself to the
freeware version.

Alas, it does appear 1 license can only be used on 1 computer, so no
sharing of a license between Windows and Linux hosts.

https://www.hdsentinel.com/hard_disk_sentinel_linux.php

I don't see anything mentioned that their tests are included in the
Linux version, like to read bad sectors, if possible, and get the hard
disk to remap the bad sectors.

https://www.diskpart.com/articles/format-ext4-windows-7201.html

Seems Windows can read/write ext4-formatted partitions, but it cannot
create them.  The article mentions a 3rd party partition manager (AOMEI)
will do the ext4 formatting, and so will other partition managers
(https://www.easeus.com/partition-manager-software/create-ext4-partition-windows-10.html).
Of course, you don't want to format the HDD.  Looks like Windows will
handle ext4.  Just clone the HDD before attempting migration or brain
surgery on it.

I did mention other Linux tools to massage the HDD to get rid of the bad
sectors (if there are remaining free sectors for remapping).

> I've run smartctl with both short and long offline tests, but they do 
> not bring the bad sector count down. They also show "Completed without 
> error."

Then perhaps there are no free sectors available for remapping.  That's
what happens when the Pending count doesn't decrease: no spare sector
where to copy the data to remap the bad sector.  You could try copy any
files that have the bad sectors (but you'll probably, at a minimum, lose
the bits in the bad sectors) to create a new file (after making sure the
bad sectors were already inuse, so they don't get used for the new
file), but without spare remapping sectors those bad sectors won't go
away, and some later file will try to use them.

Seagate has their own SeaTools you might try.  Make a bootable CD from
which to run their software.  That way, the bad HDD is quiescent, and it
doesn't matter what OS is there.  Any remapping is done at the hardware
level, not at the OS level in whatever file system the OS uses.

https://www.seagate.com/support/downloads/seatools/
Get the bootable version.  Then you don't have to install it in any OS,
and you don't have to move the HDD between computers.