Re: 9-yr.-old HDD came back to life somehow?!

Very interesting, & thanks for that.  When I got the first warning message way back in late November, I did a backup of everything important to myself personally on my old HDD, but it took so long (hours) that I did regular backups of just only my personal files from that point on, and up until that day the HDD went down (May 16th), I was doing such backups 2 or 3 times every night/day.

D. Lee
midwestern USA

On Sunday, July 25, 2021 at 6:04:25 AM UTC-4, Paul wrote:
> Lee wrote: 
> > I'm just wondering very curiously about this, because the reason why I got my new Dell PC on June 21st was that the HDD of my old HP PC was rather old and apparently about to finally expire. It was over 9 yrs. old, as I got my HP PC in late May 2012. 
> > 
> > Since late November 2020, I had been getting warning messages about the supposed imminent failure of the HDD, but I kept procrastinating about getting a new PC, as I worried very much about what a major hassle it can be to get a new one all set up. Then, finally on Sunday May 16th (approx. at 11:30 PM), there was a very quick flash of something on my monitor's screen that was way too quick for me to be able to recognize whatever it was, then my screen went mostly blank except for some text, incl. a message that said that no HDD was detected on my system, or that it had failed (finally). I ended up eventually just turning off the whole PC. 
> > 
> > But then around 12:20 AM (Monday morning of May 17th), I turned this old PC back on just to curiously see what would happen - maybe a miracle, by any slight chance? And lo & behold, apparently that miracle did occur! I still got the warning message about imminent HDD failure (another one), but somehow the PC was back to normal, with everything working fine. And it worked fine for approx. the next 5 weeks, until I finally got my new Dell PC on June 21st. 
> > 
> > So was that actually some type of miracle? How bizarre or unusual was it that my old HP PC somehow got a 2nd life that gave me an extra 5 weeks of PC usage? Again, just curiously wondering, but I'd appreciate anyone's thoughts about this - THANKS very much again for everything. 
> > 
> > D. Lee 
> > midwestern USA
> Disks can have transient errors and 
> disks can have permanent errors. 
> 
> The "surface wear" issues are permanent. A 
> worn disk drive, will never "get better" randomly, 
> because there is some kind of surface damage. 
> In the old days, the bright white filter fabric 
> inside the drive, would be filthy with fine dark 
> debris from the surface of the disk coming off. 
> That doesn't seem to happen with the same gusto 
> today, as in the past. They keep changing the 
> plated finish on the platter and use different 
> materials with each generation. The outer surface finish, 
> a "wax", is only two molecules thick! At one time, it 
> was a liquid like motor oil, and just terrible. 
> Now, it's very similar to a polymer car paint finish, 
> hard as rock and shiny. 
> 
> Transient errors can be at the OS or file system level, 
> and you may see a flash on the screen when something 
> crashes. That doesn't always mean the disk drive health 
> caused it. 
> 
> On SATA drives, there is no reset signal on the cable. 
> If the hard drive CPU goes nuts, there is nothing to 
> restore sanity. Turning the power OFF and ON again, 
> restores the sanity of the disk drive CPU. 
> 
> What you experienced, wasn't a miracle, it's just one of 
> a series of curve balls life throws at you. If you're 
> getting SMART warnings, that disk is "ripe". 
> 
> ******* 
> 
> If you do full backups of the disk drive occasionally, 
> you will have materials to fall back on, if something 
> bad happens to your hard drive. You can then buy a new 
> hard drive, and restore from a backup image stored on 
> an external hard drive. 
> 
> There is a table of backup speeds here. AOMEI was the fastest 
> at one time, but speed isn't everything. Not all free 
> backup softwares do useful things, so don't be surprised 
> if some of the freebies are a disappointment. The purpose 
> of articles like this, is to show there are lots of options. 
> (The last Acronis I tested, had a nice interface.) 
> And DriveImage XML is a "proof of concept" program, it's 
> not a commercial offering, so sure, it's slow as molasses. 
> I don't fault them for that. It's not competing head to head 
> with the others. Backup software merely has to be better 
> than DriveImage XML, or they should not bring it to market :-) 
> 
> https://www.raymond.cc/blog/10-commercial-disk-imaging-software-features-and-backuprestore-speed-comparison/2/ 
> 
> This one isn't the fastest, but it's what I've been 
> using for a while now. I have four 6TB drives with 
> backups on them. Drives above around 6TB, can be Helium 
> filled, and the Helium drives are nice, but we don't know 
> how long the Helium lasts in them. They are warranted to have 
> Helium for five years. I use the air-filled ones :-) Because 
> the air can't go anywhere. We're surrounded by air, so 
> any leaking air is replaced by... air. 
> 
> https://www.macrium.com/reflectfree 
> 
> "Reflect 7 Free 
> Perfect for limited backups and cloning. 
> Capable of basic backup scheduling." 
> 
> Any time it asks, you answer that you are a Home User, 
> as Home Users can use that one for Free. 
> 
> To shop for hard drives, you can get overviews of backup 
> drive prospects in articles like this. The objectives of 
> the author of the article, probably aren't the same 
> as my objectives. Many of the specs in the table can be 
> bullshit, but a few of them are useful for comparison. 
> 
> https://www.anandtech.com/show/12075/best-consumer-hdds 
> 
> But it's pretty hard to do all sorts of careful planning, 
> when the drives are out of stock. 
> 
> Some recent articles claimed "stock shortages are easing". 
> I'm not seeing evidence of that just yet. Not by a long shot. 
> There was more stock six weeks ago, when I bought a 1TB for 
> my Optiplex Refurb to replace the 320GB drive on it. 
> 
> I had to use ddrescue to get the data off it, but switched 
> to restoring from a backup, when some corrupt data didn't 
> seem to be getting flagged by CRC errors (these 
> are things I checked with a hex editor, for a look). 
> The reason I didn't use the backup image, was that it 
> was not "minty fresh" and using the ddrescue would 
> give a very recent copy of the data. Then my plan was 
> to patch the four damaged files. But when I looked at 
> the files, I could see some "other damage" on them, so 
> had to just use my entire backup instead. 
> 
> Paul