Re: partitioning and use thereof

On 10/11/2021 1:34 AM, Robert Baer wrote:

>    Well, i let the slow, long-winded "normal" format run. Over an hour or so later, i got responses:
> The new file system is NTFS.
> WARNING, ALL DATA ON NON-REMOVEABLE DISK DRIVE N: WILL BE LOST!
> Proceed with format(Y/N)?   y
> Formatting 238470M
> 488386560 bad sectors were encountered during the format - thesse sectors cannot be guaranteed to have been cleaned/.
> Volume label (32 characters, ENTER for none)?  NewN
> Creating file system structures.
> All NTFS boot sectors are unwriteable. Cannot continue.
> Format failed.
> 
>    Wonderful!  DOA.
>    Seems impossible to format that second partition.
> 
>    So i deleted all that bushwah and started with the HD as one partition, simple volume,
>    "quick" format .. all of which takes quite a while.
>    That works.
>    So.. what the heck..Use Properties and run error checking, scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors.
> 
>    331007 free clusters processed.
>    Number seems slow to change, and the "progress" bar is maybe one tenth across (15 minutes so far).
> ..looks liker it will take hours, so signing off till done.
>    Will report results.

http://hdtune.com/files/hdtune_255.exe            # 628KB

Install that, and use the Health tab to collect SMART data
about the drive in question. Use the menu near the top,
to select the drive you are trying to format.

I do two things with Hard Drives:

1) Read transfer curve, with the left-most tab.
    This is a sensitive test for platter surface conditions.

    The more modern the Windows OS, the harder it is to get the
    OS to shut the fuck up, while you're trying to run this test.
    Win2K was the best at this job. Win10 has the irritating properly,
    that the instant you start the bench running, you look in Task
    Manager, and Windows 10, on purpose, will fork a maintenance
    task of its own.

2) Health tab, check "Reallocated" raw data column. Value should
    be zero. If you see a finite number, like 123, that means
    you're getting low on spare sectors. One of my drives here,
    the remaining health claimed to be 5500 sectors, and you could
    watch the "Reallocated" raw value grow from one day to the next
    as the drive was used.

It might take five to ten minutes to do that much work.

*******

3) You can use the right-most tab to scan the surface for errors,
    but you've already done that effectively several times now,
    and waiting another two hours would be a bore. You know something
    is wrong with this drive, then it's a question of how much time
    to spend and so on.

The HDTune window misbehaves in some display managers, so if
you see some weirdness, "this is normal" for it :-)

   Paul