Re: partitioning and use thereof

On 10/11/2021 2:53 PM, Robert Baer wrote:

>    Checking disk is still running, maybe 1/4 "done" so i would say 2-3 daze (19,xxx,xxx free clusters processed so far).
>    Maybe i should let it run to bitter end for a report from the process?
> 
>    We are talking about a brand new drive.
>    Send it back?

You have to do sufficient debugging, to determine where
the flaw is.

On the Typing Machine (now dead), one of the SATA ports
failed a couple years ago. And I had to be pretty careful
with it, to not use that port on any other drives. The
evidence now that I've had several failures, is it was
the motherboard at fault. But at the time, I had to
retire the drive and "mark off" the port as a
"do not use", just to be safe.

This is one reason, I keep a PCIe to SATA card here,
for testing, to eliminate a Southbridge SATA port as being
a problem. Sometimes it's the data cable that got kinked,
and the controlled impedance has a "bump" in it.

*******

If it is a new drive and not a refurb (check power on hours in SMART),
you could try writing it from end to end, then read-verify it.

dd or ddrescue could do that.

Even Windows "diskpart.exe" can do it. At least
part of the operation. The "Clean All" command will
write zeros over an entire hard drive.

After the write, you do a read verify, then check SMART
for any bad news.

Administrator Command Prompt:

    diskpart
    list disk
    select disk 1
    list partitions  # The new drive should have a minimal number of partitions
    clean all        # takes two hours
    exit

While it is running, you can Start : Run : perfmon.msc
and select the disk write performance counter and plot
the transfer speed as the writes happen. That gives some
idea whether the operation is abnormally slow or not.

There are plenty of things you could try.

*******

ddrescue is addressed a bit here.

    https://www.data-medics.com/forum/how-to-clone-a-hard-drive-with-bad-sectors-using-ddrescue-t133.html

And here at the bottom. But the instructions are rather old.
And today, you don't need to compile anything. Just install
the package in some Linux distro like Ubuntu LiveDVD.

    https://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/Damaged_Hard_Disk

For a straight cloning operation, it would go like this.

    Ubuntu, Terminal (example of copying /dev/sda to /dev/sdc)

    sudo apt install gddrescue

    man ddrescue                                      # Manual page

    sudo ddrescue -n /dev/sda /dev/sdc rescued.log    # First pass...

    gedit rescued.log                                 # examine to see errors
                                                      # if you are curious

    sudo ddrescue -r 1 /dev/sda /dev/sdc rescued.log  # Second pass tries to
                                                      # fix the errored bits,
                                                      # It reads "rescued.log".

If you want to read-verify /dev/sda, you'd do it like this.

    sudo ddrescue -n /dev/sda /dev/null rescued.log    # First pass...

    gedit rescued.log                                  # Examine log for /dev/sda CRC errors

   Paul