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Can the scanner initiate bad block swap?


DBDigital

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It doesn't current initiate this. However, we've had people ask about this, and it is something we are considering including. 

However, to clarify, any write to the disk here will potentially block your ability to use disk recovery to recover any damaged files. That's why it's not in there right now.

 

However, you can run "chkdsk /r" to manually initiate the process.

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First thank you for responding. And as I said, I would be interested in AFTER I recovered the files fixing the block with a spare so it is never used again. Sure one can use "chkdsk /r but the point is, if your software already KNOWS where the problem is it would be a whole LOT less time if your software can fix it than run "chkdsk /r which may take hours and hours and hours to finish. Meanwhile the system is offline during this check.

 

The reason I was looking at your software was to avoid all of that. To be checking my disk in the background while I work and if there is a problem, tell me where the problems is, let me recover the files (if possible or perhaps it is a cache file I don't care about) and then FIX it. All without having to shut down my system for hours and hours while a check happens.

 

I understand that a bad block is a sign that maybe the hard drive is nearing failure. But sometimes there is just one or two bad blocks and it lasts for years without another issue. And of course it goes without saying that one should always keep good backups. But if there is a bad block many cloning programs won't function (or take a day to run). You can't do a defrag either. So again why I was looking at your software was for a program that could keep a GOOD eye on my HDs, and if there is a problem allow me to recover the affect file (or kill a corrupted file I don't care about) and FIX the block so it is no longer a issue. Then if there is any more errors, fix again then use another tool to dump the drive via cloning to a fresh disk and move on.

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Sure one can use "chkdsk /r but the point is, if your software already KNOWS where the problem is it would be a whole LOT less time if your software can fix it than run "chkdsk /r which may take hours and hours and hours to finish. Meanwhile the system is offline during this check.

Recently one of my Western Digital "My Book" external USB disks developed some bad blocks.  I noticed this when file copies to the disk continued indefinitely.  The Windows System Event Log showed "bad block on drive n".  I thought it worth trying "CHKDSK /R" to see if it would recover anything.

 

The disk is a 2TB Western Digital green disk.

The disk contained approximately 600 recorded-TV files (movies), and was around 70% full.

"CHKDSK /R /V" took just over 6 days to complete (running continuously).

29 files were identified as having bad blocks.

5GB of the disk was identified as bad.

 

I have not yet tried reading any files on this disk, so I do not know whether all files were recovered successfully.  I am intending to copy the contents to a new disk.

 

-- from CyberSimian in the UK

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Thanks for posting Cyber, you emphasis my point very clearly.  In the case of very large partition/volumes it will take way way too long for chkdsk to try and repair.  I would have tried to move all of the data over before trying a chkdsk, just as a precaution.  I personally couldn't have waited a week and aborted the process, which chkdsk will often corrupt a disk even more if aborted before completed.

Does S.M.A.R.T say anything (the tool I use currently is Crystaldiskinfo)?  Perhaps not if the drive is connected via USB.  5gb of bad data means that the drive has a LOT of bad sectors.  Likely more than it had spares for and you only started noticing problems when it ran out.  How large was the drive?  I try to keep large drives partitioned to a max of 500gb, makes it much easier to error check later.  If you can't get smart data off of the drive, it may be interesting to pull it and install directly into a desktop or eSATA enclosure.  Then take a look at the SMART data.  But I would only try this after you have got all the data you can off of the drive.

As for copying you might try fee file sync, open source and works really well for copying.  It also has logging so that if you ignore the popups (which I usually do in the settings) you have a full log of what files failed to copy.  And usually lists the files as still needing to be copied if they failed, but the log will give more information as to why they failed.  Another option is bad block copy, it will copy a file even if there are problems.  However I would use something else first to identify  which ones are corrupt.

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I personally couldn't have waited a week and aborted the process, which chkdsk will often corrupt a disk even more if aborted before completed.

 

Does S.M.A.R.T say anything (the tool I use currently is Crystaldiskinfo)?

I have never tried "CHKDSK / R" on a 2TB disk before, and I was curious to see how long it would take, and whether it would be successful.  Luckily, where I live is not subject to power failures; if there had been one during the 6-day CHKDSK, that might well have resulted in the loss of all of the data.  :angry:

 

The disk-check program that I have is "DiskCheckUp" version 3.  It does display SMART data, but I am not convinced by it.  There is one datum that is displayed in red ("Raw read error rate"), but the status displayed for that datum is "OK". :wacko:

 

I am currently looking at how to re-organise my data, and have been looking as NAS systems.  Although they can offer protection against disk failures, they seem to do so by storing data in a proprietary form, so that in an "emergency" it is not possible to remove a disk and connect it directly to a Windows PC.  Also, most NAS do not seem to support true low-power states (i.e. hibernation).  I want a system that will automatically hibernate if it has not been used for (say) 10-15 minutes, and then wake up in response to a magic packet over the LAN.  That is why I have returned to looking at a drive-pool solution implemented on a normal Windows system acting as a server.  That gives easy expansion by adding another disk, but every disk can be accessed individually if necessary.

 

-- from CyberSimian in the UK

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We have definitely considered adding something like this (and we may very well do so).

However, implementing this is something that will need EXTENSIVE testing to make sure it works properly. 

 

Right now, that isn't feasible, as Alex (the developer) is focused on StableBit CloudDrive and getting that finished. 

Once that is done, we'll definitely look into this.

 

But to re-emphasize here, this is something that we have talked about a lot. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Also, for anyone running Windows 8 or Server 2012, or up... you can use the "/scan" option (and /perf with that), and this scans the disk online (perf runs it at a higher priority). So this may be useful for active systems.

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