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is my C drive dying?



 
 
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  #11  
Old September 10th 16, 04:49 PM posted to alt.windows7.general,comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage
pjp[_5_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 20
Default is my C drive dying?

In article , lid
says...

"Paul" schreef in bericht
...
Linea Recta wrote:
My PC had always been very sluggish compared to my old laptop.
When reading a PC magazine I read an article about Crystal diskinfo.
Decided to download the portable version ans ran it on the laptop:
diagnose OK.

Decided to run it also on the PC: WARNING for the C drive! (see below)
Is my C drive dying?
Apart from fitting a new drive this is going to be A LOT of work,
installing and updating Windows 7 and A LOT of applications!
I suppose I can't restore a Macrium image on the replacement drive?


Be aware that "Reallocated Sector Count" does not mean
data is corrupted. It means a sector was detected as
being less than functional, and was replaced by a
spare. Only a certain percentage of the total drive
capacity is available for sparing, so it will run
out eventually.

If you were to scan the drive and found no CRC errors,
you could easily make a backup of the drive as it stands.
Then restore the drive to a replacement hard drive. No
need to reinstall an OS or anything. Just use your
backup/restore program in Clone mode.

Take the following information, collected over three days.

Current Worst Threshold Data Status
Reallocated Sector Count 100 100 36 0 OK
Reallocated Sector Count 100 100 36 57 OK
Reallocated Sector Count 98 98 36 104 OK

On the third day, drive life is at 98%, and there are
104 reallocated sectors. That implies the spare sector
count remaining is roughly 5000 sectors (spread over the disk, not
all in one spot). I have used up 2% of them.

The reallocations tend to show up, if I write the drive
from end to end. I tend to see more of them after writing
the whole drive.

Note that the top line implies "perfect health". But the
whole thing is a sham. The reading is actually thresholded.
No drive leaves the factory in "perfect" condition. So
what you're looking at, is a portion of drive life.
The reason the statistic is not entirely accurate, is to


Cloning a drive is taking a "snapshot" of the drive and duplicating it
on another drive. This snapshot info can aslo be stored in an "image"
file. Restoring is taking an "image file" created from a disk and
placing it on another (or same as one created) disk.

Think of that like a DVD is physcial and you can make a copy of it and
burn it on another dvd. You can also create an "image" of the dvd which
can be used to recreate a dvd, e..g. an iso file. Note - the image is
simply a file, it's contents store the information it needs to recreate
the dvd, kinda like a zip file in that aspect.
  #12  
Old September 10th 16, 04:59 PM posted to alt.windows7.general,comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage
Paul[_28_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 1,467
Default is my C drive dying?

Linea Recta wrote:


Thanks for the crash course!
But VirusTotal gives 2 hits for this file... so I haven't installed it yet.

BTW could you explain (briefly) the difference between cloning and
restoring a drive?

Another thing: I also have 2 external USB hard drives. One tested OK,
but the other (Maxtor onetouch) isn't even detected by Crystal diskinfo.
(it's still working ok though)


I compared the SHA256 on my 2009 copy of hdtune_255.exe with
a fresh download version, and they're the same. It's the same
value as listed on virustotal.

4256abb5b5583aeb5c61937415555657a5ae3b76fcc59657ed fcb3bce792f958

My guess would be, a false positive.

Here's a description of Trojan-Clicker.

https://www.microsoft.com/security/p...:Win32/Agent.O

I would not expect the second detection to be locatable in
Google.

I have HDTune 255 installed on just about every C:
drive I've got. I sure hope it isn't infected :-)

You would need an AV with known-good heuristic detection
capabilities, to catch it in time. Seeing as the major AV
products do not identify that as malware via its signature
alone. Windows Defender hasn't flagged it, but then,
WD isn't exactly bulletproof either.

*******

"Clone" copies the content to a new disk. Windows assigns drive letters
as they arise. Once the drive on the right-hand-side is booted by
itself, it will become a C: drive.

+-----+----+-----------------+ Clone +-----+----+-----------------+
| MBR | C: | System Reserved | --- | MBR | D: | System Reserved |
+-----+----+-----------------+ +-----+----+-----------------+

Backup and restore, keeps a copy on an external disk for safe keeping.
The restoration can be made to the disk of your choosing, by booting
the Macrium CD and doing the restore from the external USB hard drive
to the internal drive. In other words, the destination disk can be
completely blank, and you can still restore to the destination disk.
No OS is needed, because the OS is on the Macrium CD. That's why
you always burn the emergency boot CD in Macrium, for this scenario
of restoration.
backup.MRIMG
/ \
backup / \ restore
/ v
+-----+----+-----------------+ +-----+----+-----------------+
| MBR | C: | System Reserved | | MBR | C: | System Reserved |
+-----+----+-----------------+ +-----+----+-----------------+

Both clone and backup/restore record...

1) MBR (partition table and boot code)
(partition table modified, if partitions are resized)
The boot code in the MBR is the thing that gets fixed if you "fixmbr".

2) Track 0 (i.e. the sectors next to the MBR, used by Linux)

3) Partitions, both hidden, foreign, and native/visible.
Truly foreign partitions are transferred sector by sector.
Recognized partitions, only the logical info is transferred,
and the "white space" on the partition is not copied. The
software knows which clusters contain actual live data.

The boot.ini or BCD files (for boot management), may be
edited for best customer flexibility. (No drive should go
"Offline" on you.) If you clone disks with "dd.exe" for example,
after you're finished, the destination drive could have an offline
status.

Modern clones are by no means, "absolutely identical". Far from it.
They are "logically" identical and have the same function. None
of your files get lost. There are no guarantees about any other
aspect. Most modern cloning or backup/restore software is not
good enough for usage in a Court Of Law. For that, you need
proper forensic tools.

4) PBR. The partition boot stuff is copied as a part of (3).
If the partition is resized, perhaps that requires modifying
the file system header, but the PBR would be preserved.
PBR is the thing that gets fixed if you "fixboot". Generally
the PBR is in the partition with the "Active" flag set. So
if System Reserved has the Active (boot) flag set, the PBR would
be there.

What I'm trying to say here, is they do surgical copying.
Also known as a "smart" copy. They only copy things that
absolutely need to be copied. Any white space not containing
your files, that part is not copied. If you have a 500GB partition
containing 20GB of files, then approximately 20GB of reads
and 20GB of writes will be involved. The other 480GB of
white space, will not be defined. This is why the backup or
clone takes ten minutes, and not two hours.

Backup/restore is not a good way to "wipe" a disk. If you
want a forensically clean destination drive, use DiskPart
and do a "clean all" to erase each sector on the destination
disk first. After the restore of the 20GB of files, the other
480GB will be in an all-zeros state, and no old stale files
can be recovered with Recuva or Photorec.

*******

[None of the above, touches a Host Protected Area. Those
need special treatment, if you happen to be using such a thing.
An HPA is not part of any users normal work flow... It's an
annoyance when writing up articles about disks :-) ]

HTH,
Paul

  #13  
Old September 10th 16, 11:11 PM posted to alt.windows7.general,comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage
J. P. Gilliver (John)
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 115
Default is my C drive dying?

In message , Linea Recta
writes:
[]
BTW could you explain (briefly) the difference between cloning and
restoring a drive?

[]
Cloning: turning disc B into an exact copy of disc A. Involves two
drives, probably plus the drive (CD/DVD drive, USB stick, whatever) you
booted the cloning software from.

At its simplest, cloning software copies sector by sector from one drive
to another, regardless of whether they contain anything useful; though
most cloning software knows enough about how modern operating systems
(such as Windows) work, and only copies the sectors that contain
required data, unless you tell them otherwise.


Restoring: restoring a copy of a disc, from a backup you made earlier.
The backup could be a clone as above, but is more likely an _image_,
which is a _file_, containing details of the boot sector and one or more
partitions; an image file is not itself bootable. Restoring requires
(obviously) the drive you're restoring to, the drive the image is on
(which _could_ be e. g. a USB stick if big enough), and the drive you're
booting the restore software from.

Imaging software makes image files from the partitions (and even discs)
you tell it to; they're not unlike a giant ZIP file. Obviously, it knows
how to restore (unzip, if you like) these files later. Like cloning
software, modern imaging software knows enough about modern OSs to give
the option (usually the default) to only image the parts that had
relevant data on. They usually also offer compression, which makes the
image file even smaller, at the expense of some extra time while imaging
and restoring.
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

"I am entitled to my own opinion."
"Yes, but it's your constant assumption that everyone else is also that's so
annoying." - Vila & Avon
  #14  
Old September 10th 16, 11:12 PM posted to alt.windows7.general,comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage
J. P. Gilliver (John)
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 115
Default is my C drive dying?

In message , John Doe
writes:
"J. P. Gilliver (John)" wrote:

John Doe writes:


Agree with the other replies.

FWIW... For a typical user, the best setup is a fast SSD
for your primary drive and a huge conventional HDD for
your secondary drive. Forget about partitions, just make
folders on the HDD and put your clones of the SSD there.
Currently I am using 32 GB on drive C, the clones are
about 11 GB each.


For a typical user _of a desktop machine_ (or those rare
laptops that can take more than one drive), yes. For the
rest of us, we can't forget about partitions.


You must be out of the loop. All you have to do is replace
the DVD drive with an HDD adapter...

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...9SIA50M2EJ4205

Then use a USB DVD drive on the rare occasion it is needed.


My main computer (this one) doesn't have an optical drive either.
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

"I am entitled to my own opinion."
"Yes, but it's your constant assumption that everyone else is also that's so
annoying." - Vila & Avon
  #15  
Old September 10th 16, 11:45 PM posted to alt.windows7.general,comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage,free.usenet,free.spam
John Doe[_9_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 410
Default is my C drive dying?

We are talking about a typical user, not a specific user's computer.

--
"J. P. Gilliver (John)" G6JPG soft255.demon.co.uk wrote in news:zEtcTEXdVI1XFwpU soft255.demon.co.uk:

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From: "J. P. Gilliver (John)" G6JPG soft255.demon.co.uk
Newsgroups: alt.windows7.general,comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.stor age
Subject: is my C drive dying?
Date: Sat, 10 Sep 2016 23:12:45 +0100
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In message nr10nl$9pd$1 dont-email.me, John Doe
always.look message.header writes:
"J. P. Gilliver (John)" G6JPG soft255.demon.co.uk wrote:

John Doe always.look message.header writes:


Agree with the other replies.

FWIW... For a typical user, the best setup is a fast SSD
for your primary drive and a huge conventional HDD for
your secondary drive. Forget about partitions, just make
folders on the HDD and put your clones of the SSD there.
Currently I am using 32 GB on drive C, the clones are
about 11 GB each.

For a typical user _of a desktop machine_ (or those rare
laptops that can take more than one drive), yes. For the
rest of us, we can't forget about partitions.


You must be out of the loop. All you have to do is replace
the DVD drive with an HDD adapter...

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...9SIA50M2EJ4205

Then use a USB DVD drive on the rare occasion it is needed.


My main computer (this one) doesn't have an optical drive either.
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

"I am entitled to my own opinion."
"Yes, but it's your constant assumption that everyone else is also that's so
annoying." - Vila & Avon



  #16  
Old September 11th 16, 12:25 AM posted to alt.windows7.general,comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage
Ken Blake[_3_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 27
Default is my C drive dying?

On Sat, 10 Sep 2016 23:12:45 +0100, "J. P. Gilliver (John)"
wrote:


My main computer (this one) doesn't have an optical drive either.



Is it a laptop? If not, why doesn't it have one?
  #17  
Old September 11th 16, 02:48 AM posted to alt.windows7.general,comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage
Ken Blake[_3_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 27
Default is my C drive dying?

On Sat, 10 Sep 2016 19:50:04 -0400, Wolf K
wrote:

On 2016-09-10 19:25, Ken Blake wrote:
On Sat, 10 Sep 2016 23:12:45 +0100, "J. P. Gilliver (John)"
wrote:


My main computer (this one) doesn't have an optical drive either.



Is it a laptop? If not, why doesn't it have one?


Maybe it's one of these:

http://www.dell.com/us/p/inspiron-3050-micro-desktop/pd



Maybe. But it wouldn't be my choice.


  #18  
Old September 11th 16, 03:15 PM posted to alt.windows7.general,comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage
Linea Recta[_2_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 62
Default is my C drive dying?

"J. P. Gilliver (John)" schreef in bericht
news
In message , Linea Recta
writes:
[]
BTW could you explain (briefly) the difference between cloning and
restoring a drive?

[]
Cloning: turning disc B into an exact copy of disc A. Involves two drives,
probably plus the drive (CD/DVD drive, USB stick, whatever) you booted the
cloning software from.

At its simplest, cloning software copies sector by sector from one drive
to another, regardless of whether they contain anything useful; though
most cloning software knows enough about how modern operating systems
(such as Windows) work, and only copies the sectors that contain required
data, unless you tell them otherwise.


Restoring: restoring a copy of a disc, from a backup you made earlier. The
backup could be a clone as above, but is more likely an _image_, which is
a _file_, containing details of the boot sector and one or more
partitions; an image file is not itself bootable. Restoring requires
(obviously) the drive you're restoring to, the drive the image is on
(which _could_ be e. g. a USB stick if big enough), and the drive you're
booting the restore software from.

Imaging software makes image files from the partitions (and even discs)
you tell it to; they're not unlike a giant ZIP file. Obviously, it knows
how to restore (unzip, if you like) these files later. Like cloning
software, modern imaging software knows enough about modern OSs to give
the option (usually the default) to only image the parts that had relevant
data on. They usually also offer compression, which makes the image file
even smaller, at the expense of some extra time while imaging and
restoring.
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

"I am entitled to my own opinion."
"Yes, but it's your constant assumption that everyone else is also that's
so
annoying." - Vila & Avon





OK thanks. I have restored more than once (successfully), but never used the
"clone" option of Macrium yet.




--


|\ /|
| \/ |@rk
\../
\/os


  #19  
Old September 11th 16, 11:57 PM posted to alt.windows7.general,comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage
J. P. Gilliver (John)
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 115
Default is my C drive dying?

In message , Linea Recta
writes:
"J. P. Gilliver (John)" schreef in bericht
news
In message , Linea Recta
writes:
[]
BTW could you explain (briefly) the difference between cloning and
restoring a drive?

[]
Cloning: turning disc B into an exact copy of disc A. Involves two


[]
Restoring: restoring a copy of a disc, from a backup you made

[]
OK thanks. I have restored more than once (successfully), but never
used the "clone" option of Macrium yet.

Glad to be of service (-:. I don't think I'd ever use clone myself,
since my restores are only when things go wrong, which with modern
hardware is (usually!) sufficiently rare that drive sizes have
increased, so I'd be restoring to a bigger drive.



--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

What a strange illusion it is to suppose that beauty is goodness. -Leo Tolstoy,
novelist and philosopher (1828-1910)
  #20  
Old September 12th 16, 12:09 AM posted to alt.windows7.general,comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage
J. P. Gilliver (John)
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 115
Default is my C drive dying?

In message , Ken Blake
writes:
On Sat, 10 Sep 2016 19:50:04 -0400, Wolf K
wrote:

On 2016-09-10 19:25, Ken Blake wrote:
On Sat, 10 Sep 2016 23:12:45 +0100, "J. P. Gilliver (John)"
wrote:


My main computer (this one) doesn't have an optical drive either.


Is it a laptop? If not, why doesn't it have one?


It's a small laptop; when I bought it, they were described as
"netbooks", though that word has become unfashionable - though such
machines (small laptops with only one main drive and no optical one) are
still being made and sold - increasingly of late with SSDs or eSDs (?)
as the main (only) drive.

Maybe it's one of these:

http://www.dell.com/us/p/inspiron-3050-micro-desktop/pd


I assume from the name (I haven't clicked) that that's one of those
micro-cubes.

Maybe. But it wouldn't be my choice.

No, not mine either. Nor that I don't think they're capable of being
adequately-spec'd computers; just that the need to add keyboard, mouse,
and in particular monitor rather defeats the attraction, and you might
as well go for a laptop (or netbook), and thus at least have
portability.

--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

What a strange illusion it is to suppose that beauty is goodness. -Leo Tolstoy,
novelist and philosopher (1828-1910)
 




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