If this is your first visit, be sure to check out the FAQ by clicking the link above. You may have to register before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages, select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below. |
|
|
|
Thread Tools | Display Modes |
#11
|
|||
|
|||
Worth writing zeros to my used hard drives?
"Paul Rubin" wrote in message
"Folkert Rienstra" writes: I'd say write over the drive and use the SMART interface to detect whether the HDD finds any bad sectors. Nonsense, aren't you a regular here? You don't need to do that to 'find' any. Bad sectors that are to be reassigned by writes will already be known as candidate bad sectors and logged as such under "Current Pending Sector Count". If there aren't any, none will be reas- signed by writing. To detect any new you need to read the drive, not write it. These drives apparently hadn't been in use (or at least written to) for a while. It is possible that bad sectors developed while the drive was sitting on the shelf. I've certainly taken working drives out of service, then had them fail when I tried using them a year or two later. You didn't understand a word of what is written above, don't you, Rubin. Do I have to repeat it for you: *They won't show with only writing*. *To detect any new you need to read the drive, not write it.* |
#12
|
|||
|
|||
Worth writing zeros to my used hard drives?
"Arno Wagner" wrote in message
In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage Jax wrote: Home user with XP Pro. I bought some 160 GB hard drives a couple of years ago and they got filled up with data. I have now migrated all the data off these 160 GB hard drives and will now use the drives to hold backups. QUESTION --- As the HDDs are now empty is it worth writing zeros, before using them again, in order to force the HDD to map out any defective sectors? Not really needed, since if you write new data, this will happen anyways. QUESTION -- Or will mapping out of any defective sectors happen automatically when any bad sectors are next written to, which means it is not worth writing the zeros? It will. No, it won't for new bad sectors that have not been detected before. But you may want to run a long SMART selftest to find weak sectors before using the disks. Arno |
#13
|
|||
|
|||
Worth writing zeros to my used hard drives?
"Folkert Rienstra" writes:
Do I have to repeat it for you: *They won't show with only writing*. Yes, thanks, that helped. |
#14
|
|||
|
|||
Worth writing zeros to my used hard drives?
In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage Paul Rubin wrote:
"Folkert Rienstra" writes: Do I have to repeat it for you: *They won't show with only writing*. Yes, thanks, that helped. As usual, Folkert is wrong. They may or may not show up as "pending" in the SMART attributes, but after writing they will show up as reallocated defects in SMART. They will not before if the drive failed to read them. Arno |
#15
|
|||
|
|||
Worth writing zeros to my used hard drives?
"Arno Wagner" wrote in message
In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage Paul Rubin wrote: "Folkert Rienstra" writes: Do I have to repeat it for you: *They won't show with only writing*. Crucial line reinserted: *To detect any new you need to read the drive, not write it*. Yes, thanks, that helped. As usual, Folkert is wrong. And as usual you are so immensely stupid and eager to make a fool of yourself that you don't even notice that you repeat at the end what I said, babblebot. They may or may not show up as "pending" in the SMART attributes, but after writing they will show up as reallocated defects in SMART. Only the pending ones, your babblebotness. Only the ones you *already know of*. And no, not all pending ones will be reassigned, as the drive will read check them after writing and they may well prove to be good afterall, after that. They will not before if the drive failed to read them. And that is exactly what makes them pending, you babblebot moron. Only then will they *show* as pending in the SMART attribute list. Writes to possibly bad sectors that the drive is yet to know of will go without any action and may still be bad after. On the other hand they may also be cured by it. But the drive will still be unaware of them. Which is what I said in the previous post and what got conveniently snipped. As usual you haven't got a clue what was being discussed. The question was: does he need to write to the drive to see new bads (possible bads he obviously isn't yet aware of) and get rid of them. Since he isn't aware of problems there are no current pending ones. So the answer was: No, you need to read first to catch them as pending, Arno |
#16
|
|||
|
|||
Worth writing zeros to my used hard drives?
On Mar 14, 6:40 am, "Folkert Rienstra" wrote:
wrote in ooglegroups.com On Mar 13, 3:14 pm, Jax wrote: Home user with XP Pro. I bought some 160 GB hard drives a couple of years ago and they got filled up with data. I have now migrated all the data off these 160 GB hard drives and will now use the drives to hold backups. QUESTION --- As the HDDs are now empty is it worth writing zeros, before using them again, in order to force the HDD to map out any defective sectors? QUESTION -- Or will mapping out of any defective sectors happen automatically when any bad sectors are next written to, which means it is not worth writing the zeros? It's worth zeroing the data on the drives under two circumstances. 1) You're selling them, and don't want any one to steal your bank account info, etc. 2) You don't want anyone to see your porn collection If it has bad sectors, replace the unit. According to a very recent google study of over 100,000 consumer grade hard drives, those with read errors were 39 times more likely to fail within 60 days than those without. Which says absolutely nothing if those without don't fail, now is it. Of COURSE drives without bad sectors do fail. Otherwise the statement would be different. And the exact phrase was: "After the first scan error, drives are 39 times more like- ly to fail within 60 days than drives without scan errors." Unfortunately there is no such thing as a 'scan error'. I'd presumed it was a synonym for a bad spot on the drive in question. Your 'read' errors appear under probational counts. "The critical threshold for probational counts is also one: after the first event, drives are 16 times more likely to fail within 60 days than drives with zero probational counts." There were other inconsistencies in the report as well, like lower risk numbers for the total lifetime (longer than 60 days). They also didn't say what they considered a failure and whether the 'failed' drives actually failed in a different system once replaced. Neither did they check whether it was the system killing the drives. Actually, yes they did specify what they counted as a failure. I'm paraphrasing because I don't have the report in front of me. "A drive is considered to have failed if it was placed as part of a repair operation". It's worth checking the drive for bad sectors. |
#17
|
|||
|
|||
Worth writing zeros to my used hard drives?
wrote in message ups.com
On Mar 14, 6:40 am, "Folkert Rienstra" wrote: wrote in ooglegroups.com On Mar 13, 3:14 pm, Jax wrote: Home user with XP Pro. I bought some 160 GB hard drives a couple of years ago and they got filled up with data. I have now migrated all the data off these 160 GB hard drives and will now use the drives to hold backups. QUESTION --- As the HDDs are now empty is it worth writing zeros, before using them again, in order to force the HDD to map out any defective sectors? QUESTION -- Or will mapping out of any defective sectors happen automatically when any bad sectors are next written to, which means it is not worth writing the zeros? It's worth zeroing the data on the drives under two circumstances. 1) You're selling them, and don't want any one to steal your bank account info, etc. 2) You don't want anyone to see your porn collection If it has bad sectors, replace the unit. According to a very recent google study of over 100,000 consumer grade hard drives, those with read errors were 39 times more likely to fail within 60 days than those without. Which says absolutely nothing if those without don't fail, now is it. Of COURSE drives without bad sectors do fail. But not all. Without a percentage, 39 times or 16 times is a useless number. Otherwise the statement would be different. And the exact phrase was: "After the first scan error, drives are 39 times more like- ly to fail within 60 days than drives without scan errors." Unfortunately there is no such thing as a 'scan error'. I'd presumed it was a synonym for a bad spot on the drive in question. Yup, detected by a very particular action of the drive. Problem is, there is no such attribute with that name. So how will they know. They particularly isolated them from the pending ('probational') counts, the online and the offline reallocated counts, so it's not those. Your 'read' errors appear under probational counts. "The critical threshold for probational counts is also one: after the first event, drives are 16 times more likely to fail within 60 days than drives with zero probational counts." There were other inconsistencies in the report as well, like lower risk numbers for the total lifetime (longer than 60 days). They also didn't say what they considered a failure and whether the 'failed' drives actually failed in a different system once replaced. Neither did they check whether it was the system killing the drives. Actually, yes they did specify what they counted as a failure. I'm paraphrasing because I don't have the report in front of me. "A drive is considered to have failed if it was replaced as part of a repair operation". But no explanation of what a 'repair operation' is and what prompts it. A simple single bad block in the wrong place may prompt a 'repair operation' where the drive is simply replaced as part of a quick fix by lack of other repair options. That doesn't necessarily mean that the drive itself is beyond repair. It's worth checking the drive for bad sectors. |
#18
|
|||
|
|||
Worth writing zeros to my used hard drives?
On Mar 15, 4:35 pm, "Folkert Rienstra" wrote:
wrote in oglegroups.com On Mar 14, 6:40 am, "Folkert Rienstra" wrote: wrote in ooglegroups.com On Mar 13, 3:14 pm, Jax wrote: Home user with XP Pro. I bought some 160 GB hard drives a couple of years ago and they got filled up with data. I have now migrated all the data off these 160 GB hard drives and will now use the drives to hold backups. QUESTION --- As the HDDs are now empty is it worth writing zeros, before using them again, in order to force the HDD to map out any defective sectors? QUESTION -- Or will mapping out of any defective sectors happen automatically when any bad sectors are next written to, which means it is not worth writing the zeros? It's worth zeroing the data on the drives under two circumstances. 1) You're selling them, and don't want any one to steal your bank account info, etc. 2) You don't want anyone to see your porn collection If it has bad sectors, replace the unit. According to a very recent google study of over 100,000 consumer grade hard drives, those with read errors were 39 times more likely to fail within 60 days than those without. Which says absolutely nothing if those without don't fail, now is it. Of COURSE drives without bad sectors do fail. But not all. Without a percentage, 39 times or 16 times is a useless number. The percentages are on figure 6. Otherwise the statement would be different. And the exact phrase was: "After the first scan error, drives are 39 times more like- ly to fail within 60 days than drives without scan errors." Unfortunately there is no such thing as a 'scan error'. I'd presumed it was a synonym for a bad spot on the drive in question. Yup, detected by a very particular action of the drive. Problem is, there is no such attribute with that name. So how will they know. They particularly isolated them from the pending ('probational') counts, the online and the offline reallocated counts, so it's not those. It's also not Seek error, or CRC error (listed separately). It's most likely that they are referring to attribute 1. (Read Error Rate) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-Mo...ing_Technology Your 'read' errors appear under probational counts. "The critical threshold for probational counts is also one: after the first event, drives are 16 times more likely to fail within 60 days than drives with zero probational counts." They're different. Probational counts is attribute 195. There were other inconsistencies in the report as well, like lower risk numbers for the total lifetime (longer than 60 days). They also didn't say what they considered a failure and whether the 'failed' drives actually failed in a different system once replaced. Neither did they check whether it was the system killing the drives. Actually, yes they did specify what they counted as a failure. I'm paraphrasing because I don't have the report in front of me. "A drive is considered to have failed if it was replaced as part of a repair operation". But no explanation of what a 'repair operation' is and what prompts it. A simple single bad block in the wrong place may prompt a 'repair operation' where the drive is simply replaced as part of a quick fix by lack of other repair options. That doesn't necessarily mean that the drive itself is beyond repair. A repair operation is a pretty broad subject. Not many people bother to fix failed drives, except for the purposes of data recovery. Though it's possible Google does. I would however consider a drive that needed to be repaired to have failed. By the underlying tone of the report, replaced drives were often retested. "From an end-user's perspective, a defective drive is one that misbehaves in a serious or consistent enough manner in the user's specific deployment scenario that it is no longer suitable for service. Since failures are sometimes the result of a combination of components (i.e., a particular drive with a particular controller or cable, etc), it is no surprise that a good number of drives that fail for a given user could be still considered operational in a different test harness. *** We have observed that phenomenon ourselves, including situations where a drive tester consistently "green lights" a unit that invariably fails in the field.***" You can also tell that today I DO have a copy of the report in front of me. It's worth checking the drive for bad sectors. |
#19
|
|||
|
|||
Worth writing zeros to my used hard drives?
On 14 Mar 2007 03:05:11 -0700, "
wrote: It's worth zeroing the data on the drives under two circumstances. 1) You're selling them, and don't want any one to steal your bank account info, etc. 2) You don't want anyone to see your porn collection If you give them a good enough porn collection, they'll forget about your bank account. |
|
Thread Tools | |
Display Modes | |
|
|
Similar Threads | ||||
Thread | Thread Starter | Forum | Replies | Last Post |
Worth writing zeros to my used hard drives? | Jax | General | 17 | March 16th 07 03:47 AM |
These old drives are just not worth it | Football Nut | Storage (alternative) | 22 | March 11th 05 08:55 PM |
external hard drives & cd-writing | travis | Storage (alternative) | 0 | February 24th 05 01:58 PM |
Hard drive writing detection | Fred | General Hardware | 0 | April 15th 04 07:50 PM |
HP 5si page count zeros when turned off | GTO69RA4 | Printers | 1 | June 27th 03 03:45 AM |