What's Wrong With These Hard Drives?

[sustento]

If I buy a blank Hard Disk at the store, it is only that, a Hard Disk.

No. It is a hard disk, hard drive, or hard disk drive. The terms are interchangeable, as any tech source will tell you.

I'm sorry but everyone who's anyone knows it's a DASD

[NeverSure]

If I buy a blank Hard Disk at the store, it is only that, a Hard Disk.

No. It is a hard disk, hard drive, or hard disk drive. The terms are interchangeable, as any tech source will tell you.

The term "hard drive" is actually short for "hard disk drive." The term "hard disk" refers to the actual disks inside the drive. However, all three of these terms are usually seen as referring to the same thing -- the place where your data is stored. Since I use the term "hard drive" most often, that is the correct one to use.

--http://www.techterms.com/definition/harddrive

In a personal computer, a hard disk drive (HDD) is the mechanism that controls the positioning, reading, and writing of the hard disk, which furnishes the largest amount of data storage for the PC. Although the hard disk drive (often shortened to "hard drive") and the hard disk are not the same thing, they are packaged as a unit and so either term is sometimes used to refer to the whole unit.

--http://searchstorage.techtarget.com/definition/hard-disk-drive

http://pcsupport.about.com/od/componentprofiles/p/p_hdd.htm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_disk_drive

And this why, in a BIOS (pre-boot)--or one I have anyway--the hard disks are listed under the header "Hard Disk Drives" whether they have your "software" on them or not! So, it's widely recognized. Period.

Note how you buy a floppy disk drive at the store--with no floppy disk in it. It's assigned a drive letter once installed--with no floppy disk in it. Yes I know about the firmware. I'm talking common, accepted understanding of what the term drive means.

Not until I install it in or attach it to a computer and put software on it to the point it receives a drive letter does it become a hard disk drive. HDD. It is called a hard disk Drive to differentiate it from an optical drive, floppy drive, pen drive, etc. All show in My Computer as drives with drive letters -

But only those drives that are on a hard disk can be called a Hard Disk Drive. HDD.

No. In Windows Explorer, a partition on a hard disk will be called a Hard Disk Drive for the convenience of the unwashed masses and those with low-level tech knowledge such as yourself. It's not called that in Device Manager or in Disk Management, of course. Nor does Linux call it that anywhere--quite rightly. It's unfortunate Microsoft made that decision.

But no matter what Windows Explorer does, it was nonetheless a hard disk, hard drive, or hard disk drive before it had any partitions or any drive letter assigned by Windows.

I explained this to you earlier here: http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/topic/608159-reinstall-of-windows-xpadvice-please/page-2#entry5975682

There you even used "software hard drives" (SHD? ) to refer to partitions. Such befuddlement.

Hence, re: sirichai's case w/ HDSentinel, the program correctly recognized the disks and the topic was all was on track until you had to derail and confuse the whole issue with an irrelevant misuse of terminology.

From your post:

"In a personal computer, a hard disk drive (HDD) is the mechanism that controls the positioning, reading, and writing of the hard disk, which furnishes the largest amount of data storage for the PC. Although the hard disk drive (often shortened to "hard drive") and the hard disk are not the same thing, they are packaged as a unit and so either term is sometimes used to refer to the whole unit."

--http://searchstorage.techtarget.com/definition/hard-disk-drive

Gotcha.

And from your post:

"And this why, in a BIOS (pre-boot)--or one I have anyway--the hard disks are listed under the header "Hard Disk Drives" whether they have your "software" on them or not! So, it's widely recognized. Period."

The new hard disk will show in the bios because the bios is showing only hardware. It has to boot into the operating system to be assigned a drive letter. It will show in the bios, but if there's no software on it, it won't show in My Computer because it doesn't have the software on it to activate, format, and assign a drive letter. You have to go into Disk Management and activate and format it before it will show as a (software) drive in My Computer. It will be missing!

"Note how you buy a floppy disk drive at the store--with no floppy disk in it. It's assigned a drive letter once installed--with no floppy disk in it. Yes I know about the firmware. I'm talking common, accepted understanding of what the term drive means."

A floppy disk is a drive because it has firmware on it that allows the bios to see it, and the operating system can assign it the drive letter A. That firmware is the software that's needed to create any drive (letter) and to be seen by the operating system.

Again from your own post:

"In a personal computer, a hard disk drive (HDD) is the mechanism that controls the positioning, reading, and writing of the hard disk, which furnishes the largest amount of data storage for the PC. Although the hard disk drive (often shortened to "hard drive") and the hard disk are not the same thing, they are packaged as a unit and so either term is sometimes used to refer to the whole unit."

How hard can this be?

[manarak]

"In a personal computer, a hard disk drive (HDD) is the mechanism that controls the positioning, reading, and writing of the hard disk, which furnishes the largest amount of data storage for the PC. Although the hard disk drive (often shortened to "hard drive") and the hard disk are not the same thing, they are packaged as a unit and so either term is sometimes used to refer to the whole unit."

--http://searchstorage.techtarget.com/definition/hard-disk-drive

Gotcha.

And from your post:

"And this why, in a BIOS (pre-boot)--or one I have anyway--the hard disks are listed under the header "Hard Disk Drives" whether they have your "software" on them or not! So, it's widely recognized. Period."

The new hard disk will show in the bios because the bios is showing only hardware. It has to boot into the operating system to be assigned a drive letter. It will show in the bios, but if there's no software on it, it won't show in My Computer because it doesn't have the software on it to activate, format, and assign a drive letter. You have to go into Disk Management and activate and format it before it will show as a (software) drive in My Computer. It will be missing!

"Note how you buy a floppy disk drive at the store--with no floppy disk in it. It's assigned a drive letter once installed--with no floppy disk in it. Yes I know about the firmware. I'm talking common, accepted understanding of what the term drive means."

A floppy disk is a drive because it has firmware on it that allows the bios to see it, and the operating system can assign it the drive letter A. That firmware is the software that's needed to create any drive (letter) and to be seen by the operating system.

Again from your own post:

"In a personal computer, a hard disk drive (HDD) is the mechanism that controls the positioning, reading, and writing of the hard disk, which furnishes the largest amount of data storage for the PC. Although the hard disk drive (often shortened to "hard drive") and the hard disk are not the same thing, they are packaged as a unit and so either term is sometimes used to refer to the whole unit."

How hard can this be?

aaah, you found a small technicality to try a come back on the subject

yes, a hard disk and hard disk drive are not the same, because a HDD usually comprises several several harddisks for more capacity and the disk's read-write head(s) jump from one place to another to read the data from the individual hard disks that compose a HDD.

But that technicality remains 100% internal to the HDD.

now if you could please explain how the above relates to software?

this part is technically inaccurate:

A floppy disk is a drive because it has firmware on it that allows the bios to see it, and the operating system can assign it the drive letter A. That firmware is the software that's needed to create any drive (letter) and to be seen by the operating system.

Both HDD and floppy drives have firmware on them.

"drives" cannot be created on your computer, only "logical drives" can.

a so-called "drive" is called that way because of the mechanical parts that "drive" the spinning parts. These mechanical parts are present in hard disk drives and floppy drives and it doesn't matter if there is a floppy in it or not, it is still a drive because the mechanical parts are there.

the main difference between floppy/optical drives and HDDs is that the former have interchangeable disks while the HDD's disks cannot be swapped.

Therefore, as is the case with USB and other devices, windows and other OS editors decided to improve usability by assigning a fixed logical drive letter to the floppies.

By the way, unformatted HDDs do also appear in windows, in computer management -> storage -> disk management (right click on "my computer" and select "manage" to access that menu).

So technically, they do also appear in "my computer" LOL.

There you can format, partition, and assign logical drive letters.

Even in windows, once one gets into the more serious parts of the system, the logical drive letters aren't called "drives" anymore like they are in the part of the system for the masses, but they are called "volumes".

And look how one little fact contradicts your theory: there are "volumes" which do caintain data, but have no logical drive letter assigned, for example the recovery partition and the part that is system reserved. Windows has no trouble accessing data without using a "logical drive letter".

Windows adds these "logical drive letters" purely for convenience, they have no technical existence and as already pointed out, other OS, for example unix, use mount points instead, but still uses "hard disk drive" to designate the hardware component.

It's simply a question of correctly defining your technical vocabulary to use the correct words for things.

Edited March 1, 2014 by manarak

[Gregory Morozov]

I could not find a programme for the disk, Toshiba

but the Seagate one, shows no problems, except for a long run time 850+ days

My computer is on 24x7!! Over 2 years now.

The report from Sentinel shows the bad sectors are spared

which leave me to wonder if they are manufacturing bad sectors?

No way of checking that I know of.

I agree that in the commercial world even a few bad sectors are a worry.

How can I read the disk log?

On the big HP machines that I work on this is possible

but on a windows notebook???

All of modern HDDs maintain at least 2 lists of defects internally. The first is called P-List and it contains the defects discovered during factory testing. The second is called G-list and it contains the defects appearing during the lifetime of HDD. All of these defects are normally hidden from the user and are not discoverable by chkdsk and other HDD utilities. These lists can be accessed by the special vendor-specific tools. The only reference to the G-list that user can see is "Reallocated sector count" parameter in SMART statistics.

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Thaivisa Connect Thailand mobile app

[Gregory Morozov]

BTW, the calculations regarding "Health" and "remaining days" are the sole inventions of the HDD Sentinel author. While they can tell you what something is going wrong with your hard disk, they bear no real values. You can do your own "calculations" if you like by reading a raw SMART table with any of the SMART utilities.

Edited March 1, 2014 by Gregory Morozov

[Gregory Morozov]

Basically you can take Power-On Hours Count, Reallocation Sector Count, set you own maximum limit for Reallocation Sector Count, then extrapolate - how many Power-On Hours are left Again, no relationship with reality

If you want to release your own Pro version, drop in Airflow Temperature coefficient, as the higher temperature leads to faster degradation of the drive...

[astral]

the calculations regarding "Health" and "remaining days" are the sole inventions of the HDD Sentinel author

Thank you for that observation

I found this utility which confirms the bad sectors on my disk

but unlike Setinel makes no offer of analysis

I guess I need to watch and see if more bad sectors are appearing.

If so then there is trouble ahead.

It is stable then I can go on for a little longer

possibly using the disk for archive storage

and fitting a hybrid drive in the laptop.

[Crossy]

One word response - Backup.

Two word response - Reliable Backup

Three word response - Tested, Reliable Backup

[manarak]

One word response - Backup.

Two word response - Reliable Backup

Three word response - Tested, Reliable Backup

and on top: RAID-1 with backup.

That way, one has a good chance at just waiting until one of the disks fails and then just replace it, instead of restoring a system from image.

Might also be cheaper in the long run instead of replacing disks with poor health on paper but which might carry on for years regardless.

[sirchai]

So more technology people will invent, so more confused will those be, who're using it.

A priest, a drunkard, and an engineer were all being led to the guillotine to be executed. They ask the priest if he wants to face upward or downward when he meets his fate.
The priest says that he would like to die face up, so that he will be looking toward heaven when he dies.
They raise the blade of the guillotine and release it. It comes speeding down and suddenly stops just inches from his throat. The authorities take this as divine intervention and release the priest.
Next, the drunkard comes to the guillotine. He also decides to die face up hoping that he will be as fortunate as the priest.
They raise the blade of the guillotine and release it. It comes speeding down and suddenly stops just inches from his throat. So they release the drunkard as well.
The engineer is next. He too decides to die facing up.

They slowly raise the blade of the guillotine, when suddenly the engineer says, "Hey, I see what your problem is!"-

[JSixpack]

Well, manarak already has ripped you apart beautifully before I saw your post, but I'd hate for you to go around preening yourself on having gotten in the last word in our discussion (so important!) and thinking that you actually had made a cogent argument--when in fact you didn't. Hence:

From your post:

"In a personal computer, a hard disk drive (HDD) is the mechanism that controls the positioning, reading, and writing of the hard disk, which furnishes the largest amount of data storage for the PC. Although the hard disk drive

(often shortened to "hard drive") and the hard disk are not the same thing, they are packaged as a unit and so either term is sometimes used to refer to the whole unit."
--http://searchstorage.techtarget.com/definition/hard-disk-drive

Gotcha.

LOL. The fact that you think it's a gotcha simply reflects a desperate clinging to misunderstandings.

But one can always wish, aye, "teach?"

And from your post:

"And this why, in a BIOS (pre-boot)--or one I have anyway--the hard disks are listed under the header "Hard Disk Drives" whether they have your "software" on them or not! So, it's widely recognized. Period."

The new hard disk will show in the bios because the bios is showing only hardware. It has to boot into the operating system to be assigned a drive letter. It will show in the bios, but if there's no software on it, it won't show in My Computer because it doesn't have the software on it to activate, format, and assign a drive letter. You have to go into Disk Management and activate and format it before it will show as a (software) drive in My Computer. It will be missing!

Completely irrelevant to my point that the new hard disk shows as "Hard Disk Drive" in the bios, and reflects your own inability to grasp the implications of that fact to the destruction of your misconceptions.

Please give up that childlike idea of "put software on it." How you got the idea that a partition table is software, I can't imagine. It's embarrassing. Stop using that silly "software drive," too. Learn standard terminology and you'll learn the technology.

A floppy disk is a drive because it has firmware on it that allows the bios to see it, and the operating system can assign it the drive letter A. That firmware is the software that's needed to create any drive (letter) and to be seen by the operating system.

No. You just continue stretching to get around the simple truth that what Windows Explorer calls something for end users (which you've rationalized ad nauseam) and what it actually IS, according to the standard accepted definition in the industry, are really not the same in this case. Following Windows Explorer down the garden path has led to a convoluted, inconsistent, and wrong-headed idea about partitioning that wastes people's time and confuses posters here.

Again from your own post:

"In a personal computer, a hard disk drive (HDD) is the mechanism that controls the positioning, reading, and writing of the hard disk, which furnishes the largest amount of data storage for the PC. Although the hard disk drive (often shortened to "hard drive") and the hard disk are not the same thing, they are packaged as a unit and so either term is sometimes used to refer to the whole unit."

How hard can this be?

We'll have no idea until you start trying to learn. We have to consider your advanced age, after all. I've explained it to you twice already. manarak has as well. First you'll have to unlearn the wrong ideas and then learn the correct ones, starting with the basics. Go to it. Good luck!

Edited March 2, 2014 by JSixpack

[astral]

Thanks for starting this thread and the link to Sentinel

I can now see that my hard disk drive is failing fast

with more bad sectors appearing over the weekend

Time to buy a new one.

I have the Seagate 1Tb hybrid as my choice.

Please play nicely when correcting others understanding of terminology

Or I will have to take action.

Thank you

[astral]

I now have the Seagate 1Tb hybrid drive installed

Although I like the Disk Sentinel program mentioned previously

I did not feel inclined to pay for it

A little research gave me the Acronis Disk Monitor which is free

Not quite so sophisticated but should make me aware of impending disaster in the future

[manarak]

I now have the Seagate 1Tb hybrid drive installed

Although I like the Disk Sentinel program mentioned previously

I did not feel inclined to pay for it

A little research gave me the Acronis Disk Monitor which is free

Not quite so sophisticated but should make me aware of impending disaster in the future

I use the old and simple (and free) program speedfan - it reads out SMART data and at the bottom of the page gives two "health bars" for performance and health, as long as the health bar is in the green area, the data is reasonably safe from a disk failure, when it declines, I go buy a new HDD.

BTW, for SSD you should go to the homepage of the drive's manufacturer and download their SSD health check utility, because SMART data of SSD should be interpreted differently.

Edited March 9, 2014 by manarak

[mike_rad]

I use the old and simple (and free) program speedfan - it reads out SMART data and at the bottom of the page gives two "health bars" for performance and health, as long as the health bar is in the green area, the data is reasonably safe from a disk failure, when it declines, I go buy a new HDD.

BTW, for SSD you should go to the homepage of the drive's manufacturer and download their SSD health check utility, because SMART data of SSD should be interpreted differently.

Another vote for Speedfan, been using it for years.

[JetsetBkk]

I use the old and simple (and free) program speedfan - it reads out SMART data and at the bottom of the page gives two "health bars" for performance and health, as long as the health bar is in the green area, the data is reasonably safe from a disk failure, when it declines, I go buy a new HDD.

BTW, for SSD you should go to the homepage of the drive's manufacturer and download their SSD health check utility, because SMART data of SSD should be interpreted differently.

Another vote for Speedfan, been using it for years.

Ditto. I use Speedfan for showing the temperature in the System Tray.

I also use CrystalDiskInfo to read the SMART data.

I wrote a macro that runs every time the PC starts and compares the current SMART data with the previous.

So if any of the numbers are changing I can decide what to do.

But the only numbers that change are the temperatures!

The AutoHotKey macro is attached, if anyone's interested.

Wait_Min_Dump_Crystal_Disk_Info.ahk.txt