joem Posted February 25, 2011 Share Posted February 25, 2011 I am using Home Server Smart addin to keep an eye on my 4 hard disks. I noticed that one of the disks, a Seagate 1.5 Tera, has been "degraded" as far as Reallocated Sector Count. It reports that there are 2 bad sectors on the disk surface. Their contents have been reallocated to the spare area. It further states the health of this disk is questionable. It is recommended that you keep a close eye on it. If its health degrades further, you should replace it. Here is my question. I have a spare disk I could replace it with. I could go to Server Storage and remove the suspect disk and replace it with a know good hard disk. Then add that new disk, which is a WD green 2 tera within the Server Storage interface. I could then run diagnostics such as chkdsk on the suspect disk and add it back or use it for something else if it is deemed to be usable. Is this a good plan? Or is there another procedure that would be more prudent. 50 percent of my server storage is free. Thanks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ikon Posted February 25, 2011 Share Posted February 25, 2011 I am using Home Server Smart addin to keep an eye on my 4 hard disks. I noticed that one of the disks, a Seagate 1.5 Tera, has been "degraded" as far as Reallocated Sector Count. It reports that there are 2 bad sectors on the disk surface. Their contents have been reallocated to the spare area. It further states the health of this disk is questionable. It is recommended that you keep a close eye on it. If its health degrades further, you should replace it. Here is my question. I have a spare disk I could replace it with. I could go to Server Storage and remove the suspect disk and replace it with a know good hard disk. Then add that new disk, which is a WD green 2 tera within the Server Storage interface. I could then run diagnostics such as chkdsk on the suspect disk and add it back or use it for something else if it is deemed to be usable. Is this a good plan? Or is there another procedure that would be more prudent. 50 percent of my server storage is free. Thanks. When I have a degraded drive I remove it like you suggested, but then I run SpinRite on it at level 4, to basically recertify the drive. I feel chkdsk is pretty much useless for degraded drives. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
krom Posted February 25, 2011 Share Posted February 25, 2011 I have the exact same situation going but on a few disks. I did exactly what ikon suggested and SpinRite didn't show any thing as being bad or repaired so I don't know where that leaves me at the end of the day. In any case after I've done this and SpinRite didn't say something like "throw that drive out the window" can I put it back in my WHS? I know drives are cheap and data in invaluable but I also know that drives degrade over time and some if this in normal. I also remember Dave and crew discussing this exact topic on a past show. So where does the community stand on this topic? Thanks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ImTheTypeOfGuy Posted February 26, 2011 Share Posted February 26, 2011 Where do you get the SpinRite program. I searched for it and most of the links I saw looked shady. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jmwills Posted February 26, 2011 Share Posted February 26, 2011 GRC.com Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JediTim Posted February 26, 2011 Share Posted February 26, 2011 I just replaced a hard drive with 1374 reallocated sectors with another old drive which is showing 395 bad sectors...guess I will purchase a drive to replace this drive. I don't really feel like spending $89 for SpinRite...this would be for home use and I really am not sure in the value other than I now have two drives that are not working properly. Would SpinRite save these drives from the trash or would it be better for me to just purchase another driver from Newegg when I have issues with a $89 drive. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ImTheTypeOfGuy Posted February 27, 2011 Share Posted February 27, 2011 Yeah, I didn't realize it was so expensive. I am curious if others think it is worth the cost. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
joem Posted February 27, 2011 Author Share Posted February 27, 2011 I would say that Spinrite is worth the cost if you need to recover data without sending a drive out to DriveSavers or some company like that. It works on a physical basis on the drive. Sectors. The trouble with it is that if it recovers data from a bad sector it relocates it on another portion of that same hard drive! LOL Also for maintenance purposes it takes days to run on these new tera sized hard disks and I don't have that kind of time. I know of a few folks who run it on new drives before they put them into production. Also I would never put a drive back into production that I had to repair with Spinrite though. So you would end up buying a new drive anyway. But like I said it is a good last resort recovery system before you would have to throw a drive away or sent it off for recovery. I used to be in the data recovery business and we had a tools similar to this and the recovered data was copied to another drive as part of the process. My original posted question about the addin was because I didn't know how accurate the information was that is provided by it. I know some of these utilities are too general or almost next to inaccurate. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JediTim Posted February 27, 2011 Share Posted February 27, 2011 I would say that Spinrite is worth the cost if you need to recover data without sending a drive out to DriveSavers or some company like that. It works on a physical basis on the drive. Sectors. The trouble with it is that if it recovers data from a bad sector it relocates it on another portion of that same hard drive! LOL Also for maintenance purposes it takes days to run on these new tera sized hard disks and I don't have that kind of time. I know of a few folks who run it on new drives before they put them into production. Also I would never put a drive back into production that I had to repair with Spinrite though. So you would end up buying a new drive anyway. But like I said it is a good last resort recovery system before you would have to throw a drive away or sent it off for recovery. I used to be in the data recovery business and we had a tools similar to this and the recovered data was copied to another drive as part of the process. My original posted question about the addin was because I didn't know how accurate the information was that is provided by it. I know some of these utilities are too general or almost next to inaccurate. Thanks...answered the same way I was thinking...not putting a bad drive back into the system Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dvn Posted February 27, 2011 Share Posted February 27, 2011 Seagate, right? If you call, they'll say don't use any SMART tool but their own - SeaTools. SeaTools sees drive problems as they arise but only brings them to your attention after a parameter has gone beyond a certain threshold. This could mean that you'll accumulate a dozen reallocated sectors (just a wild guess) before it gives you a warning at all. The point? Seagate feels a certain amount of drive defects/degradation is within acceptable limits. Your drive may be under warranty and eligible for replacement. But here's the kicker: you will almost certainly receive a refurbished drive as a replacement. And you won't be eligible for that unless SeaTools fails your drive. So run SeaTools, and if the drive passes, find somewhere else to use it for now. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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