HDD Repair Software

Products like PerfectDisk & DisKeeper have made DeFragging an artform. But what about CheckDisk and ErrorFixing and BadSector repairing? Do we have only XP's in-built toolkit to rely on or are there quality products out there that handle these HDD issues as well?

 

I would find it very logical, that each defragger would check my harddisk first and then would start with defragging my harddisk. What's the point of defragging a harddisk with bad sectors, bad clusters, etc...
I don't know if PerfectDisk for example is doing this, but I would appreciate it. After all defragging takes quite some time, so checking and repairing my harddisk wouldn't make much difference.

 

I think you will find that the analysis part - just before the defrag will pick up on any CHKDSK type errors.

 

In my experience,the best by far are the specialised ones bought out by the manufacturers-for example,if you have a Seagate HDD,install SeaTools,which has reliable diagnostics and remedies for these problems

Other non -manufacturers disk software seems to report some false errors and is less reliable.

 

I use these freewares to check my WD Raptor Harddisks :
http://support.wdc.com/download/?cxml=n&pid=1&swid=30

I hope this is the right link for SeaTools, I can use these too for my Seagate external harddisk
http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/support/downloads/seatools

 

Let's hope so. PerfectDisk is always telling me that my harddisk is in "good condition", but only AFTER defragging.

 

Indeed the cadillac : SpinRite v6.0 First time purchasers of SpinRite. $ 89.00

 

Just so we're clear, you guys are using the word 'cadillac' to mean high quality and expensive, right?

 

Not exactly, in Belgium we say "Rolls-Royce", not cadillac.

 

I agree with Hairy Coo check out manufacturers diagnostics tools.

As for Spinrite it can get 'stuck' sometimes as it just doesn't give up on a problem - if this is considered excessive the program can be stopped and re-started after that sector.

 

If the manufacturers tools aren't up to the task, or your specific model maker has none, i've recovered a couple of badly sectored drives with HDD Regenerator (Google)

Of course it doesn't physically or otherwise electromagnetically repair anything, what it does is like some others, it relocates the bad sectors to a reserved section of the disk.
Depending on if the HD has only a few bad ones or many, it's been my last chance rescue in these instances. I'm still using some drives recovered with it but theres been a couple where it couldn't restore them at all since they were on their last leg so to speak.

 

Interesting Pete, i finally conceded once and now been sitting on SpinRite indefinitely in mothballs after getting impatient when using it although i fully trust it can do as claimed provided the drive is recoverable enough to ensure it's continued survival for an extended length of time with normal use.

HDD Regenerator while maybe not as efficient was fast enough to make corrections and the drives it fixed so far have been going along well.

 

if your disk wasn't in good condition it would not proceed to defrag. The problem
these days is finding a bad drive - haven't seen one this millennium. anyway the price of drives is now so cheap - if one started acting up I would replace it within the hour.

 

With regards to SpinRite & Regenerator when using them for HDD maintenance rather than recovery, is the data on the drive safe or does it 'fix & scrub' the drive so that it is returned working & 'empty'?

 

I've not used hdd regenerator but Spinrite using level 4 (maintenance) will 'refresh' the drive, not a low level format in itself, that's now lost to modern drives but it reads and rewrites the data at the low level while analysing the disk.

Spinrite maintenance, realtime...

 

You cannot repair physical problems, you can remark a bad sector as good, but you cannot in anyway fix what caused the bad sector...

Good for recovery, but not a permanent regeneration tool it claims to be.

Magnets do not weaken with age, they do not need refreshing or regenerating, marking a bad sector as good will not fix what causes the bad sector (a symtom not a cause). If this was true ALL hdds would loose sectors with age, which as anyone knows is simply not true.

Also, check disk does a different job, its a file system checker, same as a defragger works on the file system - a logical entity, whereas tools like spinrite try and work directly on the hardware.

 

I've seen other recovery tools use this technique and it does work quite well, but instead of writting to the same disk, the tool I saw copied the data to different media, which I thought was cool.

 

This is usually the norm. Imagine a bad failure and there are errors, do you want to write to the same disk? Just getting the data off that drive is desirable then you can retire it. There are a few good linux based tools that can help out here.