Hard drive is working fine after low level format

chris mallia · Feb 22, 2014

Hi guys I had a Hitachi 1Tb drive witch ran for some years and recently windows started to have corruptions and at last when the pc is turned on it would not load into windows it will stay in the windows boot logo so anyway I tried to install windows clicked the format and it worked fine for a while and started doing same thing allover, tried to install windows again but this time it would take a long time for every step in installation so anyway I replaced the drive. Now here is the thing I loaded ultimate boot cd and wiped the drive from there it did 3 passes and took 16hrs after that the disk worked fine, I also tested the disk with seatools and passed all test. anyone has a idea of what's the explanation thanks again

Ubrales · Feb 22, 2014

It could be due to "Disk Fragmentation" - applies to HDDs only, and not to SSDs.

The formatting that you did essentially performed a disk defrag too.

chris mallia · Feb 22, 2014

Ubrales :

Hi thanks for your reply. If a disk is formatted will it still need defrag as it is formatted? and when I installed windows I always format the drive during installation how come this format did difference thanks for your help again

Ubrales · Feb 22, 2014

The formatting completely cleans out all files on the hard disk. Fragmentation does not apply in this case as there are no files to get fragmented.

Fragmentation usually happens after a disk is in use for a long period of time. Windows has a utility that will show the level of fragmentation and you can use this utility to defrag the disk if required.

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/what-is-disk-defragmentation#1TC=windows-7

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/improve-performance-defragmenting-hard-disk#1TC=windows-7

There are other free defrag programs such as 'Defraggler' from Piriform which will do the same thing.

Paperdoc · Feb 22, 2014

Fragmentation is not the issue. You probably managed to get a benefit from a background activity that all modern HDD's do. It involves finding and replacing weak Sectors on the HDD with a spare stock of good Sectors that the HDD knows about. This process is invisible to Windows, so it cannot use it. However, completely wiping a HDD will force the HDD to inspect ALL the Sectors of the HDD and replace all that are weak or faulty. So after that drastic operation, the HDD will appear to be flawless.

HOWEVER, you should be aware of the potential problem you have with this old unit. As I said all its faulty Sectors have been replaced with good spares. But that means that the HDD's stock of known-good spares is now smaller for any future fix-ups, so eventually this self-repair process will fail. When? Who knows? There is a system on the HDD to check for this and warn you if the stock of spares is getting low. It is part of the SMART system, so if your computer's BIOS is set to check the SMART messages from the HDD, it will show you such a warning when it comes. THEN you know for sure that the HDD is due for quick replacement. The other factor is experience and prediction. Given that this older HDD HAS had some bad Sectors develop that needed replacement, how rapidly will it develop even more in the future? You can't really predict that, except to say it probably will develop problems more rapidly than a brand new HDD. Again, if you pay attention to the SMART messages that will give you some warning. But you should realize that some of these types of errors cannot be fixed, and you WILL lose data in some cases.

chris mallia · Feb 26, 2014

Paperdoc :

Fragmentation is not the issue. You probably managed to get a benefit from a background activity that all modern HDD's do. It involves finding and replacing weak Sectors on the HDD with a spare stock of good Sectors that the HDD knows about. This process is invisible to Windows, so it cannot use it. However, completely wiping a HDD will force the HDD to inspect ALL the Sectors of the HDD and replace all that are weak or faulty. So after that drastic operation, the HDD will appear to be flawless.

HOWEVER, you should be aware of the potential problem you have with this old unit. As I said all its faulty Sectors have been replaced with good spares. But that means that the HDD's stock of known-good spares is now smaller for any future fix-ups, so eventually this self-repair process will fail. When? Who knows? There is a system on the HDD to check for this and warn you if the stock of spares is getting low. It is part of the SMART system, so if your computer's BIOS is set to check the SMART messages from the HDD, it will show you such a warning when it comes. THEN you know for sure that the HDD is due for quick replacement. The other factor is experience and prediction. Given that this older HDD HAS had some bad Sectors develop that needed replacement, how rapidly will it develop even more in the future? You can't really predict that, except to say it probably will develop problems more rapidly than a brand new HDD. Again, if you pay attention to the SMART messages that will give you some warning. But you should realize that some of these types of errors cannot be fixed, and you WILL lose data in some cases.

Thank you for your Great explanation that answered all I needed to know.

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Hard drive is working fine after low level format

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