Failing hard drives then pass tests after secure wipe

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BadAsAl

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Oct 13, 2009
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I have had this happen a few times now. I get a drive in and it fails Seatools hard drive short test (confirmed with other tools) so I replace the drive. Then for security I secure wipe the drive using Dban or CCleaner and then NTFS format it, when I test it again with Seatools it passes... Any idea why?

As an example, I just had a 250GB Seagate drive in that failed the onboard HP diagnostics and I ran Seatools for DOS and Seatools for Windows and the short drive self test fails. I then used CCleaner to do a 1 time wipe, formatted NTFS, and then retested. The drive passes the short drive self test now. I know the safest route to go is chuck it and replace it, but I use spare drives all the time for testing don't want to throw out these drives unless they are actually hardware failures. so I want to know if these drives are really failing or if something with the file system is causing the failure and wiping/reformatting takes care of it?
 
Solution
SuperSoph_WD
Hey there, BadAsAl!

I'd suggest to keep using the drives since you think they are fine. I know I would. However, don't put any important data on them or if you do, always keep a backup somewhere else. This way if they do fail completely, you'd still have your data and you'd know that you've used them to the maximum.
What does the S.M.A.R.T. status of the HDD show? Can you share a screenshot or something?

SuperSoph_WD
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spooky2th

spooky2th

Splendid
May 18, 2010
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You probably just had minor file allocation, etc problems. Windows has a drive mechanic program that will scan the whole drive and fix problems. I use system mechanic and have for years. kept my hdd's and whole comp humming right along. Now that I have graduated to ssd's it keeps them up to snuff too with an excellent ssd optimizer and more.
 
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SuperSoph_WD

SuperSoph_WD

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Jul 30, 2014
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Hey there, BadAsAl!

I'd suggest to keep using the drives since you think they are fine. I know I would. However, don't put any important data on them or if you do, always keep a backup somewhere else. This way if they do fail completely, you'd still have your data and you'd know that you've used them to the maximum.
What does the S.M.A.R.T. status of the HDD show? Can you share a screenshot or something?

SuperSoph_WD
 
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Solution
F

fzabkar

Judicious
Sep 22, 2010
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@BadAsAl, a drive may have bad or "weak" sectors. When these sectors are rewritten, the drive may choose to replace them with spares. You should then see a corresponding increase in the Reallocated Sector Count attribute in your SMART report. SeaTools doesn't report the actual SMART attribute values, so it is essentially useless in that regard. Instead I would use CrystalDiskInfo.

http://crystalmark.info/software/CrystalDiskInfo/index-e.html

Look for reallocated, pending, or uncorrectable sectors.
 
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ifIwasarichman

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Jun 18, 2014
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One possible explanation could be that if the information is fragmented this means that the spinning disk drive has to work a lot harder to do the same job (increases search times and heat), add into the mix any bad sectors and the drive is then really straining. With the hdd running hotter, this can easily bring up a caution or fail when testing. After a wipe and clean install, all the information is gathered together correctly and the bad sectors will be avoided.
Another testing software to consider is HD tune, which can run a large variety of in-depth tests on a drive.
I to would continue to use them for testing, but it does not matter if the hdd is new or old, good or not, you should always keep copies of anything important. The more important, the more copies as even good hdds can fail after what appears to be just a slight bump. I had a good hdd die once due to a fault on the circuit board, luckily I had a couple of the same drives and swapped the boards over to retrieve the information. I usually keep complete drive copies of fresh installs, and regular incremental copies of any important changes, as this makes it easy to just reload the drive. For example, Acronis and Paragon have excellent software for this, but there are a lot of others out there. New ssd's do not suffer from fragmentation like hdds do. So a regular check on fragmentation on your hdds (particularly if you are constantly adding and removing a lot of data or programs) and if they are getting poor results (you will notice the degradation in the results over time), it is easy enough to perform a defragmentation and optimisation on it.
 
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