How long is patience a reasonable virtue? (HDD regenerator)

[Doc1988]

Hello everybody,

I'm running HDD Regenerator (v1.41) for almost 5 days on my Seagate 300GB SATA. The drive is under warranty, and yes, rational sense would advise to simply take it over the dealer due to the a few bad sectors are found (8kb).

But what do you do when not in mercy of time and when you have also even less time to backup all this data. Anyway, I wanted to remedy those sectors with HDD regenerator. What is usually expedient routine with this program and the same at the most takes from a few hours, to one or two days, now turns to be more then 5 days and still going.

The sectors are located at 183037 (374860090 sectors)

104 Bad sectors are found (at the moment)

But this 104 are all located around one single MB !
And this took all this time and still not passed to "8"

I wonder at this time, is there any point to continue waiting for this to be finished. Do I now risk my drive health by isolating this areas for 5 days while HDD generator is running, or you think I should run as long as it takes?

I've used regenerator a few days ago and he made remedy in less then a few hours, now for the first time, one folder was unavailable for moving or erasing. It is clear this last folder managed to be written exactly near the end of this small Bad sector area. All I wanted to do is to sort this sectors and then isolated them in separate partition with Partition manager. But now I'm afraid, if I stop this session, and try to make repartition while files are on the drive, would that folder in bad sectors allow this action? I don't mind if he gets erased…as long as he doesn't take any other prisoners with him.

I would really like to know what to do.

Thank you for your patience

 

[P5-133XL]

Return the drive. Now!

If it is under warrantee, the only reasonable rational in running a SpinRite type program is if you can't get the data off and the data has signifigent value. The problem is that once a modern drive starts showing bad sectors, the odds are the number of sectors are going to grow, causing later problems. So the program has limited value.

 

[ddrueding]

Seconded. Get your data off, and RMA the drive. Even if the problem is small now, it will get worse.

 

[Doc1988]

You couldn't be more right, both of you.
Nothing to debate here.

...the only reasonable rational in running a SpinRite type program is if you can't get the data off and the data has signifigent value.

So I did, exactly as you suggested. In fact I always treasured SpinRite as very capable tools.

So now, the very same formulation strikes again your attention. Dynastat Recovery is working. 95.94% or 0:04:01 minutes is what remains to be exact.

But, this four minutes are long gone from linearity, if you know what I mean. So question is again, how long should I let SpinRite work his medicine? What if this again takes another 5 days?

Thank you

 

[P5-133XL]

How long you wait is really dependant upon your patience and the value of the data (the more valuable, the more I'd wait). For me, the five days you've already allocated is plenty, in my estimation to do its job; But then I don't know how valuable the info is...

 

[paugie]

What I usually do with spinrite is to let it run in a faster (lower category mode) then watch it run to within a few sectors (meaning to give me time to switch in real time to the No. 5 diagnostic mode which will "repair" the bad sectors) of the cluster of bad sectors. After the No. 5 diagnostic mode has passed through the bad sectors, I switch over to the fastest mode again and complete the run.

 

[sechs]

If the data was of extreme value, you should have sent it off for professional recovery.

 

[Doc1988]

Pardons for the late reply Gents,

This trip, that trip, all voyaged me away from this drive.

Just a few days ago, grasped that my warranty is long gone. Almost 4 month to be exact. This was the short period that Seagate reduced warranty to miserable 1 year with dealer and the remaining 2 escaped my slow mode of finally returning this drive to dealer for reclamation.

That bother me not, worst things can happen, so this leaves me at the door of original question. I've managed to move the important data and drive is empty now, no files at all.

No need to throw this capacity away, so my question is :

Should I simply isolate with the usual fashion this drive , with say… 200-300 megs around each side of this micro bad sector area. In separate partition, naturally.

Or do you find that previous idea of trying to fix this sectors again.

Is it possible that either electronic or synergy of both drive and electronic could create such environment where such prospect of remedy would be impossible?

I ask this because, after almost 5 days, I had feeling, although SpinRite presented verification of his work in bad sector area, I had a feeling is it really not going anywhere and If I would leave more time, it could go like that forever.

What do you think is the better solution. Try again with SpinRite, or simply isolating this area in usual way.

Much obliged

 

[P5-133XL]

If the data is off and safe, then junk the drive. Reliability and confidence is everthing and you don't have that any more.

 

[CougTek]

I completly forgot about that thread. Guess I created another for nothing.

 

[Sol]

Just do a full format and only use the drive with the understanding that you can't trust it further than if you'd just thrown it (assuming you have any uses that will bear that assumption, like say take some files along to work for a co-worker where it doesn't matter if they have to wait a day if the drive just dies).