Formatting a hard disk and handling of suspicious bad sectors

[Man-wai Chang to The Door (24000bps)]

When I right-clicked a hard disk in Window$ and hit Format, was it the
hard disk controller that took over to format a particular sector on the
disk? Or was it the OS?

I wanted to reduce the fault tolerance level of the formatting process
such that it would mark a sector as bad when there was one single
read/write failure.

Right now, the Format process would retry again and again for long time
when a bad sector was hit. I don't want the process to retry, and just
mark it as bad.

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[Arno]

When I right-clicked a hard disk in Window$ and hit Format, was it the
hard disk controller that took over to format a particular sector on the
disk? Or was it the OS?

None of them. The "format" operation under Windows does not format
(create and write) sectors. In proper OSes, what it does
is called filesystem creation. With a long "format" it just adds
a verify read of the surface.

I wanted to reduce the fault tolerance level of the formatting process
such that it would mark a sector as bad when there was one single
read/write failure.

Right now, the Format process would retry again and again for long time
when a bad sector was hit. I don't want the process to retry, and just
mark it as bad.

The retry is likely the disk. The controller cannot do it. The
OS may also do retries, but I think it does not in this case.

Is this a WD disk? They are known to take so long on read errors
that they get dropped by RAID controllers for unresponsiveness.

One thing you can try is to overwrite the disk/partition before
a format. That would trigger the reallocation process for sectors
known to be bad. The other option I see is using a "RAID edition"
drive or one that does support time limited error recovery and set
that. However I have no idea how to do that.

You likely should als run a long SMART selftest and look
at the attributes if you have a larger number of sectors with
read errors (say, >10), quite possibly the drive is dying.

Arno

 

[Man-wai Chang to The Door (24000bps)]

One thing you can try is to overwrite the disk/partition before

a format. That would trigger the reallocation process for sectors
known to be bad. The other option I see is using a "RAID edition"
drive or one that does support time limited error recovery and set
that. However I have no idea how to do that.

You likely should als run a long SMART selftest and look
at the attributes if you have a larger number of sectors with
read errors (say,>10), quite possibly the drive is dying.

I miss the old way of formatting hard disk (DOS days).... bad sectors
were detected and marked properly....

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[Rod Speed]

I miss the old way of formatting hard disk (DOS days)....

You can still boot a dos floppy and do those today if you want to.

bad sectors were detected and marked properly....

But the drives of that era did not spare bad sectors themselves so we dont need the format to do that now.

 

[Rod Speed]

When I right-clicked a hard disk in Window$ and hit Format, was it the hard disk controller that took over to format a
particular sector on the disk? Or was it the OS?

The OS with normal hard drive controllers.

Except that the OS has never formatted a particular sector,
it just redoes the file structures and with a long format, check
if the sectors are readable. Thats not the best thing now with
modern hard drives that spare bad sectors themselves.

I wanted to reduce the fault tolerance level of the formatting process such that it would mark a sector as bad when
there was one single read/write failure.

Right now, the Format process would retry again and again for long
time when a bad sector was hit. I don't want the process to retry,
and just mark it as bad.

Just writing to every sector with a decent wiper before the format should work
fine because that should get the hard drive itself to spare pending bad sectors.

I like Darik's boot and nuke, mainly because it is completely OS independant.
http://www.dban.org/

 

[Flasherly]

When I right-clicked a hard disk in Window$ and hit Format, was it the
hard disk controller that took over to format a particular sector on the
disk? Or was it the OS?

I wanted to reduce the fault tolerance level of the formatting process
such that it would mark a sector as bad when there was one single
read/write failure.

Right now, the Format process would retry again and again for long time
when a bad sector was hit. I don't want the process to retry, and just
mark it as bad.

--
@~@ Might, Courage, Vision, SINCERITY.
/ v \ Simplicity is Beauty! May the Force and Farce be with you!
/( _ )\ (x86_64 Ubuntu 9.10) Linux 2.6.32.8
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Never really had sector issues - per se, those that I'd trust to an
OS, being a longtime user of Partition Magic (DOS of course). Errant
power conditions or software glitches, whenever those rare instances
occur that Windows reports bad sectors -- I just say "no". With a
binary backup of the OS, I allow for quick preconditional recoveries
by how programs -versus the OS- are structured (located on different
drives, partitions/extensions). I've always "organizationally
formated out" drives that way - always 3rd party w/out incident.
Usually with an option for quick formats. Not that I wouldn't have
seen a rare drive or two exhibit churning, problems, though
fortunately I've favored mine, not to impose unusual conditions or
characteristics that are hard on wear (streaming by different DVD to
the same drive, or permitting outlandish fragmentation, for instance).
Drives that have failed on me did so summarily -- no if's and but's.
These new 1.5 and 2T drives I'm getting into lately may be different,
though. Tossing them into quick storage configs with NTFS, so far.
Dunno. Were worst to come to worst, I might have a look around --
definitely before Win, that is -- even to the manufacturer's dedicated
drive/utility software (anally diagnostically inclined and slow-assed
if that's what it takes). Worst I've ever run into was off IBM's site
a 486 ThinkPad -- 8 hours to factory format a LLF routine on that
sucker.

 

[Bryce]

You can still boot a dos floppy and do those today if you
want to.


But the drives of that era did not spare bad sectors
themselves so we dont need the format to do that now.

Oh yes ... I remember DOS ... and floppy disks too! Most of
today's disks are way too big to do a DOS format without
first setting up lots of logical partitions.

Writing (anything) to the whole disk takes a long time.
That's a good reason to not do it during format.

I boot SystemRescueCD and use dd to write zeroes to the
whole disk when a controller gets balky about swapping a
failed sector.

 

[Rod Speed]

Bryce wrote

Rod Speed wrote

Oh yes ... I remember DOS ... and floppy disks too!
Most of today's disks are way too big to do a DOS
format without first setting up lots of logical partitions.

Wrong. You can format the entire drive with one partition if you want.

The only real downside with a DOS format is that you cant format NTFS.

Writing (anything) to the whole disk takes a long time.
That's a good reason to not do it during format.

If you dont like the time it takes, you can just write to the
pending sectors you have identified using the SMART report.

I boot SystemRescueCD and use dd to write zeroes to the whole
disk when a controller gets balky about swapping a failed sector.

It isnt the controller that does that, its the drive itself.

 

[Jonathan de Boyne Pollard]

None of them. The "format" operation under Windows does not format
(create and write) sectors. In proper OSes, what it does is called
filesystem creation.

And elsewhere, and more commonly, it's called a "high-level format", as
opposed to a "low-level format". Were M. Toylet to put that phrase into
xyr favourite WWW search engine, xe would find lots of information on
the subject.

 

[Jonathan de Boyne Pollard]

Wrong. You can format the entire drive with one partition if you want.

.... as long as one is prepared to use partition types that most versions
of MS/PC/DR-DOS won't be able to cope with. This, of course, was M.
Bryce's point. And even then that is presuming that one's disc is below
the 2TiB limit, beyond which one has to do things like switch from the
MBR partitioning scheme to the EFI partitioning scheme, which no version
of MS/PC/DR-DOS at all can cope with.

 

[Man-wai Chang to The Door (24000bps)]

And elsewhere, and more commonly, it's called a "high-level format", as

opposed to a "low-level format". Were M. Toylet to put that phrase into
xyr favourite WWW search engine, xe would find lots of information on
the subject.

Yes, but why can't customers do a low-level format again AFTER YEARS of
use? Why should customers rely on SMART?

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[Man-wai Chang to The Door (24000bps)]

And elsewhere, and more commonly, it's called a "high-level format", as

opposed to a "low-level format". Were M. Toylet to put that phrase into
xyr favourite WWW search engine, xe would find lots of information on
the subject.

Yes, but why can't customers do a low-level format again AFTER YEARS of
use? Why should customers rely on SMART?


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[Bob Willard]

Yes, but why can't customers do a low-level format again AFTER YEARS of
use? Why should customers rely on SMART?

Get one of the many utilities that will write zeros to the entire HD,
then repartition, then reformat (the high-level format).

The other way to get a newly formatted HD is to buy a new one.

 

[Man-wai Chang to The Door (24000bps)]

Get one of the many utilities that will write zeros to the entire HD,

then repartition, then reformat (the high-level format).

The other way to get a newly formatted HD is to buy a new one.

How could I tell the utility not to retry a bad sector to save time? I
want it to mark a sector as bad when it fails to read it on the FIRST
TIME (aka, NO MERCY)!

--
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[Arno]

Some recent disks support the SCT Error Recovery Control (ERC) command
specified in ATA-8 ACS. The command allows to read and set the time limits.

It is supported by HDAT2 and by recent builds of smartctl.

Ah, good to know. smartctl keeps getting better!

Arno

 

[Franc Zabkar]

Right now, the Format process would retry again and again for long time
when a bad sector was hit. I don't want the process to retry, and just
mark it as bad.

Makebad will do exactly what you want:
http://files.hddguru.com/index.php?&direction=0&order=&directory=Software/Makebad

- Franc Zabkar

 

[Arno]

How could I tell the utility not to retry a bad sector to save time? I
want it to mark a sector as bad when it fails to read it on the FIRST
TIME (aka, NO MERCY)!

The utility does not do the retry. The disk does. It is somewhat
justified to do so as modern HDDs need more effort occasionaly
than old ones did.

Arno

 

[Rod Speed]

Jonathan de Boyne Pollard wrote

... as long as one is prepared to use partition types that most
versions of MS/PC/DR-DOS won't be able to cope with.

Wrong. Modern versions of Win handle it fine.

This, of course, was M. Bryce's point.

Not it was not. And he isnt an M. either.

And even then that is presuming that one's disc is below the 2TiB limit,

Which it very likely is.

beyond which one has to do things like switch from the MBR partitioning scheme to the EFI partitioning scheme, which
no version of MS/PC/DR-DOS at all can cope with.

Only fools run dinosaurs like that.

 

[Rod Speed]

Yes, but why can't customers do a low-level format again AFTER YEARS of use?

Because modern drives cant do one anymore.

And they dont need to anyway, that was only useful with stepper
motor head actuator drives that got sector jitter over time. There
havent been any stepper motor head actuator drives for decades now.

Why should customers rely on SMART?

Because its much better to have the drive deal with bad sectors.

 

[Rod Speed]

How could I tell the utility not to retry a bad sector to save time?

Use a utility that does not do that.

I want it to mark a sector as bad when it fails to read it on the FIRST TIME (aka, NO MERCY)!

Not possible and that wouldnt work anyway, you will always
get some retrys with modern very high density drives.