Why wont XP Defragger place all data together?

[J. P. Gilliver (John)]

J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote: []

I see from that that the ones in red boxes are the "Data" column for
"Current Pending Sector", and "Reallocated Sector Cou[nt?]".
CPS is indeed 0 for me, but (using DiskCheckup from
www.passmark.com, but the display is almost identical) RSC isn't.
However, one tab ("SMART Info") I have shows that line as
ID 5
Description Reallocated Sector Count
Status OK
Value 94
Worst 94
Threshold 10
Raw Value 59
Predicted TEC Date 20 Jul 2088

(Still showing the same, other than it now says 10 Aug 2088.)
[]

All I can tell you, is this. This is what I observed, as a drive
went bad here. The Current and Worst appear to be percentages.

I suppose for some of the other parameters, current could get better
than worst, though I don't think it would for this particular one.

The Data field appears to be "counts" of things. I never got

DiskCheckup heads that column "Raw Value", but I think it's the same
sort of thing. Your suggestion that the first two are percentages would
sort of make some sense - my remaining is 94% (and has been since
2012-3-24).

to the Threshold value, so I don't know what happens when you get
there. Maybe the display in HDTune turns yellow or something.

I suppose at worst the drive might stop working, or become read-only,
like I understand SSDs do when some counter exceeds some value.

The Threshold value is set by the hard drive design.

Current Worst Threshold Data Status
Reallocated Sector Count 100 100 36 0 OK
Reallocated Sector Count 100 100 36 57 OK
Reallocated Sector Count 98 98 36 104 OK

A reallocated sector, is a sector no longer in service, which is
replaced by a spare sector on the same track or cylinder perhaps.
It causes a slight slowdown, to make reference to it. Once all the
spares are used up in the vicinity, then no more sparing is
offered (for performance reasons). If the spare sector was on
one end of the disk, and the bad sector on the other end of the
disk, the performance would drop below a megabyte per second.

Interesting: makes sense.

Note that, Reallocated Sector Count is not an honest count. We don't
know what the units of "Data" are. They might not be sectors.
And to avoid customers checking SMART on a new drive, and
returning the product, maybe the first 100,000 spared out
sectors are not shown in the display. When the 100,001th spared
sector operation occurs, maybe Data is set to 1.

If that's the case (and I've no reason to believe you're wrong), then
saying "Current" and "Worst" (or "Value" and "Worst" in Diskcheckup) are
percentages isn't really true (-:!

If you look at my results, it would suggest the drive has 5000
spare sectors, which is just silly. Back in the days of much
smaller drives, hard drives were leaving the factory with
100,000 sectors already spared out. The number is likely
larger by now. One reason for even attempting to read or
write the hard drive at the factory, is to develop the
factory defect list, so the drive is "stable" when the
customer goes to use it. Defects should only grow slowly

I remember when drives had the original dud sectors listed on a label on
the side (-: ...

after that. Factory defects would be microscopic defects
in the surface finish (areas of disk that won't hold data).

Paul

--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/<1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

The truth is, almost everyone in the world is lovely. But the world is ruined
for us by the sociopaths and those who aren't lovely. - Richard Osman to
Alison Graham, in Radio Times 2013-6-8 to 14

 

[Paul]

J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote: []

I see from that that the ones in red boxes are the "Data" column for
"Current Pending Sector", and "Reallocated Sector Cou[nt?]".
CPS is indeed 0 for me, but (using DiskCheckup from
www.passmark.com, but the display is almost identical) RSC isn't.
However, one tab ("SMART Info") I have shows that line as
ID 5
Description Reallocated Sector Count
Status OK
Value 94
Worst 94
Threshold 10
Raw Value 59
Predicted TEC Date 20 Jul 2088

(Still showing the same, other than it now says 10 Aug 2088.)
[]

All I can tell you, is this. This is what I observed, as a drive
went bad here. The Current and Worst appear to be percentages.

I suppose for some of the other parameters, current could get better
than worst, though I don't think it would for this particular one.

The Data field appears to be "counts" of things. I never got

DiskCheckup heads that column "Raw Value", but I think it's the same
sort of thing. Your suggestion that the first two are percentages would
sort of make some sense - my remaining is 94% (and has been since
2012-3-24).

to the Threshold value, so I don't know what happens when you get
there. Maybe the display in HDTune turns yellow or something.

I suppose at worst the drive might stop working, or become read-only,
like I understand SSDs do when some counter exceeds some value.

The Threshold value is set by the hard drive design.

Current Worst Threshold Data Status
Reallocated Sector Count 100 100 36 0 OK
Reallocated Sector Count 100 100 36 57 OK
Reallocated Sector Count 98 98 36 104 OK

A reallocated sector, is a sector no longer in service, which is
replaced by a spare sector on the same track or cylinder perhaps.
It causes a slight slowdown, to make reference to it. Once all the
spares are used up in the vicinity, then no more sparing is
offered (for performance reasons). If the spare sector was on
one end of the disk, and the bad sector on the other end of the
disk, the performance would drop below a megabyte per second.

Interesting: makes sense.

Note that, Reallocated Sector Count is not an honest count. We don't
know what the units of "Data" are. They might not be sectors.
And to avoid customers checking SMART on a new drive, and
returning the product, maybe the first 100,000 spared out
sectors are not shown in the display. When the 100,001th spared
sector operation occurs, maybe Data is set to 1.

If that's the case (and I've no reason to believe you're wrong), then
saying "Current" and "Worst" (or "Value" and "Worst" in Diskcheckup) are
percentages isn't really true (-:!

If you look at my results, it would suggest the drive has 5000
spare sectors, which is just silly. Back in the days of much
smaller drives, hard drives were leaving the factory with
100,000 sectors already spared out. The number is likely
larger by now. One reason for even attempting to read or
write the hard drive at the factory, is to develop the
factory defect list, so the drive is "stable" when the
customer goes to use it. Defects should only grow slowly

I remember when drives had the original dud sectors listed on a label on
the side (-: ...

When I installed SCSI drives at work back then, I used to
print the defect list off, on a single sheet of typing paper,
fold it up and put it inside the computer casing. That would
be the factory defect list, rather than the grown defect list.
With SCSI, you could "reset" sector sparing, and watch what
happens. (You would restore the sector sparing, for the ones
detected at the factory, and that's what the sheet of typing
paper was for.) With IDE, they don't give any user controls
worth a damn.

Paul

 

[micky]

Does it

1) condense (defragment free space)?

I don't know.

2) does it come with any junkware (toolbars, pop ups
for crap to buy,etc.)?

It offered, twice, once at download, and again at install (even though I
said No at download) to install MyPCBackup, or something with a similar
name. I think it was free and if the defrag is good, so is this
probably, but no time to think about it now.

It also encouraged users to install BoostSpeed, which I think cost
money, but was available on a trial version (or it was free and the
backup was trial, but probably the first way) I ran it and it found
thousands of bad files. Of course they weren't really bad, they were
part of a file image of winME, or an unused copy of XP I'm babysitting.

It found thousands of other problems but I wasnt' sure it would let me
decide on a one at a time basis which ones to delete, and my computer's
running fast enough already, so I just closed the program. Maybe I'll
read reviews for those two programs some time.