Corrupted HDD

[Krazes]

So my hard drives been fucked for a few months and now I bothered ordering a new one, the new HDD is arriving tomorrow. My SSD's health on CrystalDiskInfo is 95% and my HDD is on Caution, I want to go for a full factory reset with the ISO and all.

 

Should I format my HDD then take it out my PC and then a factory reset since it's corrupted and no use of it after or shall I factory reset all together with the HDD plugged in then take it out and put the new one in?

[Radium_Angel]

9 minutes ago, Krazes said:

HDD

Swap with known good drive 1st, then refresh everything.

[Krazes]

4 minutes ago, Radium_Angel said:

Swap with known good drive 1st, then refresh everything.

Why should I swap with the new HDD if there's practically gonna be nothing on there?

[Radium_Angel]

3 minutes ago, Krazes said:

Why should I swap with the new HDD if there's practically gonna be nothing on there?

???

 

Because a factory refresh on a drive listed as "caution" may stress it enough to cause it to fail outright then the refresh may, or may not, fail along side.

[Krazes]

1 minute ago, Radium_Angel said:

???

 

Because a factory refresh on a drive listed as "caution" may stress it enough to cause it to fail outright then the refresh may, or may not, fail along side.

I was thinking I should do a single drive format on the HDD just to clear the contents, take it out and put the new HDD in then factory reset everything and reinstall windows cos my SSD got some files in there too.

[Radium_Angel]

1 minute ago, Krazes said:

I was thinking I should do a single drive format on the HDD just to clear the contents

If you have everything backed up, or don't care about what's on the suspect HDD, then go for it, but a format of the suspect HDD won't prevent data recovery from it, if that's what you are worried about, but otherwise it's an unnecessary step. Just take it out, set aside to deal with properly later, and put the new one in, then refresh your system.

[mariushm]

A proper format of the HDD with problems will absolutely prevent recovery of data from it, as the data will be gone. A format of the drive = data gone.

Proper format (the one that takes a while) implies writing data over each sector, and reading back the data to make sure the data was properly written) so if you format it then you basically are unlikely to recover anything.

Quick format just erases the file allocation tables, basically the area where all the information about the files was stored, so a recovery software would be able to scan the surface of the drive and recover data based on various signatures (ex. a zip file would have the sequence "PK" at the beginning, a PNG file would have PNG in the file at the start and so on)

 

If you have the new SSD, I'd suggest reinstalling Windows on it, then make a folder on in and copy the contents of the hard drive onto the SSD and then mess around with the drive.

I'd suggest the WD tool  WD Data Lifeguard Diagnostic  (it works with any mechanical drive) : https://support.wdc.com/downloads.aspx?p=3&lang=en

 

Select your mechanical drive and use the function erase / wipe disk which will overwrite all surface of the drive just like a full format but is faster, and makes the drives re-test bad sectors or sectors that may be on the edge of going bad and mark those sectors bad.

After that process and after a reboot, the SMART data should be updated with the proper number of bad sectors or reallocated sectors.

Then, you could use various tools to see where those bad sectors are located and if they're all located in a specific area, you could create one or several partitions on the drive in such a way that the area with bad sectors will be outside any usable partition, so you won't risk losing more data by writing stuff near that area which may be a  weak spot in the disc surface inside the drive.

For example, if you have multiple bad sectors or reallocated sectors at 72-73% of the drive surface, you could make a partition from 0% to 70% and give it a letter,  one partition from 70% to 75% which  you leave without a letter , and  a partition from 75% to 100% of the drive which you give a letter.  You lose 5% of the drive capacity but you reduce the risk of that damage expanding or losing more data, because now you're never writing or reading files from that area which is weaker.

 

[Radium_Angel]

On 12/30/2019 at 11:29 AM, mariushm said:

A proper format of the HDD with problems will absolutely prevent recovery of data from it,

Incorrect.

The use of something like DBAN will render it blank, but the built-in Windows format will not.

Source: I did data recovery for a living. 

[mariushm]

DBAN is just a software that does multiple writes. It writes the surface of the drive several times with random data or with combinations of 0s and 1s to guarantee the drive's data can not be recovered.

Full Format in Windows does a more basic write over, and then tests the sectors to see if they can be read or not (if not they're marked as bad sectors).

The data is gone either way, the only difference is that someone motivated enough may still be able to recover data using specialized tools/equipment , not some cheap shareware file recovery software.

 

The idea is that each bit on a drive is not just a 0 or 1 but rather the magnetic information is some value between 0 and 100% and that a single write over may attenuate the magnetic signal below some threshold where the bit is considered 0 (for example let's say anything above 50% is considered a 1 and writing a 0 will lower the information to 15% - a specialize software could determine that 15% level and recover the bit as 1, guessing that before the format there was a 1 there.

Regular software would not be able to give you this information, because the controller on the drive doesn't output it, it only outputs 1s and 0s.

So for all intents and purposes, if you used full format on Windows, your data is gone for anyone without machines/tools that cost in the tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars.

 

Quick format does not write over the whole surface, it just deletes the file records, the area where metadata about the files is kept (file names, folder they're in, creation date, last modified, size, position on the drive platters where first byte of the file is located etc)

A recovery software can - like I already said, scan the disk surface sector by sector and try to detect where files start based on their signatures and - if they're not very fragmented - recover them.