Diagnosing and Erasing Hard Drives

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If you are evaluating a hard drive, this guide will show you how to do basic tests to detect common problems. While these tests are not perfect, they will detect MOST issues.

Common drive problems include:

High hours (Wear and tear, increased failure risk)
Reallocated sectors
Pending reallocated sectors
Hidden problems

Most failures are sudden and without warning, if not known in advance due to lack of symptoms. If the machine has problems and the issue is caught early, it will give you time to move everything and replace the drive before it fails. While SMART can only do so much, it plays a significant role since the data can be used to catch a failure before it occurs.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Some hard drives have known problems (E.g., Seagate 7.01/7200.11). In other cases (such as the WD Blue/Green drives), these aren't problematic BUT are more at risk of failure after ~5 years due to them being binned lower than say, a WD Black drive. While you can often reuse lower end drives such as the WD Blue series, they are not the best for reliability after accumulating thousands of hours over 3-5 years.

While Parted Magic can be legally redistributed under the GPL, I will not point to these downloads as I cannot verify their authenticity. The ONLY source I trust is the Parted Magic website.
- ($15 single download w/o updates, $13 monthly/$49 yearly for subscriptions).
These tests are not 100% accurate. Some problems can (and do) slip past these tests.

While WD and Seagate offer diagnostic tools, they WILL NOT CORRECT MAJOR FAILURES ON THE HARD DRIVE. If the issue is minor, it may be patchable, but if the drive has a lot of bad sectors, the problem will likely be unfixable, and the drive will have to be replaced. Most drives cap the spare sectors at ~100 before you lose capacity and fail SMART.
IMPORTANT: If you can do so before testing, back up your system's data, as it can fail during testing if something is too far gone to correct. DO NOT FIX THE DRIVE IF THERE ARE EXCESSIVELY HIGH SMART ERRORS. Back up the data, transfer the data, wipe the old drive, and replace it!

Neye ihtiyacın var

Adım 1 Mounting the hard drive for testing

Diagnosing and Erasing Hard Drives, Mounting the hard drive for testing: adım 1, 3 resimden 1.

Diagnosing and Erasing Hard Drives, Mounting the hard drive for testing: adım 1, 3 resimden 2.

Diagnosing and Erasing Hard Drives, Mounting the hard drive for testing: adım 1, 3 resimden 3.

This guide assumes the boot drive has been created beforehand. If you need instructions on how to make a bootable USB, Refer to this guide.
If you are testing an M.2 SSD (AHCI or NVMe), you will need an enclosure specially built for this. This is not shown in this guide as M.2 was not as prevalent when I wrote this guide.
Connect the drive internally to your PC (SATA port or secondary M.2 slot), or to a USB drive adapter.
If the hard drive is not installed and you do not have a USB adapter, it can be plugged into a motherboard.

Düzenle

Adım 2 Ubuntu - POH/POC Check

Diagnosing and Erasing Hard Drives, Ubuntu - POH/POC Check: adım 2, 3 resimden 1.

Diagnosing and Erasing Hard Drives, Ubuntu - POH/POC Check: adım 2, 3 resimden 2.

Diagnosing and Erasing Hard Drives, Ubuntu - POH/POC Check: adım 2, 3 resimden 3.

While high hours are not an indication of failure, the odds of a failure are much higher.
GSmartControl can be used in Ubuntu if you cannot read the output from Disks.
Boot your system into a live Ubuntu session. Locate the Disks application and select the suspicious hard drive.
From the drop-down menu, select SMART Data and Self Tests. This will pull up the SMART data.
Locate the following SMART attributes: Power On Hours and Power Cycle Count.

Düzenle

Adım 3 Ubuntu - Reallocated sectors and SMART testing

Diagnosing and Erasing Hard Drives, Ubuntu - Reallocated sectors and SMART testing: adım 3, 3 resimden 1.

Diagnosing and Erasing Hard Drives, Ubuntu - Reallocated sectors and SMART testing: adım 3, 3 resimden 2.

Diagnosing and Erasing Hard Drives, Ubuntu - Reallocated sectors and SMART testing: adım 3, 3 resimden 3.

If the Reallocated Sector Count is highlighted with a high count, REPLACE THE DRIVE; they are prone to failure and unexpected capacity loss! While SMART Extended is better, a quick test may be sufficient.
Locate the following SMART attributes: Reallocated sector count; Current pending sector count.
To run a SMART Extended Self-Test, left click Start Self-Test. Select Extended from the drop-down menu.

Düzenle

Adım 4 Parted Magic - POH/POC check

Diagnosing and Erasing Hard Drives, Parted Magic - POH/POC check: adım 4, 3 resimden 1.

Diagnosing and Erasing Hard Drives, Parted Magic - POH/POC check: adım 4, 3 resimden 2.

Diagnosing and Erasing Hard Drives, Parted Magic - POH/POC check: adım 4, 3 resimden 3.

While high hours are not an indication of failure, the odds of a failure are much higher.
Select Disks from the desktop to open GSmartControl.
Select the hard disk you want to test. Click Attributes to read the SMART data.
Locate the following attributes: Power On Time and Power Cycle Count.

Düzenle

Adım 5 Parted Magic - Reallocated sectors and SMART testing

Diagnosing and Erasing Hard Drives, Parted Magic - Reallocated sectors and SMART testing: adım 5, 3 resimden 1.

Diagnosing and Erasing Hard Drives, Parted Magic - Reallocated sectors and SMART testing: adım 5, 3 resimden 2.

Diagnosing and Erasing Hard Drives, Parted Magic - Reallocated sectors and SMART testing: adım 5, 3 resimden 3.

If the Reallocated Sector Count is highlighted with a high count, REPLACE THE DRIVE; they are prone to failure and unexpected capacity loss! While SMART Extended is better, a quick test may be sufficient.
In the Attributes tab, locate the following SMART attributes: Reallocated Sector Count; Reallocation Event Count; Current Pending Sector Count.
To test the drive, select Perform Tests. Click Test type: and select Extended Self-Test.

Düzenle

Adım 6 Parted Magic - Error log check

Diagnosing and Erasing Hard Drives, Parted Magic - Error log check: adım 6, 3 resimden 1.

Diagnosing and Erasing Hard Drives, Parted Magic - Error log check: adım 6, 3 resimden 2.

Diagnosing and Erasing Hard Drives, Parted Magic - Error log check: adım 6, 3 resimden 3.

Use the error log and SMART data together to diagnose drive problems.
Check the error log for drive errors. Click the Error log tab, and review the logs.
In the Error log, review the available errors. Read these logs if any are found.

Düzenle

Adım 7 Parted Magic - Erasing hard drives

Diagnosing and Erasing Hard Drives, Parted Magic - Erasing hard drives: adım 7, 3 resimden 1.

Diagnosing and Erasing Hard Drives, Parted Magic - Erasing hard drives: adım 7, 3 resimden 2.

Diagnosing and Erasing Hard Drives, Parted Magic - Erasing hard drives: adım 7, 3 resimden 3.

When possible, avoid using "sector wipe" on SSDs. This will eat into the TBW of the drive, which can cause problems on older 75TBW drives.
The options available here that will work will vary based on what is supported by the firmware on the drive.
CAUTION: Drives with known issues in the firmware around the ATA Secure Erase option may be bricked depending on the severity (and risk). If you use this on a drive with known problems, it can potentially brick the drive. When in doubt, select EXTERNAL for safety (at the expense of time/NAND flash wear on SSDs).
IF the drive does not support ATA Secure Erase (primarily older drives), you will need to select External and use Nwipe to erase it. The best middle ground in Nwipe/DBAN is "DoD Short (3 pass+blanking).
AHCI drives (M.2 SATA/2.5" drives/3.5" drives) When possible for security (and in the case of SSDs, reduced or mitigated drive wear), try to use the ATA Secure Erase option when possible, unless the drive has known bugs (see warning above).
NVMe SSD Recomendation: When possible, use NVMe secure erase. This is instant because it destroys the encryption key on these drives so the data can no longer be read and does not need to zero out the entire drive.