Failing Backup Drive - What does this mean?

[britechguy]

First, let me say that there is nothing whatsoever on this drive that is of a critical nature, so "playing" is possible. It is recognized by device manager and Windows, but Windows always wants to "scan and repair" it, and that's never worked. I am posting this simply so I can learn more about what the SMART and Disk Genius data tell me (any advice on attempting a "home recovery" would be welcomed, too, as this one won't be "going pro").

 

[frase]

Major sector errror, eveventualy there will be no space to allocate these to = critical failure. Image drive immedietly with ddrescue.

 

[MDD1963]

We had old PCs at work with an assortment of 80,100, and 120 GB spinners, one of which showed a similar amount of errors (40+ Current Pending Sector Count) within CrystalDiskInfo...

I informed my supervisor, but, as it was a secondary drive within one of the PCs and had nothing of importance on it anyway, we all ignored the errors.

I came back and checked the drive periodically for the next couple of years, and, it remained unchanged in it's error count, surprisingly.

 

[britechguy]

Grabbed a copy of DDRescue-GUI, and it's giving it "the old college try" on imaging that drive. This is one of the "shortest lived" Toshiba external backup drives I've ever dealt with, as it's under 5 years old.

I think I made a mistake in choosing the "best" option in DDRescue settings rather than the default "fastest," but it's not like I need the computer with me today, anyway.

 

[Markverhyden]

Phyllis? Hmmm..... Any relation to Phyllis Diller? LOL!!! Couldn't resist.

Windows constantly wanting to scan the drive means the "dirty bit" is set and is not getting cleared like it should after scanning. There's numerous methods to clearing that. The simplest is just nuking the drive which reverts it to the defaults. But if you want to "preserve" it you can create a disk image and then restoring after nuking. There are many other methods to clear that flag without nuking. As @MDD1963 indicated it might run forever. I can remember a customer in early 2k who brought in a computer with a disk failure imminent warning at power up, but not for that reason. When I asked him about it he said it had been going on over 5 years.

For imaging I still like clonezilla. Been using it for years. If I was wanting to grab the data I'd prefer to use clonezilla or live linux system. That way you bypass all that MS indexing stuff that happens in Windows.

 

[britechguy]

@Markverhyden

After the image file has been created, it's my intention to nuke the drive and reformat it from scratch.

One of the drives I've been using as an external backup drive for years how has had a couple of bad sectors on it, and the bad sector count has remained utterly unchanged for years. The idea that a few bad sectors "means anything" is just wrong. It is not unusual, at all, for a drive to develop bad sectors, few and slowly, during a fully functional normal life. It's if you suddenly see bad sector counts going up significantly, and with increasing speed, that the red flags should come out. I've posted the following two references for years because they do such a good job of explaining how normal it is for bad sectors to appear in the course of an HDD's life and how to tell the difference between innocuous bad sector appearances and those indicating impending drive failure:

Bad Sectors Explained: Why Hard Drives Get Bad Sectors and What You Can Do About It
“A few bad sectors don’t indicate that a hard drive is about to fail — they can just happen. However, if your hard drive is rapidly developing bad sectors, it may be a sign that your hard drive is failing.”

What Is a bad sector and how can I repair it?
Bad sectors are fairly common with normal computer use and the imperfections of the world we live in . . .

 

[britechguy]

There definitely appear to be easy parts and hard parts for DDRescue to deal with. The "hard parts" have very slow progress and a lot of "thinking" on the part of DDRescue before things move along. The "easy parts" fly like a straight copy does.

I doubt I could have done this, easily anyway, without DDRescue-GUI, and even that didn't make things simple as the documentation is not as good as I think it could be and everything is presented in Linux terms in the GUI, which even though I have a long history with *nix makes things "weird" when dealing with a Windows system. Thank heaven that the utility includes a Disk Information dialog that "translates" from /dev terminology to what it equates to under Windows:

It would have been very helpful had it been noted that the image destination will use a cygwin drive if you're trying to place it on another external drive, which I am.

 

[britechguy]

After chugging along all day:

 

[fincoder]

We had old PCs at work with an assortment of 80,100, and 120 GB spinners, one of which showed a similar amount of errors (40+ Current Pending Sector Count) within CrystalDiskInfo...

the next couple of years, and, it remained unchanged in it's error count, surprisingly.

They don't make 'em like they used to, unfortunately.

 

[ell]

First, let me say that there is nothing whatsoever on this drive that is of a critical nature, so "playing" is possible. It is recognized by device manager and Windows, but Windows always wants to "scan and repair" it, and that's never worked. I am posting this simply so I can learn more about what the SMART and Disk Genius data tell me (any advice on attempting a "home recovery" would be welcomed, too, as this one won't be "going pro").

View attachment 15506

View attachment 15507

Toshiba drive is your problem

 

[labtech]

Toshiba drive is your problem

From a data recovery perspective, Toshiba external drives are way better than the Seagate and WD counterparts.

 

[labtech]

It is making very good progress. Right now it is likely battling the core of bad sectors areas.

I haven't used ddrescue GUI in a while. Did you get the download from here:https://www.hamishmb.com/ddrescue-gui/
If not, do you have a link, please?

 

[britechguy]

@labtech

That was my source. As it turns out the source drive had a "plug bump" at 956 GB of 1 TB, kicking the process, and Windows (note, only Windows, I haven't tried DDRescue yet) says the resulting IMG file is corrupt. I'm quite sure, based on where the process was, that the vast majority of the data is in it. I've kept it, too.

I'm going to kick this off again on my downstairs tower where everything can remain running, undisturbed, for as long as it takes.

And I agree with you that Toshiba external drives are way, way better than Seagate and WD counterparts. Of the available brands, Toshibas have been consistently "the least problematic" for me over a period spanning decades now. That's why I stick with them.