HDD Regenerator question

[Thore]

Hi all, and happy newyear...

Someone knows the answer to this?:

Say I have a harddisk, where HDD Regenerator finds 2-3 bad sectors, and
regenerates it.

Then, afterwards I Clone another HDD to this one. Will the regenerated
sectors be overwritten with the new data? Or will the clone-program
"jump" over these bad sectors?

--
Venlig hilsen / Best regards
Thore Sorensen - DK-2620 Albertslund
(Erstat evt .INVALID med .DK for direkte mail)

Se min hobbyside: www.RacePhoto.dk

[David H. Lipman]

From: "Thore" <din...@mail.invalid>

> Hi all, and happy newyear...
>
> Someone knows the answer to this?:
>
> Say I have a harddisk, where HDD Regenerator finds 2-3 bad sectors, and
> regenerates it.
>
> Then, afterwards I Clone another HDD to this one. Will the regenerated
> sectors be overwritten with the new data? Or will the clone-program
> "jump" over these bad sectors?
>

I don't know "HDD Regenerator" but if it marks the bad sectors as unusable then yes.

You really should test the drive with the manuafacturer's hard disk diagnostic utility.

Example:
SeaGate - SeaTools
Western Digital - WD Diagnostics
IBM/Hitachi - Drive Fitness Test (DFT)


--
Dave
Multi-AV Scanning Tool - http://multi-av.thespykiller.co.uk
http://www.pctipp.ch/downloads/dl/35905.asp

[Craig]

On 01/09/2012 06:42 AM, Thore wrote:
> Hi all, and happy newyear...
>
> Someone knows the answer to this?:
>
> Say I have a harddisk, where HDD Regenerator finds 2-3 bad sectors, and
> regenerates it.
>
> Then, afterwards I Clone another HDD to this one. Will the regenerated
> sectors be overwritten with the new data? Or will the clone-program
> "jump" over these bad sectors?

This program looks to be $$$ware but, that aside, have you tried
contacting the developer directly?

http://hddregenerator.net/contact

From the looks of the product, my guess would be that these
"regenerated" sectors would be re-marked as good. Therefore, those
sectors would be available again to be written to.

Good article on bad sectors:
http://www.s2services.com/baddisk.htm
http://www.mjmdatarecovery.co.uk/data-recovery-articles/bad-sector-errors.html

S2 services also has a substantial collection of free- & non-freeware
related to all types of failing storage technology. Definitely worth a
bookmark.

hth,
--
-Craig
http://pricelesswarehome.org/

[Charlie]

On Mon, 09 Jan 2012 15:42:27 +0100, Thore wrote:

> Hi all, and happy newyear...
>
> Someone knows the answer to this?:
>
> Say I have a harddisk, where HDD Regenerator finds 2-3 bad sectors, and
> regenerates it.
>
> Then, afterwards I Clone another HDD to this one. Will the regenerated
> sectors be overwritten with the new data? Or will the clone-program
> "jump" over these bad sectors?

Why take a chance with a failing hard drive? Replace it at once, it'll only
deteriorate further.

[David H. Lipman]

From: "Charlie" <plink.1...@spamgourmet.net>

I hard disk can have bad sectors and still be good. However it could also be indicative
of a failing drive and that's why I suggested running manufacturer diagnostics to help
make that determination.

[VanguardLH]

Thore wrote:

> Hi all, and happy newyear...
>
> Someone knows the answer to this?:
>
> Say I have a harddisk, where HDD Regenerator finds 2-3 bad sectors, and
> regenerates it.
>
> Then, afterwards I Clone another HDD to this one. Will the regenerated
> sectors be overwritten with the new data? Or will the clone-program
> "jump" over these bad sectors?

This newsgroup discusses FREEware, not payware. HDD Regenerator costs
$54 (which is a discount price for awhile). At that price, I'd probably
do some research to compare it against the long-time Gibson's SpinRite
product that has evolved for over two decades and who has an absolute
guarantee (if not satisfied for any reason, you get your money back).

Since you PAID for the product, you are entitled to support. Call them
to find out if their product gets the firmware table update in the HDD's
interface to permanently remap the bad sector to the reserve area.

Because both products will test for and remap bad sectors without any
partitioning or formatting, obviously they are not storing the remapping
in a file system. So it looks like they are updating the firmware table
in the HDD. But they'll know their product best. Ask the HDD
Regenerator folks since you paid for their product. If you haven't yet
paid for the product and are here just culling for opinions, contact
both companies to ask about their products and where the remapping is
performed. You don't want something, say, that loads as a bootstrap
program in the MBR to do the remapping.

The manual (http://hddregenerator.net/hdd-regenerator-works.html) is
hardly much of a manual and gives no technical details on how the
product works.


http://hddregenerator.net/hdd-regenerator-spinrite.html is so full of
bullshit that I'd not bother with that product. They are promoting
snake oil as their magic on repairing a hard disk. Remapping of bad
sectors is not magic nor rocket science and they want to pretend they do
something different than SpinRite when their description shows they do
exactly the same thing. SpinRite doesn't just find bad sectors and mark
them as bad (and remap). It can return sectors that were previously
marked bad and mark them as good. SpinRite can also "refresh" the
sectors on any magnetic media. Bad data can be the result of loss of
retention in magnetic strength due to dipole stress. Everything
magnetic will lose its retention over time. Reading data does not
change the dipole angular change. Writing does that, so SpinRite has an
option (well, it did way back when I used to have v3). It will read the
data, place it in a known safe tested area, exercise the test area, and
then rewrite the data to refresh it to make it a stronger recording.
Lots of times when data cannot be read from a magnetic device it is not
due to physical damage but a weakened recording over time.

Neither SpinRite or HDD Regenerator repair physical damage to a HDD.
That the HDD Regenerator folks even mention that means they are using
FUD to cloud what they do is what the others do, too. They don't know
how SpinRite works so they toss mud in trying to lure you to BUY their
product. Find somewhere else to compare HDD Regenerator and SpinRite
since the HDD Regenerator folks are not being truthful. For example,
they note that SpinRite can take more than a day to fully test an entire
HDD but they don't mention that SpinRite isn't just letting the HDD do a
normal read/write test but also checking alignment and retentivity to
determine if a good sector is really a marginally bad sector.

Neither product makes sense to buy if you will only replace a single HDD
during the lifetime of a computer, and only if you want to restore a
"bad" HDD rather than get a newer one that is bigger or faster. The
cost of HDD Regenerator or SpinRite is the price for a new replacement
HDD, so just go get the new replacement and clone your old one over to
the new HDD. These products are best suited to a computer shop,
development company, or a workplace that has LOTS of workstations to
maintain. Also, these products are to try to recover data from sectors
that are now considered [marginally] bad after testing those sectors.
The tech/help desk using this software would be using it to get all the
data usable on a HDD and then replace it. The SMART function in newer
HDDs (and a utility to monitor the health of your HDD) is all you need
in a consumer-grade computer so don't waste your money on these
bad-sector-repair utilities.

Those software tools are for disaster recovery whereupon you end up
replacing the HDD, anyway. If SMART is showing a high sector remapping
count and if the pending remapping count isn't going down then you have
a bad HDD that these tools *may* repair sufficiently to make them
reliable for awhile but you should no longer trust the HDD and plan for
replacement. You can put tape over a crack in a cup to fix a leak and
prevent losing its contents but you should really replace the cup.

If you're not running a computer shop or having to maintain hundreds of
workstations at a company, don't bother with HDD Regenerator, SpinRite,
or any of the other low-level repair tools. Just get a new HDD. These
tools are for disaster recovery, not to keep in service what is a
failing HDD. They give you breathing room to do a replacement.

[John Corliss]

I don't think that this is always true. This computer I'm using as I
type this has what the OS marked as bad sectors on one of its drives.
I've continued to use the drive since those sectors were marked about
four years ago without any further deterioration, and believe me, the
affected hard drive is used quite harshly sometimes.

--
John Corliss BS206. No ad, CD, commercial, cripple, demo, nag, share,
spy, time-limited, trial or web wares OR warez for me, please.
Freeware -legally obtainable computer programs which you may use at no
cost, monetary or otherwise, for as long as you wish.
Because of Googlespam, I block almost everything from Google Groups. I
also usually block as much as possible from anonymous remailers and
feeds, and other such rogue services because forger-trolls use them:

aioe.org
alt.net
anonymous (in the Path header)
datemas.de
dizum.com
ecn.org
frell.theremailer.net
mixmaster.*
mixmin (in the Path header)
octanews.net <--------------------NEW!
open-news-network.org
Pooh or any of its variants (in the Subject or From headers)
remailer (in the Path header)
rip.ax.lt
tioat.net
usenet4all.se
xsusenet.com
x-privat.org
etc. (as they appear)

P.S. I don't reply to complaints about my signature file length. It's
laid out so that it's easier to see the individual rogue services.

[Thore]

On Mon, 09 Jan 2012 15:42:27 +0100, Thore <din...@mail.invalid> wrote:

>Say I have a harddisk, where HDD Regenerator finds 2-3 bad sectors, and
>regenerates it.
>

Hi all and thx for your comments.

BTW: This old version is (was) freeware...

[VanguardLH]

Thore wrote:

> BTW: This old version is (was) freeware...

This old WHAT VERSION was freeware? Betaware that's "free" is often to
[ab]use users to test the product for free until it's no longer beta and
then the product gets yanked from those users that helped the software
author (i.e., no reward for helping).

I think HDD Regenerator is only a couple years old starting sometime in
2009. From what I've read, it's always been demoware. That a product
doesn't self-expire after a trial period ends doesn't preclude it from
being payware. Just because you can continue using the product after
its trial period expires (because the author didn't add expiration code)
doesn't mean it is freeware. The *license* dictates whether or not the
product is freeware. In your claimed freeware version, is there license
info in its help or as a separate eula or readme file?

Didn't find any prior old versions at www.oldversion.com or
www.oldapps.com or other sites listing/carrying old version apps.

In their current demo version, "Limitations - Only one bad sector will
be regenerated". A "free" trial version is not freeware. I've seen
sites that purport to have a "free" download but they're just the trial
(http://downloads.phpnuke.org/en/download-item-view-x-a-z-b-m/HDD%2BREGENERATOR.htm,
but notice the limitation which shows 1.51 was still a trial version).

You sure there was an old version that was actually freeware? I don't
mean trialware or shareware or crackedware (cracked, warez, keygen).
What version do you have that you think is freeware?

[Thore]

On Tue, 10 Jan 2012 11:37:26 -0600, VanguardLH <V...@nguard.LH> wrote:

>Thore wrote:
>
>> BTW: This old version is (was) freeware...
>
>This old WHAT VERSION was freeware? Betaware that's "free" is often to

Ver 1.51 - my bad - it is not freeware but beta... sorry..

[Craig]

On 01/11/2012 07:02 AM, Thore wrote:
> On Tue, 10 Jan 2012 11:37:26 -0600, VanguardLH<V...@nguard.LH> wrote:
>
>> Thore wrote:
>>
>>> BTW: This old version is (was) freeware...
>>
>> This old WHAT VERSION was freeware? Betaware that's "free" is often to
>
> Ver 1.51 - my bad - it is not freeware but beta... sorry..

Sounds like an honest mistake. Thanks for bringing this one to our
attention. I hadn't heard of any product which claimed to be able to
repair disks by "magnetic reversal" before.

http://hddregenerator.net/hdd-regenerator-works.html#more-156

If anyone has heard of a freeware utility like this, I'd like to know
about it.

tia,
--
-Craig
http://pricelesswarehome.org/