I then ran some tests using Seatools and DiskGenius on my disks, the internal disk was fine, the external disk failed Seatools tests SMART, Short DST and Short Generic, and DiskGenius reports random bad sectors located in different cylinders each time I ran the test; But about 2.5 weeks ago when I ran the same tests, my external HDD had passed all of them, and nothing can physically harm my external HDD had happened...
I thought the USB convertor(I don't know its name) must have had malfunctioned, I opened the case of the disk, and bought a SATA data cable after finding out there was no spare SATA cable in my computer, plugged in and made the disk internal;
I then ran some more tests, this time, things were very different; The 2TB disk passed SMART, Short DST and Short Generic every time I use Seatools to test it, never failed, and it passed the tests faster than the boot disk...But DiskGenius reports a total of 163 bad cylinders with cylinder numbers fixed, and I can't get SMART data; The errors were mostly I/O Device Timeout, others were Data Error;
The script had succeeded, I then used DiskGenius to fix the bad sectors and all bad sectors were fixed successfully, and there is SMART data again, I then checked the areas where there were bad sectors and had confirmed the bad sectors were indeed fixed, the "Damaged" cylinders are now "Good" cylinders, the bad sectors were really fixed, but then comes the question: Can this disk be trusted?
For me, the fact itself that the bad sectors started to arise, would alert me that my HDD is old enough and I wouldln't put too much trust on that drive and backup the most important data somewhere else.
This function is designed to quickly partition a new disk or repartition a hard drive that contains partitions already. A hard drive can be partitioned via a few simple operations. If you do not want to change default settings on partition count, size, type, label, etc. open "Quick Partition" window and click OK button, and the disk will be repartitioned and formatted. Note: Disk repartitioning removes all existing partitions on the disk and quick formats each new partition.
You can click the disk shown under "Current Disk (Click to Change)" to reselect a disk to partition without going back to the home interface. DiskGenius does not allow to partition system disk under Windows environment, but you can create a bootable disk to boot computer and partition system disk. Warning: please make sure you are selecting the correct disk, as the partitioning process deletes all existing partitions on selected disk.
Both MBR and GPT disk style are supported to partition your disk. MBR is the default setting if the disk capacity is less than 2TB. Besides, Rebuild MBR (Master Boot Record) is selected for MBR disk and it is recommended to leave it checked if there is boot manager based on MBR on the disk and it needs to be reserved. If you select GUID partition table style, you can choose whether create ESP partition or MSR partition.
You can either press "3, 4, 5 or 6" key from keyboard or use mouse to set partition count. Besides, you can also custom partition count by selecting Custom option. Once selecting a partition count, the corresponding partition number changes on the right side of the pane.
File System: NTFS, FAT32 and exFAT are available here to choose. If you want to format the drive to other file system such as EXT4, you can reformat partition with DiskGenius after the disk is partitioned.
How to do a full disk image to the hard disk? This article describes in detail how to back up the entire disk as an image file. When the original data is damaged, you can easily restore the data to ensure data security.
We all know that there are many reasons for data loss or hard drive damage, and many of them are unavoidable, so backing up data is well worth the time and effort to do. Back up the hard disk to an image file when the hard disk is in good working order, and then perform regular hard disk backups to ensure that you always have the latest backup copy.
Use third-party backup software to back up the entire hard drive's contents to an image file. The data in the image file and the original data are two independent entities, but there is no difference in content. A hard disk image can be used as a backup of a hard disk, or it can replace the original data to accomplish the same task. In addition, when the original data is lost or the original hard disk fails, data can be extracted from the image file or the image can be restored to another hard disk.
The function of backing up a disk to image file is to back up all partitions, file data or other data in the entire disk to a specified file (called an "image file") for recovery when the disk data is damaged.
All Sectors: Back up all sectors of the source disk to the image file in sequence from the beginning to the end, without judging whether there is valid data in the sectors. While backing up valid data, this method also backs up a large amount of useless data, which is suitable for special needs. Because of the large amount of data to be backed up, it is the slowest. When restoring a disk in the "All Sectors" mode, the size of the target disk should not be smaller than the source disk.
Data Sectors Only: According to the file system structure of each partition on the source disk, the valid data is backed up to the image file "as is". When backing up, only the sectors with valid data are backed up, and the sectors without valid data are excluded. This method is relatively fast. In the future, the size of the target disk cannot be smaller than the source disk when restoring in the mode of "Data Sectors Only".
All Files: Back up all files and other valid data on the source disk to the specified file. This method does not backup invalid sectors, and the backup speed is faster. The storage location of files will be rearranged during restore, which can effectively eliminate file fragmentation. When restoring in the future, the capacity of the target disk is greater than the sum of the used data of the source disk.
To reduce the size of the image file, you can choose to compress the data during backup. However, compressing the data will have a slight impact on the backup speed. The higher the compression quality you choose, the slower the backup will be, but the smaller the image file will be. It is recommended to select "Fast Compression".
This function supports hot backup. When the backup involves system disk, you can choose the hot backup method, so that the backup operation can be completed while Windows is running without restarting the computer.
Step 4: The operation of restoring the disk will overwrite the existing data on the target disk, please back up all the data you wish to keep before starting. Click the "OK" button, the program starts to restore the disk.
Whether it is accidental damage to the hard disk or routine maintenance, backup disks are very necessary. As long as you have the need for backup disks, DiskGenius should be your first choice. If you have any questions when using DiskGenius, you can contact us at any time, and our professional team will provide you with answers in time.
Hard drive can be said to be one of the more easily damaged hardware in computer hardware. Therefore, in the process of computer maintenance, computer faults caused by hard drive problems are also very common. For many computer users, although the hard drive is not the most important, the data stored on the hard drive may be very important. Once the hard drive is damaged, it will bring great trouble.
How to deal with a corrupted hard drive? If there are important files stored on the hard drive, the first thing you should do is to recover lost data. Hard drive data recovery software like DiskGenius can do this for you. Once your files are recovered correctly, you can try repairing the hard drive.
If the hard drive has bad sectors or internal errors, the hard drive is easy to be damaged. If you know how to run disk checking on your computer, it will easily repair the problem of hard drive damage for you.
Important: repairing bad sectors will destroy the data near them! If possible, be sure to back up the drive data first. If there is important data in the bad sector area, please do not use this function to repair bad sectors, but send the hard drive to a professional data recovery center to recover the data. Bad sector repair will destroy data, not restore data! In addition, it should be noted that not all bad sectors can be repaired. The types of bad sectors that can be repaired by this function are limited.
Physical failure: the hard drive may be physically damaged by heat, moisture, or electric shock. These physical damages may cause serious damage to the hard drive, resulting in hard drive failure. Most of the time, due to the impurities accumulated in its filter, the fan cannot provide sufficient cooling for the hard drive, which will cause thermal damage to the hard drive. Water overflow on the hard drive cam can cause moisture damage, while falling laptop can cause hard drive damage.
Logical failure: logical failure is usually related to software problems, not physical damage. Viruses, file system corruption and human errors may cause logical corruption. The common blue screen error problem is often caused by the logic damage of the hard drive.
Physical damage and logical damage can be distinguished according to the symptoms of hard drive damage. If the hard drive has obvious symptoms of physical damage or is damaged in case of overheating, it is obvious that the physical damage causes the hard drive to crash. In addition, if the hard drive stops working immediately after being impacted or overflowed, it is also a physical failure. The hard drive with logical crash will have symptoms such as low system performance, accidental data loss and disk error.
Hard drive damage is unpredictable, but it can be prevented by maintaining and optimizing the health of the drive. The best way to avoid data loss due to hard drive damage is to back up regularly. For physical hard drive damage, it is recommended to seek professional help to recover the data.
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