Software to detect and record "weak" (slow) sectors

[tortillasoup]

Is there a software utility that can scan a HDD and identify which sectors are slow but not impossible to read? I was thinking of then putting rarely read data in those sectors and in essence reserve them so that the HDD doesn't behave so slowly in the event it puts some important data in those weak sectors.

 

[Blain]

Is there a software utility that can scan a HDD and identify which sectors are slow but not impossible to read? I was thinking of then putting rarely read data in those sectors and in essence reserve them so that the HDD doesn't behave so slowly in the event it puts some important data in those weak sectors.

What program are you using that can direct specific data to specific sectors?

 

[AlienTech]

HDD Speed current version I think is V3.3 will shows access time for every sector.. But to map out those sectors you need some program that can work with MFT's to mark them as used or bad or something. Should not be very difficult to do as windows chkdsk will mark a sector as bad or inactive.. Another problem is, every drive have a lot of bad sectors which are remapped and would show as having higher than normal access time as the drive has to go to the spare sector to read those sectors. From the factory those areas of the drive would be marked as bad and unused by the firmware but errors do develop.. Guess it wont matter much if you map out the re-allocated sectors.. But just saying, you can not know if the large access time is because a sector is bad or something else.. Most drives should show under 100 of these sectors as the really bad areas are already mapped out at the factory..

 

[Blain]

Remapping sectors is pretty common, but he wants to assign "rarely read data" to those brown sectors. I don't know how he plans on doing that, which is why I asked about what specific program he planned on using to do the job.

 

[greenhawk]

I know https://stablebit.com/Scanner does do periodical checks of clusters and trys to do copy the data in advance of it being totally lost, but I think it is then listed as bad so no other data is placed there.

Given the space on a drive, I do not think that there is any point looking to save 4Kbytes at a time.

If you have a large area that is bad from a head crash or something, better to look into portioning out several GB to keep the rest of the drive usable.

 

[tortillasoup]

The reason I mention "rarely" read data is because I don't want the computer to feel those sectors are available for use. I mean I'd basically put garbage data in those sectors but keep them reserved. I can't remap the data because there are just too many sectors and I don't want to have to split up my partition on the HDD in order to avoid the weak sectors.

 

[bigi]

this - mhdd

 

[Blain]

MHDD has limitations. It can remap, but can't remap as specifically as tortillasoup wants.