ST32000542AS (barracuda LP) fail to reallocate sectors

[allen2]

Hi,

It was a long time since i posted there (i had a lot of stuff to do IRL).

I have a ST32000542AS that was in raid 5 array. I removed it from the raid 5 array as it was "stopping to work" until next reboot.

I connected it to a intel sata II controller (Z77) and tried a long check (surface scan i think) with sea tools for windows which failed at 53%. Seatools for windows added in the diagnostics logs that seatools for dos could repair the drive so it tried it and it failed a 54%. I was also able to upgrade the firmware from CC34 to CC35.

As the drive isn't under warranty, i would like to try anything that might force sector reallocation or mark the unusable sectors as bad.

When seatools (dos or windows) fail its scan/repair (low level format ?), the drive disappear completly (but it continue to spin as usual) until next reboot (for seatools dos) or until i unplug / replug it (seatools for windows).

Below are the smart values taken from Crystal disk info:

ID Cur Wor Thr RawValues(6) Attribute Name01 117 100 __6 000008ECD67C Read Error Rate03 100 100 __0 000000000000 Spin-Up Time04 100 100 _20 000000000109 Start/Stop Count05 __5 __5 _36 000000000F37 Reallocated Sectors Count07 _69 _60 _30 00000072A1B6 Seek Error Rate09 100 100 __0 00000000016B Power-On Hours0A 100 100 _97 000000000000 Spin Retry Count0C 100 100 _20 000000000108 Power Cycle CountB7 100 100 __0 000000000000 UnknownB8 100 100 _99 000000000000 End-to-End ErrorBB _96 _96 __0 000000000004 Reported Uncorrectable ErrorsBC 100 _96 __0 00080008000B Command TimeoutBD _97 _97 __0 000000000003 High Fly WritesBE _57 _45 _45 00002B2B002B Airflow TemperatureC2 _43 _55 __0 00140000002B TemperatureC3 _53 _33 __0 000008ECD67C Hardware ECC recoveredC5 100 100 __0 000000000000 Current Pending Sector CountC6 100 100 __0 000000000000 Uncorrectable Sector CountC7 200 200 __0 000000000000 UltraDMA CRC Error CountF0 100 253 __0 FB53000003EE Head Flying HoursF1 100 253 __0 0000BA881646 Total LBAs WrittenF2 100 253 __0 00002B092FE4 Total LBAs Read

Thanks by advance for suggestions.

[jaclaz]

The best you can do (IMHO) is to find out which area of the disk is "bad" and make a partition table in such a way that the area is not used.

This, depending greatly on the UNknown reason of the issue, might give to the rest of the disk some residual "life" (though it is well possible that the "bad" area will grow).

You can try, with tools like mhdd or Victoria, or hdparm, to mark an area as bad or do an ATA secure erase, but it won't likely  help much if the area is biggish, or, if you prefer, YMMGV (Your Mileage May Greatly Vary), here are some hints:
http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/158576-need-to-mark-a-few-blocks-as-unusable/

 

jaclaz

Edited October 28, 2014 by jaclaz

[allen2]

Thanks, Victoria 4.3 seems perfect for the job. I'll try a full erase and report here the results.

 

In the end whenever i try to access with Victoria (i suppose that any tool will have the same problem) to the LBA between 2183266048 and 2224268463 the disk disappear.

Edited October 30, 2014 by allen2