Hard Disk Drive Myths Debunked!

[Adrian Wong]

Originally Posted by coreying

Hard drives are NOT sealed! Yep... that's correct. Check it out for yourself, there is usually a little hole on a harddrive which is visible... it sometimes even says something like 'do not cover' etc. It's not always visible to us without pulling the harddrive apart, but it is there.

The reason ?
As soon as you start moving the platters and heads, friction in the environment (ie, platters moving in the air) causes heat, and also heat from the bearings and other electronic/mechnical devices causes the air to expand. Thus it needs a way to escape.

Err.. Actually, I only said sealed, not hermetically sealed or airtight.

What I meant by sealed is that the hard disks are permanently enclosed within a case. Yes, there is at least one vent hole for barometric equalization.

There are some hard disks that are hermetically sealed. They are used in military applications which require the hard disks to be used in high altitudes.

Originally Posted by coreying

I will also support power's posts about the software utility called HDD Regenerator. Doing technical support in an environment with over 9,000 computers (laptops/desktops/servers), this piece of software has proven invaluable. The fact that it can actually restore data from sectors which have been marked bad, all without formatting, is great. It doesn't work all the time, but considering it's doing something you'd have previously thought was impossible for any software to do, it's awesome.
Anyone who does not look into that further is only causing themselves a disservice.[/b]

I have to be honest. I really wonder about the basis behind this software. Maybe all it does is swap sectors on the go. But I have just been told that new hard disks do that anyway. Hmm....

BTW, I was supposed to update the guide sometime ago but I haven't found the time yet. Please hang in there for a while. I will do my best to clarify everything and if I have propagated any myths myself, I assure you I will correct them.

Thanks!

[TripleA]

Hello.

I was just as sceptical about HDD Regenerator when I first read about it. But later experience seems to indicate that it does actually work as-advertized. I.E. a lot of bad sectors are repaired, but not all. It works with drives other tools couldn't recover (and I usually use it last, for reasons I'll soon explain). And I haven't noticed any patterns to exactly how many sectors get repaired. On one drive not a single sector will be repaired, while on another a few hundred or thousand will be. The results are consistant on the same drive over several runs, and the data always came back, in my experience.

So it's a *very* useful tool, in my experience.

But there is a catch. Quite a big one: it's *very* slow. 9 to 10 seconds per sector recovered. Which can add up pretty quickly.

Example: as I write this, HDD Regenerator v1.41 is running next to me on a 60GB IBM Deathstar. It has been for about 5 hours and 20 minutes. So far, it's gotten through ~69000 sectors. Of those, 1985 sectors were recovered. That's about 3% of sectors done so far. At this rate about 3.5 million sectors will have to be recovered from this drive. That'll take about 9 thousand hours. A bit over a year.

I think it can very strongly be argued that a 60GB HDD is not worth that much effort.

I'm hoping only the start of the drive is damaged, though, so I'll give it a couple of days before I pull the plug...

Speaking of which, does anyone have any idea of the typical damage pattern on IBM Deathstars? Note that I'm not sure this particular drive actually suffers from the same ailment that gave the Deathstars their name. It does make a weird kind of soft clicking sound that I haven't heard any other dead HDD make. And I've listened to a few, over the years.

P.S. About old floppy-age tools: I remember the local holy-Grails: PCTools DiskFix & VGACopy, whatever the name stood for. Real life-savers, both of them were.

[Edit: re-ordered some stuff to make it easier to understand.]

[Adrian Wong]

Hello TripleA,

How many bad sectors are on that 60GB Deathstar?

9-10 seconds per bad sector is very slow...

I have actually asked several hard disk companies but so far, everyone has refused to comment on it. I wonder why...

[TripleA]

Originally Posted by Adrian Wong

How many bad sectors are on that 60GB Deathstar?

I wish I knew. Would help me calculate how old I'll be when it's done.

The data is of some importance, anyway, so I'd probably have run it through Regen in any case...

BTW, it's now gotten through a shocking ~1057000 sectors (About a million of them in about 5 minutes, since they were clean. Gives one some hope...). So far it had to recover ~11400 sectors. And that took it just about 31 hours and 3 minutes. That's an average of ~9.8 seconds per sector.

As I said, a useful tool. But of limited applicability.

Originally Posted by Adrian Wong

I have actually asked several hard disk companies but so far, everyone has refused to comment on it. I wonder why...

Do please let us know if any of them makes any comments. I'd really like to know how it works. I have my theories, but most of them would require a kind of raw HDD read/write mode. Which, AFAIK, does not exist. Not to mention that HDD Regenerator seems to be chipset/HDD model independent...

[Adrian Wong]

Originally Posted by TripleA

I wish I knew. Would help me calculate how old I'll be when it's done.

ROTFL!!

Originally Posted by TripleA

Do please let us know if any of them makes any comments. I'd really like to know how it works. I have my theories, but most of them would require a kind of raw HDD read/write mode. Which, AFAIK, does not exist. Not to mention that HDD Regenerator seems to be chipset/HDD model independent...

Sure! I will definitely post an update if I ever eke out any response from any hard disk manufacturer about the utility!

[Dashken]

We have just updated the guide!

This guide was written in response to the numerous fallacies about the hard disk that are still being propagated in many forum discussions. Although many articles have covered these topics, it is apparent that hard disk urban legends are still more popular than the simple truth.

So, let's get down to basics and examine some of these common fallacies or myths and debunk them!

Here's a quote from the article :-

"To be honest, many articles have covered these topics. It would have been easy for someone to do a quick search online before imparting their opinions to newbies. Unfortunately, it became apparent to us that some folks just prefer to trust their innate instincts over logic and knowledge. As such, these hard drive urban legends have remained more popular than the simple truth. So, let's get down to basics and examine some of these common fallacies or myths and debunk them!"

Link : Hard Disk Drive Myths Debunked Rev. 3.0

[hjlavery]

You must format your hard drive every <insert duration of choice> to improve performance.

You might also want to mention in this one that the more stuff windows loads into memory (particularly at startup) the slower your computer will run, and as formatting your system drive will reset windows back to its default state it will appear to start up much faster

[Adrian Wong]

Originally Posted by hjlavery

You might also want to mention in this one that the more stuff windows loads into memory (particularly at startup) the slower your computer will run, and as formatting your system drive will reset windows back to its default state it will appear to start up much faster

Hmm.. That's true, plus the problem of fragmentation after a long time. Thanks, will add that to the next update. +rep!

[mikegas]

wah .. old article being revived. Good debunk but some are just common sense

Of course there are more stuff. Just need to remember, hard disk is a hardware, it has nothing to do with how OS organizing the files. It will work with any OS host as long as they send the correct ATA command to the drives

[Adrian Wong]

Originally Posted by mikegas

wah .. old article being revived. Good debunk but some are just common sense

Of course there are more stuff. Just need to remember, hard disk is a hardware, it has nothing to do with how OS organizing the files. It will work with any OS host as long as they send the correct ATA command to the drives

You would be surprised... Many of these myths are still being spouted in online discussions. I just saw a few in the last 2 weeks.

BTW, if anyone has any other myths or recommendations/corrections to suggest, please let me know. Thanks!