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How to check hard drive performance on a computer. Ways to check and repair a hard drive

If the HDD is making strange noises or there are problems writing and reading information, you should use one of the programs to check the hard disk for errors. Depending on the task (checking the disk surface for damage, searching for bad sectors, fixing bugs, etc.) different software may be useful.

You can quickly check the disk for errors using standard system tools, but to restore the hard drive, you will need special third-party programs. By learning how to check the health of a hard drive using various utilities, a user of any level will be able to cope with the problems that have arisen.

The CheckDisk system service is the simplest hard drive diagnostic program that is not able to find complex errors and fix bad sectors, but is useful for fixing basic problems. It is available on all versions of Windows and can be used to check drives of any type. All users need to know how to check hard drive for errors with this tool.

The GUI version of the utility is the most convenient for novice users. You can start it through the disk management menu, which can be accessed in two ways:

in Windows XP / Vista / 7 - select the item "Management" in context menu"My Computer", then go to the desired menu;
in Windows 8/10 - press the Win + X combination and select the appropriate item.

In the window that opens, select the device that needs analysis, click on it right click mouse and select "Properties" from the drop-down menu. Going to the "Service" tab, you need to run the hard drive diagnostic program.

The system will check and automatically correct errors if the disk is in this moment not busy with read or write processes. Otherwise, the program will offer to test after restarting the PC. If necessary, in the test results window, you can see detailed information about the status of the HDD.

The GUI version does not always save, so how to check hard state disk is sometimes required from safe mode or without starting the operating system at all. In such cases, the console comes to the rescue, which can be started before the system starts using the boot disk.

After opening the recovery console, you need to run the chkdsk / f command, which will check all connected drives. In some cases, this will help fix the error. However, in most situations, if the failure of the HDD has led to the inability to start the system, a deeper check of the condition of the hard drive will be required.

To take advantage console command from inside the system:

run command line(via Win+X or by typing cmd into the Run window);
enter the chkdsk command with the letter of the section to be checked and additional flags;
confirm the operation by pressing Y.

Checking the HDD via the command line will be a little faster than using the GUI version of the program, the results will be shown right here in the console.

The Linux system also has standard tools - hdparm and smartctl, launched from the console.

Simple programs for quick HDD check

If standard utilities are not suitable, hard drive diagnostics can be carried out using simple third-party programs. They allow you to get more information about the health of the HDD, but in case of serious problems they will not work, since you cannot fix the breakdowns with their help.

HDDScan is a free program that performs analysis in two modes:

in terms of S.M.A.R.T.;
linear processing.

The tool evaluates the speed of reading and writing in various sectors, marking "slow" cells. In the course of the analysis, the program makes sure that the tested hard drives do not overheat; at the end of processing, the user is presented with a complete report.

HDDScan good versatility. The utility allows you to check disks for errors regardless of the type of devices: it can be used to check external hard disk, and analyze a RAID array, SSD drive or memory card.

Crystal Disk Mark has only one function - it evaluates the speed of reading and writing. Despite this, it is often used, since it is still possible to check the hard drive for serviceability with just two indicators.

For the test, different algorithms are used, one of which is the sequential recording mode. The program gradually fills all the space on the drive with blocks of the size specified by the user, after which it cleans the HDD. The same technique is used by hard drive manufacturers to check product quality. Its disadvantage is that it accelerates the wear of SSD drives.

CrystalDiskInfo and DiskCheckup similar in function set, differ only in interface. They check the state of the hard drive using S.M.A.R.T. algorithms and compile a history of checks, which allows you to track the dynamics of changes. CrystalDiskInfo has more options for visualizing history. For example, you can build a graph, not just get a written report.

Another feature of these programs is a convenient notification system. Hard drive deep tests usually take a long time. If the user needs to move away from the computer, they can turn on notifications for critical HDD errors by e-mail.

Programs from hard drive manufacturers

Some HDD manufacturers have developed their own utilities for analyzing the state of the hard drive. They are intended for use with devices of the same name, it is possible to diagnose a hard drive from another company with their help, but this must be done carefully. Unlike more simple programs, these utilities have versions in different languages, including Russian. What program is better to analyze the state of the HDD?

Seagate's proprietary program exists in two versions: a standard version for running under Windows and a DOS version in iso-image format, from which you can make bootable flash drive. It is recommended to use the second option, since the check in this case will be more accurate and efficient.

SeaTools uses part of the S.M.A.R.T. to test the hard drive without giving details about each item. Three tests can be done:

short HDD self-test;
short express test;
a long check in which all sectors are sequentially read.

During the check, the program automatically corrects the errors it finds.

Owners of hard drives from WD should be aware of how to check the performance of hard drives using proprietary software from this manufacturer. Its set of features is similar to that of the program from Seagate, but somewhat expanded and allows for deeper work with the affected device.

There are two additional functions:

deep disk formatting - the program writes zeros to all sectors, irretrievably destroying information;
blocking access to bad sectors - the program marks bad blocks, excluding write new information in them.

Unlike SeaTools, this HDD diagnostic program can be freely used with devices from any manufacturer to check the hard drive for errors - no problems have been identified with this.

Deep Testing Software

If you need not only to check the hard disk for errors, but also to fix bad sectors, you cannot do without a complex software, which performs the most in-depth analysis of the HDD status.

Victoria HDD

According to many users, Victoria HDD is the best hard drive troubleshooting software. The program has received such a reputation due to its wide range of functions.

Victoria exists in two versions:

with a graphical shell for use from within Windows;
with a DOS shell to create a boot disk.

It is better to use the second version. HDD diagnostics outside the system allows you to achieve best results, so it is always recommended to follow the principle - "if possible, I test the disk from the boot disk." As a last resort, you can use a LiveCD of another OS, for example, Linux distribution like Ubuntu.

Victoria HDD has a variety of functions:

quick and complete disk check;
reassignment of bad sectors and their recovery;
checking the status of contacts in the IDE or SATA cable;
equipment performance analysis;
viewing S.M.A.R.T. indicators.

When checking, you need to pay attention to the access time to sectors. It should not exceed 200-600 ms. You can also see the temperature of the disk during operation, but this is not so important.

HDD Regenerator

HDD Regenerator is a professional hard drive recovery software. She not only marks bad sectors as unused, but also tries to reanimate them. For this, it is not used standard method deep formatting, but its own algorithm based on the transmission of signals of different levels to the sector. Despite the professional level, inexperienced users can also use this software, since it is not difficult to test a hard drive with its help thanks to a convenient Russian-language interface.

Program features:

ensuring the safety of data - it works only in read mode;
support for different file systems;
the ability to scan the surface of the disk;
real time monitoring.

The program is not suitable for everyone, since you can check the hard drive for operability with it for free, but you will have to pay $90 for the sector recovery function.

If you do not want to pay, you can use TestDisk, a free program that can restore the partition table, boot sectors, and MFT. It also detects bad sectors, can recover deleted information and fix file system errors. The only drawback is the lack GUI, it is necessary to work from the console.

If after checking the HDD and fixing all the problems, the computer does not stop working incorrectly, it is worth checking the registry. Perhaps the failures are not caused by equipment failure, but internal errors systems.

Good afternoon.

In today's article I want to touch on the heart of a computer - a hard drive (by the way, many people call the processor the heart, but I personally don’t think so. If the processor burns out, buy a new one and there are no problems; if the hard drive burns out, then information in 99% of cases cannot be restored).

When do you need to check the hard drive for health and bad sectors? They do this, firstly, when they buy a new hard drive, and secondly, when the computer is unstable: you have strange noises(); when accessing a file - the computer freezes; long copying of information from one partition hard disk to another missing files and folders, etc.

In this article, I would like to tell in a simple language how to check a hard drive for bads, to assess its performance in the future, and to sort out typical user questions along the way.

So, let's begin…

Updated on 12/07/2015. Not so long ago, an article appeared on the blog about the restoration of bad sectors ( bad treatment blocks) by the HDAT2 program - (I think the link will be relevant for this article). Its main difference from MHDD and Victoria is support for almost any disk with interfaces: ATA/ATAPI/SATA, SSD, SCSI and USB.

1. What do we need?

Before proceeding with the testing operation, in cases where the hard disk is not stable, I recommend copying all important files from a disk to other media: flash drives, external HDD etc. ().

1) Need special program for testing and restoring the health of the hard drive. There are a lot of similar programs, I recommend using one of the most popular - Victoria. Below are the download links

2) Next, a multi-colored program window will appear in front of us: go to the “Standard” tab. The upper right side shows hard drives and CD-Rom that are installed in the system. Choose your hard drive you want to test. Then press the "Passport" button. If everything goes well, then you will see how your hard drive model is determined. See picture below.

If the hard disk controller is operating in AHCI (Native SATA) mode, SMART attributes may not be obtained, with the message “Get S.M.A.R.T. command… Error reading S.M.A.R.T!”. The inability to receive SMART data is also indicated by the “Non ATA” highlighted in red during the initialization of the media, the controller of which does not allow the use of ATA interface commands, including the request for SMART attributes.

In this case, you need to go to BIOS and in the Config->>Serial ATA (SATA)->>SATA Controller Mode Option->>tab change from AHCI to Compatibility. After finishing testing with Victoria, change the setting to the way it was before.

You can read more about how to change ACHI to IDE (Compatibility) in my other article:

4) Now go to the "Test" tab and press the "Start" button. In the main window, on the left, rectangles painted in different colors will start to appear. It is best if they are all grey.

You need to focus your attention on the red and blue rectangles (the so-called bad sectors, about them at the very bottom). It is especially bad if there are a lot of blue rectangles on the disk, in this case it is recommended to check the disk again, only with the “Remap” checkbox enabled. In this case, the Victoria program will hide the found bad sectors. In this way, hard drives are restored that have begun to behave unstably.

By the way, after such a recovery, the hard drive will not always work for a long time. If he has already begun to “crumble”, then hope for a program - personally, I would not. With a large number of blue and red rectangles, it's time to think about a new hard drive. By the way, on a new hard drive, blue blocks are not allowed at all! experienced users call bad sectors (meaning bad, not readable). Such unreadable sectors can occur both during the manufacture of a hard disk and during its operation. All the same, the hard drive is a mechanical device.

During operation, the magnetic disks in the hard drive case rotate rapidly, and the reading heads move above them. If the device is bumped, struck, or a software error occurs, it may happen that the heads hit or fall to the surface. Thus, almost certainly, a bad sector will appear.

In general, this is not scary, and many disks have such sectors. The disk file system is able to isolate such sectors from file copy/read operations. Over time, the number of bad sectors may increase. But, as a rule, the hard drive often becomes unusable for other reasons before the bad sectors “kill” it. Also, bad sectors can be isolated using special programs, one of which we used in this article. After such a procedure - usually, the hard drive starts to work more stable and better, however, it is not known how long this stability will last ...

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What is the verification for?

It is necessary to check the operation of the internal storage medium then:

When you purchased a new PC hard drive.
If you notice poor computer performance. This can be: the loss of folders and files, long-term copying and transferring files from one hard drive storage location to another, frequent freezing of applications.
If there are noisy noises while working with the computer.

Checking the internal memory drive is carried out using special programs. The most effective of them are scanning utilities - HDD Scan and Victoria. The first program is able to check the hard drive to the full extent and give a result that will indicate the assessment of the status of all storage media:

IDE/SATA/SCSI;
USB/Firewire (external drives);
RAID arrays;
flash cards.

HDD Scan will tell you the series and firmware number of the hard drive that is installed on the PC. The utility is able to scan and find flaws and damage on internal memory your PC. Also, HDD Scan will determine how full the hard drive resource is.

How to check the hard drive for performance with the HDD Scan program is available to every student. This is the easiest way to detect damage to the hard drive. You need to download the program to your computer and download the check. The utility offers a simple menu that does not require further explanation.

You can download the program by clicking on the “Download Version” button. After downloading the utility to your computer, unzip the files. Now go to the program folder by running the executable file. This program does not require mandatory installation, and the file with the multifunctional utility takes up a meager place on the hard drive.

A method for diagnosing and cleaning a hard drive (Victoria)

In the process of using a computer hard drive, their performance is lost over time. In this regard, the so-called “broken sectors” can form on hard drives.

This process foreshadows the aging of the internal storage resource and it is inexorable. These problems are characterized by a decrease in hard drive performance and loss of information from the disk. Having identified the problem, it is necessary to solve it.

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Surely, many PC and laptop users had to deal with all sorts of problems that arose with a hard drive. In this article, we will try to answer the main questions regarding the operation of a hard drive and analyze it using a specific example? what to do, when how to check the health of the carrier and whether it is worth spending your nerves and time on it.

As an example, let's take one of the most popular hard drives, which are equipped with thousands of computers and laptops - HDD from Seagate. The main problems of the “experimental” are the freezing of the operating system or the refusal to boot at all, various errors, creaking and clicking. So, how to check the health of the hard drive on the computer?

Soft

One of the most interesting (and free) programs for checking a hard drive from a technical point of view is HDDScan, which can be downloaded from the official website upon request in any search engine.

The first step is to check the S.M.A.R.T. hard disk (built-in technology that evaluates the hard drive with self-diagnostic equipment with a prediction of the remaining “life” time), and then a qualitative test of the media surface will be passed to identify bad sectors (bad blocks).

But before checking the status for any problems, let's take a short digression to understand how it works. HDD utilities Scan, explaining in more detail what SMART, bad blocks are and why some of them cannot be “cured”, especially since users leave numerous reviews about this program, who have not fully understood what these blocks, tracks and sectors are .

Principle of operation

Winchester consists of glass and aluminum plates, which are covered with a layer of technical ferromagnetic material. That is, simply put, a hard disk is a magnetic recording device. The heads, which are located on the surface of the carrier, hover at a height of 10-13 nm and never touch the surface itself, which, by the way, is very easy to damage.

The pipeline at the last stages of hard disk production carries out low-level formatting, which forms the “map” of the hard drive, dividing it into tracks and sectors. Also, special servo marks are applied, which are responsible for the exact hit of the head on the desired track of the hard disk.

Sectors

The unit of measurement of a hard drive is a sector that consists of 512 bytes of data, and in order to format the media at a low level, special and very expensive equipment is required - “Servowriter”, therefore it is performed only in the factory, and all information recorded with this equipment, will never be overwritten in any service. If someone promises to check the status of the hard drive and fulfill it, you should know that this cannot be done at home.

The manufacturer writes only service information to the sectors: the physical address of the sector itself and the address marking indicating the beginning of the track. This information is very often called the hard disk layout, and it is needed for the correct operation of the media, so that the hard drive heads accurately hit the desired sector and track for reading and writing data.

After purchasing a hard drive, the user has access to almost its entire volume, with the exception of service information, which contains the MBR (Master Boot Record) and built-in utility utilities. The disk area where this data is located has a greater magnetization, preventing the user from accidentally or deliberately deleting service information.

firmware

Data on sectors, tracks and their numbers are presented special table th, inaccessible to BIOS and any OS. This table is located in the service area, which is a kind of mini-operating system and, together with the Firmware, controls all the actions of the hard drive. Some users are wondering: is it necessary to update or completely change the built-in firmware before checking the health of a hard drive on a laptop or on a regular PC? The answer is unequivocal: no. All modern media do not need any firmware update.

All information that is recorded in the service area, along with the firmware, is a disk passport: S.M.A.R.T. attributes, a table with detected defects, bad blocks that cannot be corrected, and reassigned sectors.

Sector types

Before checking an external hard drive for serviceability, it is important to know that there are three types of bad sectors in total: physical, logical and software. When trying to read a bad sector, the operating system tries several times to load the data again, and if this fails, the OS recognizes the sector as bad and writes all the necessary information to the normal sector, which is on the backup track. Such a process is called Remapping, or in the common people Remap.

Moreover, it is only the controller of the hard drive that decides whether to carry out or postpone the REMAP, and not the user or third party software, which can only "hint" the hard drive about the need for a remap. Before checking for serviceability, the built-in utilities always check the table of defects, which includes all bad sectors that were either reassigned by the system or marked as unrecoverable.

In total, there are two tables with defects - the factory one (Primary List), which reflects the results of initial tests on the conveyor with already marked bad blocks, and the current one (Grown List), which is filled as current problems accumulate.

Bad sectors. How to fix them?

Before being serviceable, you need to know about the types of bad sectors and the possibility of their further rehabilitation in case of damage.

According to reviews, physically defective bad blocks cannot be restored by any formatting. The only thing that can be done is to reassign bad sectors with spare ones from spare tracks. A significant disadvantage of this method will be a decrease in the speed of the hard drive, since the heads will have to travel a greater distance and make additional movements to search for information on backup tracks.

Physical bad sectors are hard disk defects that are of a mechanical nature: a broken magnetic layer of the media surface, chips, scratches, etc. Very often, such problems occur after a hard drive hit, when one or more heads were damaged and, closely attaching to a magnetic drive scratched its surface. Overheating or vibration, according to reviews, can also cause bad sectors. In this case, the bad block must always be replaced and reassigned with a normal sector from the backup track.

Creak and click

If before you often heard a creak or click inside system block, then the reason in most cases lies in the positioner of the hard drive head. The carrier tries to read the information over and over again, wearing out the positioner in a certain position, as a result of which a small creak occurs.

The reason for the occurrence of clicks may be the reassignment of tracks of bad sectors to backup ones. They are not always nearby, so the heads often and abruptly change their direction from side to side, resulting in specific clicks.

Another one of possible causes clicks and squeaks are a violation of the factory markings as a result of the mechanical impact described in the section above. Servo tags can be destroyed, and the head can no longer accurately hit the sector it needs, which is why repeated attempts by the carrier to read the information and get into its “rut” are heard.

According to reviews, the only panacea for squeaks and clicks available simple user, are the built-in utilities of the operating system, which, if it does not help get rid of the problem, will at least make the hard drive work for some more time.

How to check the hard drive for good sectors?

Logical bad blocks that occur as a result of errors in the sector logic can be divided into correctable and faulty ones. Consider in which case it is impossible to fix a logical bad block.

As mentioned above, each sector of the hard disk, in addition to user data, carries a part of the service information about the markup and physical addresses that determine the beginning of the sector. If this information has been damaged for various reasons (mechanical or physical impact), then it can be restored only in the factory, which is very problematic for an ordinary user.

But if, before checking the hard drive for serviceability, you did not hit or overheat it, that is, the service information in the sectors is not broken, you can restore the data and the health of the media using the checksum of each sector (ECC - error correction code). Each unit of the media contains this data, and it is this data that is used by utilities for the rehabilitation of the hard drive.

If you believe the reviews, various kinds of hard disk software errors, such as an incorrectly marked sector or track, are “treated” normal formatting or software built into the operating system.

Summarizing

After we figured out the principle of operation of the hard drive and outlined the points that can be fixed and which cannot, you can safely start testing the disk with the HDDScan utility and see the results, drawing the appropriate conclusions for yourself. positive feedback There is a lot of information about this software on the Internet, so you can recommend it to both novice users and experienced professionals.

After you know Current state S.M.A.R.T., you can make a prediction - to restore this disk or purchase a new one.

Letter. Difficult question for the site administrator site and please answer plain language in order to be understandable to the average user.

How to check the hard drive for health, and most importantly, is it possible to remove bad sectors from the hard disk or, as they are called, bad blocks, which, as it turned out, are of several types:
- physical (crumbling magnetic layer of working plates, chips, etc.),
- logical (sector logic errors), logical bad blocks, can also be attributed software bads, that is, soft-bads (file system errors).
Before writing to you, I have been investigating this issue for quite some time and I realized that ordinary user superficial and inaccurate information is known, namely: many people think that all bad sectors or bad blocks are removed by regular formatting, but this is not so. It turns out that it is impossible to remove physical bads at all, but logical ones can only be removed with the help of special programs and only software bad blocks or soft bads (file system errors) can be removed with ordinary Windows tools, for example using or regular formatting. Why am I all this.

Recently, I had to go to a service center about the strange behavior of my computer. Firstly, periodic freezes were observed, lasting for several seconds, and sometimes for good, I had to restart the computer with the Reset button. Occasionally, strange clicks and creaks were heard from the hard drive. Strange folders without names were found in the system. The simple process of copying a file from one hard drive partition to another took an awfully long time. Also, the operating system often checked the hard disk for errors when the computer was turned on, and the last time it issued BOOTMGR is missing on a black screen, given error restored with installation disk seven, but a day later, when booting up, the computer gave out just a black screen, I thought enough was enough and contacted the service center.

V service center a technician checked my hard drive free program HDDScan.

Unfortunately, the master did not explain anything when checking, he showed me only after checking the presence of 12 bad blocks (English bad sector, bad block, bad sectors-damaged) marked in blue by the program. Another 90 sectors were marked in red, they were not bad blocks yet, but their response time was not good, more than 500 ms.

The wizard also showed me the S.M.A.R.T of my hard drive and found it not very good, since the most important parameter Reallocated Sector Count - indicating the number of reassigned sectors (when a disk detects a read / write error, the sector is marked "reassigned", and data from the damaged sector or in other words the physical bad block is transferred to the spare area), is almost critical, it is responsible for physical defects hard drive that can no longer be repaired.

Another parameter, Current Pending Errors Count, which is responsible for the number of sectors that are difficult to read and is very different from reading a normal sector, was also marked in yellow, which indicated its poor condition. The expert’s advice was this: Transfer all important data from the hard drive and “treat” it in this HDDScan program, but since there are a lot of bad blocks, most likely, it will not be possible to fix all of them and it will no longer be possible to install the operating system on it, in Subsequently, you need to use this hard drive as a file storage or, as they say, a file trash can, only in this way, it will live for some more time.

I listened to the master and left the hard drive in the service for "treatment" until the evening, and in the evening the result was shown to me.

Not a single bad sector (bad block), but there were 12. The number of sectors with a response time of more than 500 ms has become less (it was 90, but it became 23),

one of the critical S.M.A.R.T indicators - 197 Current Pending Errors Count-responsible, as I said, for the number of sectors, the reading of which is difficult, has become normal, the parameter 198 Uncorrectable Errors Count- the number of uncorrected errors when accessing the sector also became within the normal range, but the most important Reallocated Sector Count indicator, according to him, did not change and remained unsatisfactory, so the conclusion is this: the operating system cannot be installed on this hard disk.

And I have a question for you, explain in detail, how to check hard drive on professional suitability on my own, how to determine how many bad sectors I have and what are they? How to use programs like HDDScan, and most importantly, how to get rid of bad blocks with it. What exactly does the program do with the hard drive, ridding it of bad blocks, and for how long will such hard drive treatment help? Is it still possible to install an operating system on this hard drive or not? And the last question, the unrecoverable parameter S.M.A.R.T - Reallocated Sector Count can still be fixed and whether physical bads are actually unrecoverable at all, on many forums on the Internet they say that there are proprietary utilities from manufacturers hard drives, capable of performing low-level formatting at home. Alexander Anatolievich. Tomsk.

How to check hard drive

Friends, they say brevity - sister of talent, one of my friends, having read this question, answered him like this:- “You can’t fix a scratch with anything, but a soft bad is treated with zero.”

The topic is not simple, but relevant, the article is long, but I tried to make it understandable to a simple user. To make it easier to understand everything, I suggest that during the article, step by step check the MAXTOR STM3250310AS hard drive installed in the computer that was brought to our service for repair with the free HDDScan program. The operating system installed on the hard drive freezes from time to time, refuses to boot, giving various errors or just a black screen. The hard drive creaks and clicks, (I will explain why below). Reinstalling Windows did not help the case and the owners of the computer do not know what to do.

so how to check hard drive status? This can be done by various tests in the HDDScan program, first we check the S.M.A.R.T indicators this hard drive, then we will test the surface of the hard drive, find no less than 63 bad sectors and our program will fix them all, another question is for how long (read on).

But first, very brief information about how a hard drive is built, if this digression is not made, you simply will not understand the principle of operation of the HDDScan program and others. similar programs, all the more you will not understand what S.M.A.R.T is, as well as bad sectors (bad blocks) and why some of them cannot be fixed.

The hard disk is made of aluminum or glass plates coated with a layer of ferromagnetic material. A hard disk is primarily a device that works on the principle of magnetic recording. Magnetic heads that read, write or erase information from a hard disk hover above its surface at a height of 10-12 nm and never touch the surface magnetic disk which is easily damaged.

At the final stage of hard drive production, low-level formatting, that is, tracks are applied to the working plates of the hard disk, each track is divided into sectors. Also, special magnetic servo marks are applied to the magnetic surface of the hard disk, they are needed to accurately hit the magnetic head of the hard drive on the tracks of the hard disk. The minimum unit of information on a hard disk is a sector, the amount available to the user is 512 bytes of data. Low-level formatting in the life of a hard disk occurs only once, friends, and only on special and very expensive factory equipment - called Servowriter. Information written using this formatting will never be overwritten. In any service, friends, such formatting cannot be done. Therefore, my answer to the question of whether it is possible to carry out low-level formatting using the means of the operating system will be the answer - no, it is not possible. Low-level formatting can only be done at the factory, it even destroys tracks, sectors and magnetic servos. For example, in the program, Victoria overwrites all information on the hard disk by filling all sectors with zeros, this cannot be called low-level formatting, but it cannot be called formatting either, it is something in between. After the Write mode, all sectors of the hard disk are filled with zeros and do not contain any errors, and it can be formatted in file system Windows tools.
At the factory, only service information is written to the sectors ( servo-information servo-service, for example, the physical address of the sector and the address marker that determines the beginning of the sector), this information can be called markup, it is needed for the normal operation of the hard disk, this is information about the numbers of tracks and sectors, which is necessary for the heads to correctly hit these tracks and sectors when reading information recorded in them.
After purchasing the hard drive, user data will also be written to this area later (for example, the first sector of the hard drive will contain the MBR), but user data can be written and erased, in contrast to service information, which has a much higher magnetization, which is why the read-write heads of the drive can't rub it.

All service information about track and sector numbers will be stored in a special table located in a closed and inaccessible to OS and BIOS tools service area, which is a mini-operating system, together with Firmware, they control the operation of the hard disk. Sometimes they ask the question - Do I sometimes need to update the firmware of the hard drive, the answer is no, modern hard drives do not need to be updated. This SA will also store the disk passport, SMART attribute values, as well as a defect table with information about unrecoverable or reassigned bad sectors (bad blocks).
So we got with you to the physical, logical and software bad sectors.

The fact is friends, if the operating system has problems reading data from any sector, then the hard drive controller makes several additional attempts to read the data, if they are also unsuccessful, this sector is recognized as a failure, then information is written to the normal sector , located on the backup track, and the problem sector is recognized as a failure and removed from circulation, this is called ( Remapping , in the common people remap).

Friends, whether to remap or not is decided only by the hard disk controller during operation, and not by any programs for working with the hard drive (Victoria, MHDD). These programs can only hint with their tests (for example, Advanced REMAP in Victoria program- improved algorithm for hiding bad blocks) to the hard drive controller about what needs to be done REMAP.

The fact that a sector is recognized as bad is entered in the defect table with information about unrecoverable or reassigned bad sectors located in the service area.

By the way, there are two defect tables, one initial P-list (Primary-list) is created after the final factory tests, any friends hard drive already has several reassigned bad blocks when it leaves the factory. Well, the growing G-list (Grown-list) table of defects is filled in as we use the hard disk.

What are bad sectors and how to fix them?

Physical bad sectors are mechanical defects in the magnetic coating of the hard disk surface (crumbling magnetic layer of working plates, chips, etc.). That is, the sector structure itself is physically faulty, such a bad block is undoubtedly subject to reassignment as a normal sector from the backup track. Very often this happens due to an impact caused, for example, by dropping a hard drive on the floor, mechanical damage magnetic coating of the hard disk, damage to the magnetic heads, the same can happen due to overheating. Vibration of the hard drive is also dangerous if it is not securely fixed. A dusty room, smoking, despite the filter installed in the hard drive, also play a huge role in the formation of bad blocks, tobacco tar and dust stick to the surface of the hard drive and interfere with reading information.
Physical bad blocks impossible fix it with no formatting, you can only reassign spare sectors from backup tracks, naturally, because of this, performance will drop somewhat, since the magnetic head of the hard drive will have to make many additional movements, looking for information on the reassigned sectors from backup tracks.

Why does the hard drive creak and clicks sometimes when working

When the operating system encounters a bad sector, the hard disk controller makes several attempts to read information from it, while clicks and creaks can be emitted by the hard drive head positioner.

The following reason may also be the cause of clicks and creaking of the hard drive. When reassigning a bad sector to a normal one from a backup track (which is not always nearby), the magnetic head naturally has to change direction, as many people say, jump from side to side.

The third reason - as I said above, in the manufacture of a hard drive, a special marking of the magnetic surface of hard drives is made with special servo marks, these servo marks serve for precise positioning of the magnetic head on the tracks of the hard drive, it is with the help of servo marks that the magnetic head of the hard drive moves correctly. Sometimes servo tags are destroyed for the same reasons that physical bad blocks are formed and the magnetic head cannot take and hold the position it needs, while clicks and creaks are heard from the hard drive.

Logic bad blocks(sector logic errors), in turn divided into correctable and incorrigible. In which case logical bad block cannot be fixed? As I said above, each sector carries in itself except user information more service information (servo information, for example, the physical address of the sector and the address marker that determines the beginning of the sector), in simple words marking, with the help of which the magnetic head of the hard drive gets to the desired tracks of the sectors, such marking is applied by low-level formatting at the factory during the manufacture of the hard drive. This information it is almost impossible to remove it since it is highly magnetized, but under certain circumstances, similar to the causes of the appearance of physical bad blocks (shock, vibration, bearing play, and so on), this information is violated and it can be restored only in the factory. Yes, there are special proprietary utilities that overwrite service information, but due to the complexity of their application, this issue is difficult even for narrow specialists and we will not consider it.
Logic bad blocksthat can be corrected. When writing to the user information sector, a portion of service information is additionally recorded, the so-called ECC sector checksum (Error Correction Code), this code allows you to recover data if they were read with an error. But sometimes this code is not written, and accordingly the sum of user data in the sector does not match the ECC checksum. One of simple examples why this happens, you can cause a sudden shutdown of the computer due to power failures, because of this, information was written to the hard disk sector, but there was no checksum. The next time the operating system will access this sector and try to read data from it, but they will not match the ECC checksum, an attempt will be made to read the data again and again unsuccessfully (here you get freezes and a bad bad block).
Software bad blocks(File system errors - for example, an incorrectly marked sector belonging to two files) can be removed by means of the operating system -, more reliably, by regular formatting.

You will say that all this is good and understandable, but how to get rid of bad blocks, can you transfer data from the hard drive and format it in the operating system installer?

When formatting in all ways available operating system, the same attempt will be made to read the information from the bad sector, then compare them with the ECC checksum, but it does not match, which means that the incorrect information will not be overwritten and the bad sector will remain bad even after formatting. So it turns out that a special program is needed, for example, MHDD or HDDScan, which will not read anything, but simply overwrite it forcibly, usually fill the bad sector with zeros, but then it will read what was written and compare the checksum, after which the sector will return to work.

For example, the HDDScan program has the Erase function - Test in linear recording mode (sector-by-sector erasing of data), carefully all your data will be deleted. Unfortunately, nothing will work without deleting the data, therefore, before this test, they must be transferred to another storage medium.

And the best thing is to completely remove your hard drive and connect it to another computer that has the HDDScan program, then run the Erase test and check your entire hard drive. You can not shoot anything, write down boot disks with MHDD or Victoria programs, boot from them and run these programs with the Advanced remap function, but we will do this in other articles.

Now friends go directly to working with the HDDScan program, with the help of this program, we will see the complete picture of what is happening with our hard drive, namely, we will find out the S.M.A.R.T of our hard drive and decrypt it, we will also set the number of bad sectors and of course we will try to fix them.
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