New TC functionality? - checking drive sectors while read / write operation

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grfam
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New TC functionality? - checking drive sectors while read / write operation

Post by *grfam »

Hi,
Is it possible to implement a function (option) which will check and report if there is some delay in accessing a sector on HDD (SSD) during copying files (read / write)?
It would be good to know if some sectors are loosing their properties before failing completely.

I've noticed several times while copying a huge amount of data to a HDD that transfers droped suddenly and then recovered to full copying speed. I scanned surface with HDD Regenerator and found some "slow" sectors.

Thanks and regards,
Gregor
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Dalai
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Re: New TC functionality? - checking drive sectors while read / write operation

Post by *Dalai »

A file manager like TC doesn't know which sectors a file uses because it doesn't need to. It calls API functions that do the copying, transfering files in blocks, and that's it. When an HDD fails to read some sector, it will try again, and if successful it will try to relocate the data of that sector to some spare sector (all HDDs manufactured within at least the last decade have spare sectors).

And, in case of SSDs it's not even possible because the OS doesn't have access to specific sectors of such drives because they're controlled internally by the SSD controller, and also used for something called wear-leveling which distributes writes evenly across the NAND flash.

In short: Use a specially designed program to check if all sectors are readable. But keep in mind that it's only useful for HDDs, not for SSDs or SSHDs (because only the drive knows about the sectors).

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Dalai
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HolgerK
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Re: New TC functionality? - checking drive sectors while read / write operation

Post by *HolgerK »

Install a S.M.A.R.T. monitoring program like CrystaldiskInfo which runs in the background (system tray) and constantly monitors S.M.A.R.T. info's like "reallocated sector count" from all drives and will warn you if a drive begins to fail.

If this warning occurs it is time to think about a new hard-drive (do you have a backup?).

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Holger
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