Recover and repair your hard drives (cluster, sector, data, etc.) with HD Sentinel (Hard Drive Sentinel)

[Christophe]

If you have problems with your hard drives (and we all have a day), here is a great recovery software!

A few days ago I tested the Hard Drive Sentinel demo, a software that I did not know yet (despite my 25 years of PC experience). This because one of my hard drives was "rowing" more than normal ... so I wanted to do an advanced benchmark.

Et there, surprise, I came across a "real" software (as we do more!) Disk management (nothing to do with the simplicity of a CCleaner ...).

I strongly advise you because keeping an old hard drive instead of replacing it is econological, not to mention the loss of data.

The main features of this HD Sentinel are:

a) 24 / 24 status monitoring (temperature) and estimation of the remaining life (reliability?), warning system if degradation
b) Recovery / repair of hard disks with sector / cluster defective (with or without loss of data)
c) Surface test (with deletion of data)
d) Long-term benchmark

We can even see the content of each sector ... I think the last time I saw an app that displayed sectors in Hexadecimal was on ... Amiga!

In short I decided to buy a license with eyes closed (33 € for life for the pro version for a software that makes so much service is a gift)!

Some personal captures:

hd_Sentinel.gif (148.95 Kio) Viewed 11835 times

hd_Sentinel2.gif (93.44 Kio) Viewed 11835 times

hd_Sentinel3.gif (28.98 Kio) Viewed 11835 times

The official site: https://www.hdsentinel.com/
Downloads page: https://www.hdsentinel.com/download.php
Demo: https://www.hdsentinel.com/hard_disk_se ... creenshots
Download the demo: https://www.harddisksentinel.com/hdsent ... _setup.zip

Well then you must not hope: if your disk is too damaged or turns or does not turn on, do not expect a miracle! I have for example another WD that fell off a table and has since an I / O problem and nothing works ... I tested everything under win and linux ...

Nevertheless I think that taking care of its clusters regularly can extend the life of a hard drive! The WD in repair has not far from 10 000 on / off and 540 days of continuous operation is 13000h ... (it's not a server hard drive huh)

ps: my Western Digital at 6% of life is being "repaired" I would tell you what it is, do not be in too much of a hurry for this kind of manipulation (forecast duration: 48h) but the partial repairs that I made yesterday seem to hold! (errors are no longer detected during a 2nd pass)

[Christophe]

Another interesting feature that I just found is to compare the state of its hard drives to those of other users (strictly identical model).

So I just saw that my system hard drive had compared to other exactly identical disk:
- 3595 on / off for up to 90033 on / off (there's room!)
- 8409 hours for up to 39060 h (bis)

By cons I am above average on these 2 values:
- average on / off: 1396
- average hours: 4351

So I do average 2h20 sessions between 2 cycle on / off while the average of the other users is 3h06 ... it surprises me a bit because it is my working PC and I spend 10-12h per day on it without interruption (after I never leave the night for nothing ... and I do not download! )

[Christophe]

If the software does not work at all, then you have to give a hand to the hardware ...

What I just did, a first for me in 30 years of computer science: I physically opened my first hard drive! I did not have much to lose since this hard disk was not responding at all (neither under WIn nor Linux). This hard drive had suffered a shock in 2013: the heads were stuck on the disc following a fall of about 1 m on tiles ... I had left it abandoned with little hope during these years ... Until I fall on these videos:

Operation carried out, "like a pig" in my living room (so far from being a clean room!) Without gloves or any "dust" precaution and it worked: the hard disk which did not respond at all, responds!

WD1.jpg (173.78 KIO) Viewed 11660 times

WD2.jpg (128.69 KIO) Viewed 11660 times

At the result level, the hard disk contained about 800 GB of data (on 2 To) on 4 partitions, 2 4 are no longer accessible at all (and indicated in RAW 100% occupied) but a good part are still accessible: is the most important for me because it's the personal data!

I put one hit of TestDisk and several passes of CHKDSK on each partition.

By cons, the hard drive is very slow (especially access time) and the average rate is less than 1 MB / s but it is essential transfer, just do not be too in a hurry.

In 3 days I managed to transfer 250 Go ...

Once the data transferred I will try different surface test with HD Sentinel ... history to see if we can refurbish it (the disc does not sound suspicious), the hard drive had only 10h before its fall in 2013 ...

[failure]

Thank you
Super tutorial to try to save the old hard drive.
I'll try to fix it

[Paul72]

OH!!! I will try that wish, lost for lost, I also have a "blocked" external hard drive. it makes a "click click" when you start it instead of going round, it may be blocked as well (it has already fallen once or twice .... it's an old thing of almost 10 years)
Merci!

[Christophe]

Yes, open it and carefully unlock the read head by hand.

Attention it must be moved at the same time as the rotation of the disc ...

[Paul72]

Yes, open it and carefully unlock the read head by hand.

Attention it must be moved at the same time as the rotation of the disc ...

well, the problem did not come from there ...

the disc is not spinning, it must be an engine problem or something else

[Christophe]

By the way there is an excellent FAQ on HDSentinel: https://www.hdsentinel.com/faq.php (on the technology and management of hard disks, not only on the software)