Hard Drive Test stops when encountering sectors already "fixed" by Windows 10

[ChasLM530]

I've ordered a new secondary hard drive, as I know this is a sign of eventual failure.  Still it would be helpful if this test recognized that the sectors were already marked as "bad"/unusable by windows' repair process, and continued on with the remainder of the read & seek tests.  Is there a way around this?  The extended windows scan/repair is much slower than PC-Doctor.  Thanks

[PCD_Dan]

Hello,

I apologize for the inconvenience you are experiencing. I'm curious about your situation but unfortunately I don't think I fully understand what it is that you would like to accomplish.

It sounds like you know you have a bad hard drive, and if I'm understanding you correctly you would like Toolbox to ignore the fact that Windows has already diagnosed it defective, in order for the test to complete inside Toolbox and provide you with test results?

Please note, that running diagnostic tests, especially any type of stress test, on a known bad hard drive should be avoided. Running diagnostics on a known defective device will only increase the chances of the device failing entirely.

It's worth mentioning that Toolbox pulls a large amount of the information it reports on straight from your Operating System. I have not been faced with this first hand, but there is perhaps a chance that you can go into the 'Hardware' section of the Toolbox application, and assuming it is providing you a warning related to what Windows has already diagnosed, you may be able to chose to 'Ignore'. Afterwards, now that Toolbox is ignoring what Windows has diagnosed, the test may now be capable of completion. Again, this is not recommended and I would avoid running any other diagnostic tests on your defective hard drive so long as you need to use it.

-Dan R.

[ChasLM530]

My knowledge in this area is dated, but there used to be drive diagnostics that would mark faulty sectors as bad so they could not be written on, and then would go on to test the remainder of the drive.  The idea was to allow you to continue using the drive for a while without data loss.  Subsequent tests would also avoid areas of the disk marked as bad, and mark any additional sectors found in the same way.  Maybe this is now considered unnecessary either due to advances in drive technology or the ability to replace SATA drives inexpensively.  Just wondering, curious.  It's not a big deal as I was using it mainly as a full system/software/data recovery backup of the primary drive.

[PCD_Dan]

From my knowledge, you are still correct with how the drives work when encountering faulty sectors, but the theory of "being able to continue using the drive for a while without data loss" has been debunked. From all stand points, end user to manufacturer, it's a much safer stance to take when you recommend immediate HDD replacement once issues are detected, for obvious reasons.

You also are likely correct in assuming that it is now considered unnecessary due to SATA drives being much more affordable than they used to be.

-Dan R.