XPost: aus.computers   
   From: nospam@needed.invalid   
      
   On Wed, 11/26/2025 8:45 PM, Computer Nerd Kev wrote:   
      
   >   
   > The disk's not sick if SMART shows no failures and it's and passed   
   > the built-in self-test IMHO. The OS might have messed up the data   
   > on it, or power was cut during a write.   
      
   The OPs disk showed "two power-on hours".   
      
   The SMART is not currently reporting properly.   
      
   I have a disk I'm cloning right now, where the same   
   sort of thing has happened. The Reallocated number previously   
   reported have been reset. While I was doing a bad   
   block scan, it was throwing errors like crazy, and   
   as a final impressive stunt, the drive seemed to reset   
   itself and when it came back up, the bad block   
   scan "zoomed ahead" indicating all remaining blocks   
   had CRC errors.   
      
   I currently have the disk being cloned via ddrescue,   
   and the weird part ? It no longer shows CRC errors,   
   the disk is behaving in a saintly way, and I have   
   about one more hour to wait before the copy is complete.   
      
   Something is happening to these SMART subsystems, and   
   on purpose, before the ddrescue started, I was careful   
   to not use any tool to trigger any SMART activity.   
   And for some reason, that has changed the symptoms.   
      
   I will repeat a previous statement - the drives DO NOT   
   behave like the hopeful description provided by the manufacturer.   
   Once your disk is sick, man the life boats, because   
   you don't know what will happen next. Disks did not always   
   behave this way. I've also worked on broken disks years   
   ago, and the behavior (dying right in front of you) was   
   more predictable. You got lots of clicks of death and   
   so on. The symptoms were consistent right up to the end.   
      
   It seems, up to a certain point, the drive continues to   
   spare out bad blocks. But, you cannot continue to write   
   to it and expect to drive it right to the failure point   
   (no reallocations left). Something has been placed in the   
   code, which causes mostly random behavior after a certain   
   point. Yesterday, when I did a bad block scan, about half   
   the blocks were red. Today, when I use ddrescue -v   
   there are  "0 bad sector  error rate: 0 B/sec". Why ?   
   I have no theory to offer at the moment.   
      
   Just, be careful, if you have forced a drive to run too long   
   in a sick state.   
      
      Paul   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)