Menu
homeBios

Utility for working with wd disks. How to use one of the legendary hard drive diagnostic programs called Victoria! What you need to know about Western Digital Data Lifeguard Diagnostic

In today's article:

1. How can I find out what condition my hard drive or SSD is in and how long it will last? How to find out the health status of a used hard drive or SSD. What is S.M.A.R.T and what do its indicators say: Value, Worst, Raw, Threshold?

2. What are bad blocks? How to find out how many bad sectors (bad blocks) there are on my hard drive, can they be fixed, and most importantly, how can I fix them?

3. What should I do if the operating system does not boot or freezes even after reinstallation, and the hard drive makes clicking noises and strange sounds during operation? Why does the disk check utility chkdsk run every time I boot Windows?

4. How to create a bootable USB flash drive with the Victoria program and check the hard drive of a computer or laptop for bad blocks, even if it does not boot, and so on...

How to use one of the legendary hard drive diagnostic programs called Victoria!

Today's article is about the Victoria program. I can confidently say that this program is the best among utilities for diagnosing and treating hard drives. This creation was developed by the first category sorcerer Sergei Kazansky.

I prepared for this article for a very long time and responsibly, feeling grateful to this program. Sometimes Victoria saved seemingly lost data on the hard drives of my clients, friends and acquaintances (often the master is NOT faced with the task of returning a faulty hard drive to normal operation, but only saving the data on it), and sometimes brought the hard drive itself back to life!

  • I really wanted to write an article that would help novice users figure it out, and most importantly, they are not afraid of this program, but they are afraid of something, if you use the program carelessly, for example, start a thoughtless scan in Erase mode or, even worse, Write, then you can delete all the data on the drive, Even if you come to your senses in time, you will still crash the MBR boot record and you will not be able to boot into the operating system next time.

Friends, it’s impossible to put everything I want to tell and show about the Victoria program in one article.. As a result of my efforts it turned out several articles:

  1. Today's article. How to download and run the Victoria program directly from a running Windows. What is S.M.A.R.T. or how to determine the health status of your hard drive or SSD in a couple of seconds. More articles...
  2. How to cure a hard drive.

Firstly, there are two main versions of the Victoria program:

The first version will allow us to diagnose and minor repairs of hard drives directly in a running Windows, but I want to say that it is possible to diagnose a hard drive using this version, but correcting bad sectors (remap) often ends in failure, and there is also the possibility of errors when working with Victoria directly “from Windows” is present, so many experienced users and professionals prefer the second version of the program.

The second version of the Victoria program will be located on a boot disk or flash drive; from this disk (flash drive) we will boot our desktop computer or laptop and also carry out diagnostics and, if necessary, treatment of the hard drive.

Note: The second version will be very useful to many, since most users have one hard drive in their computer, or even more so in a laptop, in this case you can boot from Victoria’s disk (flash drive) and work with one single hard drive.

1. Victoria on the boot disk is very useful if you cannot start the operating system due to bad blocks.

2. If you have one hard drive and an operating system is installed on it, and you run Victoria in the same running operating system, then it will probably refuse to correct bad sectors (bad blocks).

Many users will notice that often a good bad problem cannot be fixed even by Victoria, to which the answer can be this - not all bad problems are of a physical nature (a broken sector on the hard drive), many bad problems are of a logical nature and can be easily fixed by this program.

I’ll just say briefly that physical problems (a physically destroyed sector) cannot be restored, but logical ones (software, sector logic errors) can be restored.

Friends, we can talk a lot, but there is a good life proverb: “It is better to see once than to hear a hundred times,” so I will give you several examples of how the Victoria program works.

Victoria for working from a boot disk

We go to the official website of the program and select Victoria 3.5 Russian ISO image of the boot CD-ROM.

We also need Victoria on the boot disk, but we will consider working with this version second. If you do not have a disk drive, then we will make a bootable USB flash drive with the Victoria program.

Victoria for working directly in the operating system Windows XP, 7, 8, 10

We also download the Windows version on my cloud.

Right-click on the downloaded program archive and select Extract files.

The files are extracted into the created vcr43 folder. We go to this folder and be sure to run the executable file of the program victoria43.exe as administrator.

Main program window Victoria

In the main window of the program, we will go through all the tabs superficially, and then in detail.

Standard

Select the initial tab Standard. If you have several hard drives, then in the right part of the window, select the hard drive you need with your left mouse and immediately on the left side of the window the passport data of our hard drive will be displayed: where you were born and married, model, firmware, serial number, cache size, and so on. At the bottom there is a log of our actions.

What is S.M.A.R.T.

Then select the hard drive we need in the right part of the window, if you have several of them, and select it with the left mouse. Let's choose a hard drive for example WDC WD5000AAKS-00A7B2(volume 500 GB).

Go to the SMART tab, press the button Get SMART, a message will light up to the right of the button GOOD and S.M.A.R.T. will open. the hard drive we have selected.

S.M.A.R.T.(from the English self-monitoring, analysis and reporting technology) - an improved technology for self-monitoring, analysis and reporting of the hard drive, developed in 1995 by the largest hard drive manufacturers.

In other words, friends, if you look at this window, you can find out the state of your hard drive.

Please note that the Victoria program has highlighted the number 8 in red (alarm!) in the Raw value, the most important attribute for the health of the hard drive

5 Reallocated Sector Count - (remap), indicating the number of reassigned sectors.

Note: the value of the Raw attribute is very important, read why.

In simple words, if the firmware built into the hard drive detects a bad sector (bad block), it will reassign this sector as a sector from the backup track (the process is called remapping). But the reserve sectors on the hard drive are not an infinite number and the program warns us that soon there will be nothing to reassign bad blocks to, and this is fraught with data loss and we need to prepare to change the hard drive to a new one.

Looking ahead, I will say that in the next article we will try to treat this hard drive.

9 Power-On time 14810, not highlighted in red, but I want to say that approaching the figure of 20,000 operating hours in most cases is associated with illness and unstable operation of the hard drive.

The attributes are also highlighted:

196 Reallocation Event Count - 3 . The number of operations of reassigning bad blocks to sectors from backup tracks (remapping), both successful and unsuccessful operations are taken into account.

197 Current Pending Sector - 1 3. An indicator of the number of unstable sectors of real candidates for bad blocks. The hard drive firmware plans to replace these sectors in the future with sectors from the reserve area (remap), but there is still hope that in the future some of these sectors will be read well and will be excluded from the list of candidates.

198 Offline scan UNC sectors - 13 . The number of actually existing non-reassigned bads on the hard drive (possibly fixable ones with a logical structure - details later in the article).

199 UltraDMA CRC Errors - 63771. Errors that occur when transmitting information via an external interface, the reason is perhaps a twisted and poor-quality SATA cable and it needs to be replaced or a loose SATA connector on the motherboard or on the hard drive itself. Or maybe the hard drive itself of the SATA 6 Gb/s interface is connected to the connector on the SATA 3 Gb/s motherboard, it needs to be reconnected.

S.M.A.R.T attributes and their meanings. Very important to know!

Attribute values

Val is the current value of the attribute, it should be high (up to 255); if the value of Val is equal to the critical Tresh or even less than it, then this corresponds to an unsatisfactory assessment of the parameter. For example, in our case, on a WDC WD5000AAKS-00A7B2 (500 GB, 7200 RPM, SATA-II) hard drive, the Reallocated Sector Count attribute has the value Val-199 and the attribute Tresh(threshold) has a value of 140, which is bad, but the value of Val -199 is not yet equal to the value of Tresh (threshold) of 140 and we have time to copy the data from this disk and retire it.

Wrst is the lowest value of the Val attribute for the entire operating time of the hard drive.

Tresh is the threshold value of the attribute; this value must be much lower than the Val value (current value).

Raw - the “raw value” that will be converted into a value Value, the lower this value, the better.

An important indicator for evaluating the attribute is the real number from which the Value value is formed, but how exactly the process of forming the Value value occurs is a proprietary secret of each hard drive manufacturer!

Let's look at all the S.M.A.R.T attributes, but I want to say that most often on “bad” hard drives it is this Reallocated Sector Count attribute that will be unsatisfactory. This is already a reason to be wary and test the surface of a hard drive or SSD (we will learn how to do this later in the article).

Friends, to instantly assess the health of a S.M.A.R.T hard drive, I use another simple program in Russian, CrystalDiskInfo, be sure to download and install it for yourself. All attributes are indicated in Russian!

http://crystalmark.info/download/index-e.html

Select Shizuku Edition (exe).

In this window, you can select Russian for the program language.

As you can see, CrystalDiskInfo directly tells us (confirming Victoria’s fears) that on the WDC WD5000AAKS-00A7B2 hard drive (500 GB capacity) there are bad values ​​of the attributes responsible for Reassigned sectors, Unstable sectors, Uncorrectable sector errors, highlighting them in yellow and indicating those . hard drive status in one word: "Alarm"

What does the S.M.A.R.T of a faulty hard drive look like?

And here S.M.A.R.T of a faulty hard drive WDC WD500BPVT laptop, which was brought to me for repair.

Victoria from Windows. Pay attention to the attribute:

5 Reallocated Sector Count (reassigned sectors), it has a value of Val -133, and the Tresh attribute has a value of 140, this is unsatisfactory, since the value of Val -133 should not be less than the Tresh limit value of 140, that is, the number of failed sectors will grow, but there is nothing to reassign them with, the spare sectors on the reserve tracks have already run out.

197 Current Pending Sector - the indicator of the number of unstable sectors of real candidates for bad blocks has gone beyond all possible limits.

And most importantly, self-assessment SMART status = BAD (unfit).

Program CrystalDiskInfo(download link is just above). We see the same thing, the Reallocated Sector Count attribute has a value of Val (current) -133, and the Tresh attribute (threshold) has a value of 140, the program rated the condition of the hard drive as Bad.

this laptop is terribly slow, data cannot be copied from it, Windows cannot be reinstalled, periodically the hard drive disappears from the BIOS, that is, such a hard drive must be replaced without hesitation, even ours Victoria will not be able to completely cure such a screw, since healthy sectors on the reserve tracks have ended and there is nothing to reassign bad sectors with, and copying data from it will be a real adventure for a week (I’ll definitely write an article about it).

Looking ahead, I will say that a test of this screw in the Victoria program showed the presence of 500 irreparable bad sectors (bad blocks).

DOS is a version of the Victoria program.

Note: To make your life easier, some hard drive diagnostic programs map each attribute, good or bad, to the color of the icon.

Green - the hard drive attribute is normal.

Yellow - indicates a slight discrepancy with the standard and it is better not to store important data on this screw. If you have Windows on such a hard drive, transfer it to an SSD.

Red indicates a significant discrepancy with the standard and the hard drive should have been changed yesterday.

S.M.A.R.T of the same WDC WD500BPVT hard drive in the program HDDScan

Attributes

001 Raw Read Error Rate-frequency of errors when reading information from disk

002 Spinup Time-time to spin up disks to working condition

003 Start/Stop Count-total number of spindle starts/stops.

005 Reallocated Sector Count - (remap) indicates the number of reassigned sectors. If the firmware built into the hard drive detects a bad sector (bad block), it will reassign this sector as a sector from the backup track (the process is called remapping). But the reserve sectors on the hard drive are not an infinite number and the program warns us that soon there will be nothing to reassign bad blocks to, and this is fraught with data loss and we need to prepare to change the hard drive to a new one

007 Seek Error Rate- the frequency of errors when positioning the head unit, a constantly growing value, indicates overheating of the hard drive and an unstable position in the basket, for example, it is poorly secured.

009 Power-on Hours Count- the number of hours spent in the switched on state.

010 Spin Retry Count- the number of repeated spins of the disk to operating speed if the first one fails.

012 Device Power Cycle Count-Number of complete disk on-off cycles

187 Reported Uncorrectable Error-Errors that the hard drive’s firmware could not recover using its own methods of eliminating errors with hardware, the consequences of overheating and vibration.

189 High Fly Writes-the recording head was located higher above the surface than necessary, which means the magnetic field was insufficient for reliable recording of the media. The reason is vibration (shock).

For laptops this figure is slightly higher.

190 Important parameters regarding temperature. It is important that the temperature does not rise above 45 degrees.

194 HDA Temperature-temperature of the mechanical part of the hard drive

195 Hardware ECC Recovered-the number of errors that were corrected by the hard drive itself.

196 Reallocation Event Count- The number of operations of reassigning bad blocks to sectors from backup tracks (remapping), both successful and unsuccessful operations are taken into account.

197 Current Pending Errors Count- uncorrectable sector errors, also an important parameter, the number of sectors, reading which is difficult and very different from reading a normal sector. That is, the hard disk controller could not read these sectors the first time, usually these sectors belong to soft bads, also called software or logical bad blocks (sector logic error) - when writing user information to a sector, service information is also written , namely the sector checksum ECC (Error Correction Code), it allows you to restore data if it was read with an error, but sometimes this code is not written, which means the sum of user data in the sector does not match the ECC checksum. For example, this happens when the computer suddenly turns off due to a power failure; because of this, information was written to the hard disk sector, but the checksum was not.

  • Logical bad blocks cannot be corrected by simple formatting, since when formatting the hard disk controller will first try to read information from the bad sector; if it fails (in most cases), then no rewriting will occur and the bad block will remain bad. block. You can correct the situation in the Victoria program, it will forcefully enter information into the sector (heal the sector), then read it, compare the ECC checksum and the bad block will become a normal sector. More details about all types of bad blocks in our article How to check a hard drive.

198 Offline scan UNC sectors- The number of real non-reassigned bads that actually exist on the hard drive (possibly fixable ones with a logical structure - details later in the article).

198 Uncorrectable Errors Count-the number of uncorrected errors when accessing a sector, indicates surface defects.

Reported Uncorrectable Errors- shows the number of uncorrected bad sectors.

199 UltraDMA CRC Errors-the number of errors that occur when transmitting information via an external interface, the reason is a twisted and low-quality SATA cable, it may need to be changed.

200 Write Error Rate- the frequency of errors that occur when writing to a hard drive; this indicator is usually used to judge the quality of the drive’s surface and its mechanical part.

202 Data Address Mark Errors- I haven’t seen a decryption anywhere, literally an address marker data error, it could mean something that only the manufacturer of this hard drive knows.

How to quickly check a hard drive or SSD for serviceability?

And we look at S.M.A.R.T, as we see, the hard drive is in almost perfect condition, although it has already worked for 8000 hours (parameter 9 Power-On Time)

Victoria

Hard drive surface test!

On the right side of the program window, check the Ignor item and the read item and click Start. This will run a simple hard drive surface test without error correction. This test will not bring any negative or positive effects on the hard drive, but at the end of the test you will know what condition your hard drive is in..

The test results are excellent. Not a single block with a delay of more than 30 ms!

CrystalDiskInfo


Hard drive SAMSUNG HD403LJ (372 GB) from a recent article

There were bad blocks on it and I had to transfer Windows 8 from it to an SSD. After a successful transfer, the owner (my classmate) gave me this screw and Victoria soon brought it back to life after “writing all over the clearing” (Write algorithm). The previous owner refused to take back the cured hard drive.

The test results are slightly worse. 3 blocks with a delay of more than 200 ms and 1 block with a delay of 600 ms (possibly a candidate for trouble).

The not quite serviceable hard drive MAXTOR STM3250310AS (250 GB, 7200 RPM, SATA-II) is 8 years old (veteran) and still works, although I take care of it, storing only unimportant data files on it.

Although there are no obvious bad things on it, we see that the attribute is 5 Reallocated Sector Count - (remap), indicating the number of remapped sectors critical and soon there will be nothing to reassign bads with.

9 Power-On time - total number of hours worked by the hard drive 23668 , this is a lot, usually problems with hard drives begin after 20,000 hours of operation.

Also unimportant attribute 199 UltraDMA CRC Errors - 63771, errors that occur when transmitting information via an external interface, the reason is a poor-quality SATA cable and it needs to be replaced (this is not always the case).

The test results are even worse. 71 blocks with a delay of more than 200 ms and 1 block with a delay of 600 ms (possibly a candidate for trouble).

HDD ST3200826AS(200 GB, 7200 RPM, SATA). The propeller is about three years old and the flight is still normal.

How to test a hard drive or SSD in Victoria and how to fix bad sectors (bad blocks)

A program for testing hard drives from different manufacturers, allowing you to find out the condition of the drive using S.M.A.R.T. analysis and correct bad sector errors.

What you need to know about Western Digital Data Lifeguard Diagnostic

This is an official utility from a well-known storage media manufacturer that works successfully with devices from various vendors. The application performs express diagnostics of information containers using the S.M.A.R.T. method, compares the obtained numbers with acceptable values, and performs a quick or in-depth analysis of the media surface. During low-level testing, the application detects the presence of so-called bad sectors and prohibits accessing them during subsequent recording of objects. This corrects file access errors and takes preventative measures to prevent data loss during further operation.

The program displays information about local volumes and also displays detailed information about installed devices (volume of space, firmware version and component serial number). A feature of Western Digital Data Life Guard Diagnostic is the presence of a zero sector recording function, which deeply formats the disk without the ability to restore deleted objects. That's why we recommend performing tasks carefully or paying attention to simpler utilities like Seagate SeaTools.

Briefly and clearly:

  • express test of drives;
  • generation of S.M.A.R.T. report;
  • deep diagnostics of the device surface;
  • fixing the problem of broken partitions;
  • formatting information.

Western Digital Data LifeGuard Diagnostics

Download

Western Digital Data LifeGuard Diagnostics disk health utility with IDE interface. The program does a good job, allowing you to return the disk to a state when defects did not yet exist. Immediately after launching the executable file and accepting the license terms, we are greeted by a window with the disks installed in the system, including flash drives (see photo above). Click on the selected disk and see a window for selecting the desired tests.

The program will ask you to close all other active windows to avoid data loss. And I’m talking about all the buttons in order:

Quick test– Quick testing (aka Express method). It speaks for itself and allows you to obtain information with a fairly high level of confidence and the condition of the disk in a short time. For a more detailed analysis, go to the next point.

Extended Test– Advanced testing more accurately determines the condition of the disk, so large disks will take a long time to pass. If there are defects, the program may freeze, only to continue working again after a while. The test does not destroy the sample (hard drive), that is, it does not affect the surface of the disk until the user selects the function of restoring (repairing) damaged sectors.

Write Zeros– Recording zeros. The function can be used to clean up operating systems or entire batches of files. The QUICK ERASE subfunction writes zeros in the first and last of a million sectors, the FULL ERASE subfunction writes zeros in all sectors of the disk, so you have to wait.

In this article we will look at tools for checking disks for errors and diagnosing their condition. Let's look at the diagnostic function built into Windows. There are a large number of diagnostic utilities that will help you determine, if necessary, a problem with your hard drive. Tools like Check Disk for Errors and Microsoft's chkdsk command are already present as a standard feature of Windows. And some others are provided by hard drive manufacturers and other third-party developers.

In some cases, testing a hard drive must be done by connecting it as a second one to another computer.

There are also many paid programs for hard drive diagnostics. But in this article we are interested in free programs or those that have a partially free version.

Content:

Seagate SeaTools

Seagate SeaTools is a free hard drive diagnostic utility provided by Seagate that comes in two types:

SeaTools for DOS– supports Seagate or Maxtor drives, and runs regardless of the operating system from a disk or USB drive, which makes it very reliable. It is more powerful than the Windows utility, but more difficult for the user.

SeaTools for Windows is a program that is installed on Windows and supports all its modern versions. With its help, you can do basic or advanced testing of any hard drive, external or internal, from any manufacturer. It has simpler functionality than the DOS program, but is much easier to use.

These programs can test the health of any type of hard drive: SCSI, PATA or SATA, as well as external hard drives. To do this, just launch the program, select the disk that needs to be tested, the type of testing and run it.

Seagate SeaTools are used to test hard drives by professional computer services, but are simple enough for anyone to use. If, for example, you are concerned about the sounds made by your hard drive, you can safely test it using programs from Seagate.

Windows Drive Fitness Test (WinDFT) is another free diagnostic utility for hard drives of any type and manufacturer, which is presented by the hard drive manufacturer Western Digital (formerly owned by Hitachi). But the ability to test with it is not limited to WD or Hitachi drives.

The program includes not only several disk scanning functions, but also the ability to view SMART attributes and clean the hard drive.

Although WinDFT is designed to work on Windows, it does not scan or test the disk on which the operating system is installed. The utility supports external hard drives and other USB storage devices. It displays only supported hard drives in its list and shows information about them: serial number, firmware version, capacity, status.

By double-clicking on the disk, you will see its SMART status. There is also the option to select Quick Test or Ext Test. You can test one or several disks at the same time.


The Utilities button is an extended menu that appears in a separate window from the main one. From it you can select one of the additional functions of the program: clearing the partition table, disk cleanup, short test, long test, etc.

Western Digital Data Lifeguard Diagnostic (DLGDIAG) is another free hard drive diagnostic and testing program from Western Digital. Western Digital Data Lifeguard Diagnostic comes in both a PC version and a portable version.

There are also versions of the program for Windows and for DOS. The Windows version is easier to use than the DOS version, but has more limited functionality. For the DOS version of the program to work, the main (primary) disk must be WD. Both versions have the ability to wipe the hard drive.


Fujitsu Diagnostic Tool is a hard drive testing program that only works with hard drives manufactured by Fujitsu.

The program has two forms: one runs from Windows, the other works from a Floppy disk (floppy disk). The Windows version supports all versions. The DOS version works regardless of the operating system.

Both versions perform two tests: Quick Test – which will take no more than three minutes, and Comprehensive Test – in addition to the read/write test, it also checks the disk surface. The duration of the second test depends on the size of the media being scanned.


Using Windows' built-in Disk Error Checker, you can detect and fix a range of errors, from file system errors to physical errors like bad sectors.

The Check Disk Error Tool is a graphical version of a tool that runs from the command line - "chkdsk", one of the most famous commands of all versions of Windows. It is present on all modern versions of Windows, with only minor differences.

Checking the disk takes from several minutes to several hours - it all depends on the size and speed of the storage medium, as well as the number of errors detected.

Windows 10 and Windows 8 already check disks for errors automatically, but you can also run the check manually.

To run the tool, open the “This PC” folder and right-click on the drive you want to scan. From the pop-up menu, select Properties and go to the Tools tab. To start the program, click the Check button.


The “chkdsk” command is also simultaneously available on the computer, but has broader functionality. You can run it using the Command Line and it contains two functions:

chkdsk /f – detects and fixes system errors.

chkdsk /r – detects and, if possible, repairs bad disk sectors.

To do this, type the specified commands in the Command Line field and press Enter. If errors are detected, the tool will notify you and prompt you to restart your computer.

Of course, this is not a complete list of tools for diagnosing hard drives and may not even be their main representatives. In this article, we simply focused on several free utilities from hard drive manufacturers that were available to us at the moment. If necessary, we can also suggest that you pay attention to such free hard drive diagnostic tools as: HDDScan, DiskCheckup, GSmart Control, Samsung HUTIL, Bart's Stuff Test, HD Tune, EASIS Drive Check, Macrorit Disk Scanner, Ariolic Disk Scanner, etc. .