Hardware chkdsk for Console HDDs better alternative ?

[BestNoob]

As you know the old gaming consoles still use HDDs and those have from time to time defective sectors. And that cause slow system speed, crashes etc.
So you should check HDDs every 3 Years (or every year) to get shure that ure system is running well.

Now Windows has as tool chkdsk but what about the speed and efficience ? I think its way to slow .... what about 6GB/s SATA ? I dont feel this speed when i use chkdsk.

Is there a better tool to check and repair HDDs or will one of you guys write one ?

Normally you use chkdsk X: /f /r via Windows CMD.

Spoiler: What are defective sectors and is there a way to repair those ?

Physical bad sectors
Unlike logical bad sectors, there is little chance of physical bad sectors appearing on your hard drive. If there are some physical bad sectors or hard bad sectors on the hard disk, neither the operating system nor the disk controller can access them, nor can read and write operations of any kind be performed.
Generally, the physical bad sectors are caused by shock or sudden power failure while using the hard drive.
How can I remove a bad sector from my hard drive?
There are two types of bad sectors - logical bad sectors and physical bad sectors. If there are some logical bad sectors on your hard drive, you can run CHKDSK and then format them. If there are some physical bad sectors, there is no viable solution.
Can CHKDSK fix bad sectors?
CHKDSK scans every sector on a disk volume to look for bad sectors and attempts to repair logical/slightly bad sectors and mark physical/hard bad sectors so that they are no longer used.

Greeds

 

[KleinesSinchen]

As you know the old gaming consoles still use HDDs and those have from time to time defective sectors. And that cause slow system speed, crashes etc.
So you should check HDDs every 3 Years (or every year) to get shure that ure system is running well.

Now Windows has as tool chkdsk but what about the speed and efficience ? I think its way to slow .... what about 6GB/s SATA ? I dont feel this speed when i use chkdsk.

Is there a better tool to check and repair HDDs or will one of you guys write one ?

Normally you use chkdsk X: /f /r via Windows CMD.


Greeds

Assuming consoles using an unencrypted file system which is understood by Microsoft Windows and the chkdsk tool…
Please don't throw together things like the bus speed (SATA 6Gb/s) and the speed of an actual HDD – let alone an older one in an older console. While SSDs have long left this top speed (6Gb/s) behind and consequently get connected to newer interfaces than SATA III, the same can't be said for classic HDDs.

Checking for so-called bad sectors is – to my knowledge – pretty antiquated. The last time I experienced bad sectors visible to OS tools was on a HDD was a 500MB drive from 1994. Newer HDDs should automatically reassign (reallocate) bad sectors from a pool of reserve sectors. This can be seen with any tool reading SMART attributes.


The SMART functionality allows for self-test as well (drive stays available at reduced performance), but it can take quite long. This is independent from the OS and comes near to the what old scandisk on MS-DOS did in the 1980s and early 1990s.

(My computer does the quick self-test of all HDDs automatically pretty much every day. No idea why, but it does no harm and takes only a minute. As you see the full test takes a whole day. The short test is only to identify almost completely dead drives.)

In any case, a function for surface scan (or whatever checking utilities might call them) requires writing and reading each block of a disk. On Linux systems there is the badblocks utility, (to my knowledge the test is destructive overwriting the HDD!!). I never used such things since leaving MS-DOS behind – "surface scan" takes ages on current drives. But I did encounter HDDs with a non-zero value of reallocation event. Those HDDs died shortly after starting to lose sectors.

 

[gdavies]

I have found hard drive regenerator to be good solid software for fixing bad sectors if needed, it is time consuming but it does do the job

 

[AncientBoi]

I forgot all about chkdsk. I just might run it on both my PC and Laptop.

Eitherway, Thanks for the Idea

 

[Psionic Roshambo]

If it's truely an ancient console like the original Xbox or PS2 or something the hard drives are mostly likely small enough to back up to a PC, make a backup and restore it as needed. On the plus side I think they are doing things with IDE and SD card adapters so as long as you power them on from time to time you should be fine.

 

[AncientBoi]

I forgot all about chkdsk. I just might run it on both my PC and Laptop.

Eitherway, Thanks for the Idea

[update] Doing so, has had a slight impact on the speed on my slow laptop for the better. Thanks

 

[tech3475]

If it's truely an ancient console like the original Xbox or PS2 or something the hard drives are mostly likely small enough to back up to a PC, make a backup and restore it as needed. On the plus side I think they are doing things with IDE and SD card adapters so as long as you power them on from time to time you should be fine.

Yes and no.

They both use proprietary filesystems and in the case of the Xbox also lock the HDD on a stock BIOS.

So you'd have to take this into consideration, in terms of dumping, restoring and locking in the case of the Xbox unless you have a modchip or reflashed BIOS.

 

[eyeliner]

Diskpart
Use the command: Clean

All your troubles will be resolved.

 

[KleinesSinchen]

Diskpart
Use the command: Clean

All your troubles will be resolved.

You missed the EOF. Such comments are neither needed nor creative nor funny.

 

[eyeliner]

You missed the EOF. Such comments are neither needed nor creative nor funny.

What do you mean? It is a perfectly valid and worthwhile comment. For me, it's the best tool for the job.

And I find my comment hysterical.