Computer Questions Not Worth Their Own Thread II

[aimeeandbeatles]

Question: My tertiary hard drive is failing (bad sectors and bad noises). I've gotten the most important files off it and I'm getting a replacement for it. Until it arrives, would it be a good idea to unmount it to prevent Windows from accessing it any more than it needs to?

(Please quote this message so I see the response, or I might forget I posted over here )

 

[Michkov]

Question: My tertiary hard drive is failing (bad sectors and bad noises). I've gotten the most important files off it and I'm getting a replacement for it. Until it arrives, would it be a good idea to unmount it to prevent Windows from accessing it any more than it needs to?

(Please quote this message so I see the response, or I might forget I posted over here )

If it's making funny noises, separate it from the machine. Unplug it, remove it from the machine store it somewhere safe until it comes to taking the date off. Mind the transfer is going to put the old HD through an exercise once more, so you want to get all that is important to you off first should it fail in the process.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

I can do that. I just check to make sure I got everything I need off first.

I was worried that spinning it back up might cause more issues but then I just realized I have to turn the computer off to put the new drive in anyways.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

When I get the new drive, is there anything special I should do to test things before I start copying things to it?

 

[Michkov]

Get everything set up before you plug in the old drive, you want it running as short as possible if failure is imminent. You'll need to format the new drive before you can put any data on it, that can take some time.

Apart from that I dont think there is much that could go wrong if all that is being copied are files. At worst it fails and the new drive is corrupted, but not beyond what a fresh formatting cant fix. But someone correct me on this if I'm wrong.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

That's good to know.

Seeing as most drives fail when they're either brand-new or completely worn out, I think running a standard chkdsk after formatting it should give me early warning of any problems. I believe HDDScan also has some read/write tests so I might look into that.

 

[Lemon Merchant]

Get everything set up before you plug in the old drive, you want it running as short as possible if failure is imminent. You'll need to format the new drive before you can put any data on it, that can take some time.

Apart from that I dont think there is much that could go wrong if all that is being copied are files. At worst it fails and the new drive is corrupted, but not beyond what a fresh formatting cant fix. But someone correct me on this if I'm wrong.

On the new drive, you can delete the corrupted files, unlike a broken drive.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

If I run into problems copying the files over, I plan to try Roadkil's Unstoppable Copier (which is designed to copy files from bad drives).

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

I've got the drive installed and am having no problem copying files from my old drive.

I'm going to wait a few weeks to see if I have any problems with the new drive. If there's no problems, I'm considering turning the new drive into my main data drive D: since it's bigger.

What's the best way to do this without disruption?

I have a few programs and application data that runs off D:, but I'm assuming if I copy (not move) everything over then use disk management to swap the letters around, it should work. Unless somebody else has a better idea.

 

[Michkov]

That sounds about how I did it when I replaced my old HD. Not sure how you'd go about keeping the old and new in sync while running them both. I just removed the old drive after copying was done so I never had the problem myself.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

I have an older application. It works surprisingly well on Windows 10, except that it was designed for far smaller resolutions and thus all the UI and text elements are pretty tiny. Aside from breaking out a magnifier or applying scaling to literally everything, is there anything I can do?

 

[Synobun]

I have an older application. It works surprisingly well on Windows 10, except that it was designed for far smaller resolutions and thus all the UI and text elements are pretty tiny. Aside from breaking out a magnifier or applying scaling to literally everything, is there anything I can do?

I thought there was a program which could force-change resolutions but my quick search didn't come up with anything.

I did find this, however: https://superuser.com/questions/632031/change-windows-resolution-for-certain-program

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

I know that defragging an SSD just wears it out faster. But what happens if you use TRIM on an HDD?

(I use Defraggler to defrag specific files. For some reason it thinks my new Seagate Barracuda is a SSD. I can still defrag after some warning prompts, but the default option is 'optimize' which as I understand is TRIM.)

 

[Lemon Merchant]

Some Barracudas are part SSD, therefore the TRIM option would be best. You should check your model numbers and find out if your drive is indeed a hybrid.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

I looked up my drive model. I didn't see anything about it being a hybrid but found some stuff about it using some sort of shingled writing mode. I'm not sure I understand it.

 

[Lemon Merchant]

I wonder why Windows is treating it as an SSD then? Weird.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Windows itself properly detects it as an HDD.

There's a glitch with Defraggler incorrectly detecting drives as wrong types. Except that the glitch also occurred in WinContig.

UltraDefrag doesn't seem to have the problem, but I don't see a good way to defragment single file/folders in it without a shell extension.

 

[Michkov]

I know that defragging an SSD just wears it out faster. But what happens if you use TRIM on an HDD?

(I use Defraggler to defrag specific files. For some reason it thinks my new Seagate Barracuda is a SSD. I can still defrag after some warning prompts, but the default option is 'optimize' which as I understand is TRIM.)

This used to be the case in early SSDs. Where every read write cylce would wear the memory a bit, I believe this problem has been largely overcome. That said due to the nature how you access memory on a SSD defragging them is pointless anyway.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

That's good to know.

New question: Can someone explain shingled magnetic recording to me? I'm having a bad day and can't really understand the Wikipedia article.

 

[Lemon Merchant]

That's good to know.

New question: Can someone explain shingled magnetic recording to me? I'm having a bad day and can't really understand the Wikipedia article.

Conventional hard disk drives record data by writing non-overlapping magnetic tracks parallel to each other (perpendicular recording), while shingled recording writes new tracks that overlap part of the previously written magnetic track, leaving the previous track narrower and allowing for higher track density. Thus, the tracks partially overlap similar to roof shingles.

I think this quote actually says it all. The HDD basically writes half of a track over an old track so that two tracks take up the same space under the recording head as a regular track does. Since the recording head is the same size it always has been, it reads two tracks at once (and writes). The firmware in the HDD knows how to handle this if it is device managed, otherwise it is left to the operating system to handle the ins and outs of disk writing and reading.

The reason they do it would be to get more storage in a limited disk space, though I doubt you would see this technology on anything smaller than a 4 GB hard disk (Seagates especially)

Does that make sense?