Smart Defrag Bug? Corrupting my hard drive

[mheppner08]

Awhile ago, I decided to use Smart Defrag. Advanced System Care 3 is such a great product, so I decided to give Smart Defrag a try. I analyzed my hard drive and decided to use the "deep optimize" option. After about half an hour of it doing nothing, I pressed cancel and went with "fast optimize." It began to defragment and work its magic. After a few hours, it finished.

 

Here's where the problem came. When I noticed some strange start-up/shut-down behavior (mainly it being extremely slow), I performed a check disk. It said there were 4 kb in bad sectors. I ran a full check disk on a reboot and it fixed the sectors. After that, it would not shut down at all. It would just stick on the "shutting down" screen, but it would never go. I kept running complete check disks via the command prompt in Windows Recovery. It kept fixing bad sectors, but the same 4 kb would always reappear.

 

I ended up calling Dell and having to get a new hard drive, which was under warranty. I've had this hard drive for about 2 months and I have never had any problems. I run Vista's check disk every few weeks and I never have problems. I decided to use Smart Defrag again, figuring my last problem was caused by something else. I used the "deep optimize" option, but I still ran into the exact same problem of it not doing anything.

 

I now have 4 kb in bad sectors...AGAIN. This is probably the start of yet another hard drive failing. Check disk doesn't seem to really fix anything, no matter how many times I run it. Does this mean there is a (serious) bug in Smart Defrag that is causing this?

 

I am running Windows Vista Home Premium and using the most recent version of Smart Defrag. My last hard drive was a 320 GB Western Digital and now it is a Toshiba. There are no similarities between what I did before and what I did now, except for running Smart Defrag with the "deep optimize" option selected, and then canceling it.

 

Could check disk be reporting something false? Did Smart Defrag just move something incorrectly and somehow Windows reads it as a bad sector? Is there any way to fix this, besides getting a new hard drive?

[solbjerg]

Hi mheppner

How long did you wait? What had the Analysis said? Did you close it by restarting your computer or by pulling the plug? This last action could be responsible for the bad sector in my opinion.

If it is rather fragmented and you want to run a deep optimize, - it will take quite a while before any action is seen on the screen, also your disks are fairly large.

Cheers

solbjerg

 

 

Awhile ago, I decided to use Smart Defrag. Advanced System Care 3 is such a great product, so I decided to give Smart Defrag a try. I analyzed my hard drive and decided to use the "deep optimize" option. After about half an hour of it doing nothing, I pressed cancel and went with "fast optimize." It began to defragment and work its magic. After a few hours, it finished.

 

Here's where the problem came. When I noticed some strange start-up/shut-down behavior (mainly it being extremely slow), I performed a check disk. It said there were 4 kb in bad sectors. I ran a full check disk on a reboot and it fixed the sectors. After that, it would not shut down at all. It would just stick on the "shutting down" screen, but it would never go. I kept running complete check disks via the command prompt in Windows Recovery. It kept fixing bad sectors, but the same 4 kb would always reappear.

 

I ended up calling Dell and having to get a new hard drive, which was under warranty. I've had this hard drive for about 2 months and I have never had any problems. I run Vista's check disk every few weeks and I never have problems. I decided to use Smart Defrag again, figuring my last problem was caused by something else. I used the "deep optimize" option, but I still ran into the exact same problem of it not doing anything.

 

I now have 4 kb in bad sectors...AGAIN. This is probably the start of yet another hard drive failing. Check disk doesn't seem to really fix anything, no matter how many times I run it. Does this mean there is a (serious) bug in Smart Defrag that is causing this?

 

I am running Windows Vista Home Premium and using the most recent version of Smart Defrag. My last hard drive was a 320 GB Western Digital and now it is a Toshiba. There are no similarities between what I did before and what I did now, except for running Smart Defrag with the "deep optimize" option selected, and then canceling it.

 

Could check disk be reporting something false? Did Smart Defrag just move something incorrectly and somehow Windows reads it as a bad sector? Is there any way to fix this, besides getting a new hard drive?

[hedgemon56]

Same Problem on my PC (small 60G HDD)

 

I have had the same corruption happen when I used deep optimze... I was able to fix with norton and several other disk repair programs and a sytem restore... BUT ... now smart defrag runs very slow... I am only using "defrag only" or "analyze".. takes several days to get to 31% on analyze.

[Melvin_Deal]

Other issues at hand.

 

Dear hedgemon56 and mostly mheppner08 (after reflection and my edit),

 

Thank you for coming here! You are always welcome and I hope you both come back to view the reflections of our members!

 

There has to be another software issue involved here. Symantic(Norton) isn't in the disk repair business... or defrag business! Smart defrag is very ironed out.

Could you post a system log here so we can see whats running?

 

That may be helpfull!

 

 

 

"my edit" :If the Dell machine hard disk was under warranty and you replaced it. Q1 did you do this yourself?? Q2 What is your operating system? Q3 Hard disk failure again is not likely, what other ideas do you have? Please post log!!

[MikeS]

Smart Defrag Bug? Corrupting my hard drive

 

It looks like this problem has reappeared with SMART DEFRAG 2. The hard disks on both my Laptop and Desktop have both been corrupted with a few days of each other and and niether can boot.

[Winbird]

Hard Drive Bad Sectors

 

Hi All

This is my fist post so I hope I used the correct thread to reply to.

 

First off I am very impressed with Advanced Systemcare and its products.

 

I run Windows 7 Professional on a Lenovo Thinkpad SL500. About a year ago I replaced my hard drive with a 500 gig. Since replacement I do not move my laptop around and use it as a desk top – being on pension and nowhere to go (lol). I do however use it 24/7. I bought a cooler fan stand to keep it cool.

 

My laptop started to run slower and slower until I started making use of ASC and using all its various programs. This made it nice and fast again. My problem is with my hard drive. I got the blue screen of death several times but not very serious until the last time when I could not start my laptop or see my local drive. After research I found this interesting comment on the web:

In the old days, you could "mark" bad disk sectors so that they wouldn't be used.

Nowadays, the disk is managed by a microcontroller on the drive itself, and that microcontroller keeps track of bad sectors and "swaps in" good sectors from a reserve pool. It works great as long as there are sectors left in the reserve pool.

But when that "reserve pool" is depleted, the OS churns along and merrily tries to write to bad sectors.

 

I am busy with a large project for a company and loaded a lot of data on my hard drive leaving about 100 gig free space. So I immediately went and removed about 20 gig from my hard drive. This left me with about 120 gig free space. I then run Disk Doctor. It picked up error and after reboot corrected it. I then ran Smart Defrag 2 and after that once again Disk Doctor. To my surprise Disk Doctor picked up errors again. Could it be that during defrag it moved files onto bad sectors? I rebooted and corrected these. I then removed about 110 gig from my hard drive. Removing meaning also from the recycle bin. This is where I am at the moment.

 

I would appreciate advice on how to proceed from here. Do I run Disk Doctor first and then defrag or only Disk Doctor? Or whatever.

 

My concern is now even more after reading this on the web:

http://www.pagestart.com/win7chkdskbs01.html

 

Drive format refresher course:

There are two types of formats, ‘Full’ or ‘Quick’ for creating NTFS partitions. The disadvantage of a ‘Quick’ format is that bad sectors are not identified therefore they can not be mapped out. With a ‘Quick’ format only the MFT is created for the partition and it is assumed the partition does not have any sector issues.

 

The advantage of performing a ‘Full’ format when a drive is being prepared for use is that if a bad sector is detected it is mapped out and a spare sector is mapped in to replace the defective sector or sectors. This remapping information is stored in the NTFS partition’s Master File Table (MFT) so there is no chance of writing a file to the defective sector. Note that all drive manufactures have an area located on the drive which contains spare sectors if they are needed.

 

Windows 7 only performs a ‘Quick’ format:

The Windows 7 installation software however is only capable of performing a ‘Quick’ format when performing a “Custom” install. You have the option to create partitions, however you do not have a choice of ‘Full’ or ‘Quick’, its Quick only. Therefore should the drive contain one or more bad sectors in an area utilized by Windows 7 during the install process you can expect to encounter any number of problems such as error messages, freezing and failing to complete or even crashing.

For anyone else reading this article you need to locate that bad sector and hope that you can shrink the Windows 7 partition so that the bad sector is now part of and located in the drive’s unallocated space. This may require that you defragment the hard drive using software utilities like ‘MyDefrag’ and ‘PerfectDisk’ which have the ability to move the Windows files up to the front of the partition and also perform a boot time defrag required to move the existing MFT area closer the front of the Windows partition. For the partition shrink operation to have the best results no files should be located near the end of a partition as it will severely limit how much you are able to shrink the partition.

My further question obviously is does ASC have a program that can do this as recommended.

 

Many thanks in advance.

[solbjerg]

Hi Winbird

My suggestion would be to run the command chkdsk /r

Notice the space before /

One should run a chkdsk fairly often I think, to be sure that bad sectors are identified.

This way bad sectors will be identified and will not be used again.

I doubt that your problems have anything to do with SmartDefrag

How to use chkdsk in Windows 7 - try reading this link:

http://www.w7forums.com/threads/how-to-use-chkdsk-check-disk.448/

Cheers

solbjerg

 

 

Hi All

This is my fist post so I hope I used the correct thread to reply to.

 

First off I am very impressed with Advanced Systemcare and its products.

 

I run Windows 7 Professional on a Lenovo Thinkpad SL500. About a year ago I replaced my hard drive with a 500 gig. Since replacement I do not move my laptop around and use it as a desk top – being on pension and nowhere to go (lol). I do however use it 24/7. I bought a cooler fan stand to keep it cool.

 

My laptop started to run slower and slower until I started making use of ASC and using all its various programs. This made it nice and fast again. My problem is with my hard drive. I got the blue screen of death several times but not very serious until the last time when I could not start my laptop or see my local drive. After research I found this interesting comment on the web:

 

 

I am busy with a large project for a company and loaded a lot of data on my hard drive leaving about 100 gig free space. So I immediately went and removed about 20 gig from my hard drive. This left me with about 120 gig free space. I then run Disk Doctor. It picked up error and after reboot corrected it. I then ran Smart Defrag 2 and after that once again Disk Doctor. To my surprise Disk Doctor picked up errors again. Could it be that during defrag it moved files onto bad sectors? I rebooted and corrected these. I then removed about 110 gig from my hard drive. Removing meaning also from the recycle bin. This is where I am at the moment.

 

I would appreciate advice on how to proceed from here. Do I run Disk Doctor first and then defrag or only Disk Doctor? Or whatever.

 

My concern is now even more after reading this on the web:

http://www.pagestart.com/win7chkdskbs01.html

 

 

My further question obviously is does ASC have a program that can do this as recommended.

 

Many thanks in advance.

[Winbird]

Hard Drive bad Sectors

 

Hi Solbjerg

Thank you very much for your speedy reply and giving the advice that worked. I ran the chkdsk and it only finished now and the reason for only replying now.

 

I were under the impression that Disk Doctor ran the /r option but with the /r there are 5 parts whilst with Disk Doctor there is ony 3. It has now marked 32 sectors as bad - 8 new ones.

 

Winbird

[solbjerg]

hi Winbird

Glad to hear it.

Hope your machine works now

The chkdsk /f is not as thorough as chkdsk /r

I often takes some time to run the /r version, but it should be used once in a while, I think.

Cheers

solbjerg

 

 

Hi Solbjerg

Thank you very much for your speedy reply and giving the advice that worked. I ran the chkdsk and it only finished now and the reason for only replying now.

 

I were under the impression that Disk Doctor ran the /r option but with the /r there are 5 parts whilst with Disk Doctor there is ony 3. It has now marked 32 sectors as bad - 8 new ones.

 

Winbird

[Winbird]

Bad Hard Drive sectors

 

Hi Solbjerg

 

I am sure this was my problem. The files in these 8 new bad sectors was the files I were working with. I think every time I hit one of them I got the blue screen. My laptop is now very responsive and fast - just like when it was new.

 

I think anyone that install Windows 7 for the first time should run chkdsk /r just to ensure that all bad ssectors on the disc is marked as the quick format does not do it.

 

I have learned somthing new.

 

Thanks

 

Johann

[solbjerg]

Hi Winbird

Thank you very much for your feedback.

Nice to know that your machine is working fine.

I myself run chkdsk /r at least 6 times a year as a preemptive measure.

I use a XP OS on an around 10-12 year old machine and also have about 30-some bad sectors. But the computer is still running fine and my SpeedFan program gives me a fine report that only tells me to watch the developement of the Hours on Count and advises me to get a new harddisk if this reading is getting worse. So I suppose that I will buy a new computer when support for XP runs out in half a year.

Geniet jou dag (have a genial day)

Cheers

solbjerg

 

 

Hi Solbjerg

 

I am sure this was my problem. The files in these 8 new bad sectors was the files I were working with. I think every time I hit one of them I got the blue screen. My laptop is now very responsive and fast - just like when it was new.

 

I think anyone that install Windows 7 for the first time should run chkdsk /r just to ensure that all bad ssectors on the disc is marked as the quick format does not do it.

 

I have learned somthing new.

 

Thanks

 

Johann