Checking the hard drive for bad sectors and bad blocks in MHDD. How to work with the MHDD program How to work with the mhdd program

MHDD is a program known for its power, designed to interact with drives at low levels. The program was created fourteen years ago by Dmitry Postrigan and since then it has become much easier to use MHDD.

MHDD is capable of scanning the surface of a drive that has an IDE interface in CHS mode. The creator dreamed of personal diagnostic equipment that would inspire confidence in users.

Today, the capabilities of the MHDD program are not limited to diagnostics. When using the MHDD utility, you can:

• Read;
• Write arbitrary sectors;
• Manage the SMART system, the password system, the system that controls the noise characteristics;
• You can even change the drive format.

On the website http://www.ihdd.ru you can find a copy of MHDD. You can download the program for use in different forms: archived and as a floppy disk with a self-extracting function.

Log/mhdd.log— the main log file created when the installed program is launched for the first time. Your future actions will be recorded on it.

So that the MHDD program reads information from some element located on the drive, you need to send a BIOS request. And the BIOS begins searching for the ports of the required drive, checks the data, and exchanges it with the drive. Then the data is returned to the operating system.

You cannot run MHDD from a drive located on an IDE cable, to which the drive under test will be connected. Data corruption will occur on both sides. Therefore the program does not interact with PRIMARY. If you need to unblock the PRIMARY channel, you need to run MHDD, exit, edit the MHDD.CFG file. (command term with the ENABLEPRIMARY key).

The program imposes certain requirements for the operation of the software:

• To the processor: Intel Pentium or the latest developments in the world of computers;
• RAM of at least 4 megabytes;
• MSDOS must be at least version 6.22;
• Boot device required (USB, HDD, CDROM, FDD).

Requirements for IDE/SATA controllers:

• Must have integration into the northbridge; PCI UDMA have automatic detection; certain RAID controllers are supported; UDMA/RAID controllers are present in the form of a microcircuit.
• Requirements for drives: IDE or Serial ATA, the volume of which exceeds 600 megabytes, but does not exceed 8388607 terabytes; SCSI drive having a sector size limited to 512 and 528 bytes.
• The drive being tested must be switched to MASTER mode.
• You can scan a device if the process is supervised by ID or EID commands (the F2 key is responsible). Type SCAN, press ENTER (F4 key). You can change settings in the menu.
• You can view the attributes by pressing SMART ATT (F8 key). You can find out the number of remapped sectors. A value greater than 50 should be alarming. You can look at the attribute showing temperature values. UDMA CRC error rate will show how many errors there are when data is transmitted over the cable.
• The HPA team is able to limit the storage volume.
• The PWD command locks the drive by setting a password.
• Using the AAM command, you can adjust the noise characteristics.
• CONFIG allows you to change the configuration.

If you want to see help on using MHDD, dedicated to all program commands, press F1. If this program does not help, try the Victoria program to analyze the disk.

HDD (hard drive) is one of the main components of any computer, because it is from here that the operating system is loaded. Therefore, the role of such a device cannot be overestimated. The stability of the system and the speed of data reading depend on the operation of the hard drive. However, as happens with other components, the hard drive can also fail at any time, which brings a lot of inconvenience to any user. There can be quite a few reasons for this, and such a device is not always repairable. But there is still the possibility of restoring the hard drive. Therefore, if you encounter such a problem, the first thing you should do is not run to the computer store and buy a new hard drive.

One of the best programs that can restore a hard drive has been considered MHDD for many years now. Every user can understand its work, which is why it has gained immense popularity. But this is not the main thing. In most cases, it really helps to restore a hard drive, and you don’t even have to pay anyone for it.

Description of the MHDD program.

MHDD is one of the most common programs that will help diagnose and also restore your hard drive. You can download it on various sites, and this can be done absolutely free, which also cannot but please users. First of all, it is worth noting that this program is suitable for most HDD interfaces, including SATA, IDE, SCSI, USB.

The first version of MHDD appeared back in 2000, and the developers were Russian specialists. At that time, the program could scan the surface of a hard drive with an IDE interface. Today, using MHDD, you can perform not only diagnostics, but also many other useful functions, including:

• reading or writing arbitrary sectors of the hard drive;
• SMART system control;
• removal of poorly performing sectors;
• cleaning the hard drive;
• changing the hard drive capacity;
• system password management;
• reduction of noise during operation of the device. This significantly reduces the speed of the HDD;
• hard drive test under maximum load.

Many users have heard about this program, but have encountered difficulties in working with it. All due to ignorance of the basics that are necessary to work with MHDD. Therefore, before you start working with this program, familiarize yourself in detail with what it is needed for and how to work with it. To do this you only need 20-30 minutes of time. If this is not done, then there is no hope of restoring the hard drives. In this case, you can only make it worse, for example, erase all content from the disk without the possibility of recovery.

The main advantage of such a program is its speed. You can run diagnostics and check your hard drive for errors in a very short period of time. Also among the advantages of MHDD is the ability to run the program from any storage medium, be it a floppy disk, disk or USB drive.

How does MHDD work?

The first step to launch this program is to go into the BIOS, where you need to change the system boot method. You need to boot from the device where you have the program itself, that is, from a disk, floppy disk or USB drive. This is done very simply, you just need to install the device you need in the First Boot Device item. For example, if you need to boot from a CD-ROM, it will look like this:

After this, save all changes and reboot the system. This will launch the MHDD program, which will first of all display a message whether the ADAPTEC drivers need to be loaded. For most cases, you don't need to download them. Therefore, select the appropriate item and proceed to the next step.

The program will give you information about the number of sectors that are on your hard drive.

The hard drive will also be assigned a specific channel number, which will be necessary for further work with MHDD. You will need to enter this number, after which you can begin working with the hard drive.

After this, you will be able to find out all the information about the hard drive, as well as get acquainted with the basic commands that will be needed to work with MHDD. To do this, you will need to press F2 and F1 respectively. Next, you can start scanning your hard drive by entering the name of the command (Scan), after which you will see this menu in front of you:

At the same time, you can start checking your hard drive, indicating from which sector and for which sector you need to perform diagnostics. You enter this data in the first two lines of the menu. All other points can be left unchanged. After this, you can start running the scan and identifying bad sectors of the hard drive; to do this, press the F4 key. It will also sometimes be useful to change the last item in the menu from Off to On. This is necessary if you have suspicions that the system itself mistakenly classifies some sectors as bad. It is almost impossible for ordinary users to determine this. With this scan, all sectors where read delays are detected will be erased.

After this, you will see the following picture in front of you, where the hard drive will be checked:

The column on the right will display the number of blocks that are read at different speeds, respectively, at speeds up to 3, up to 10, up to 50, up to 150, up to 500 and more than 500 milliseconds. An indicator of up to 150 milliseconds is considered normal. The presence of the symbols “x” and “s” indicate bad sectors of the hard drive.

The hard drive scan will take up to several hours. Everything directly depends on the size of the hard drive. After this, you will be given information about how many bad sectors were detected on the hard drive. And only after that you can begin to eliminate them. This is why the Erase Delays and Remap functions exist, which marks all bad areas of the disk and does not access them in the future. It is recommended to run Erase Delays. This way you can remove all software failures of the hard drive. And after checking using this function, you can start launching with the Remap function enabled. This way you can restore all possible areas of the hard drive and remove all bad sectors from it. Information that was located in bad sectors will be deleted.

If their number is very large, then, of course, working with such a hard drive in the future will be quite problematic due to the slow speed of reading information from it. But even this can be fixed by completely formatting the disk. In this case, the system will mark bad sectors as areas in which information does not need to be written. Accordingly, the volume of the hard drive will decrease, but you will still be able to work with it successfully.

Conclusion.

As you can see, it is still possible to restore your hard drive yourself. The MHDD program would be ideal for this. Understanding its work, as you already understood, is quite simple. Therefore, if you suddenly encounter a hard drive failure, you can use MHDD. The whole procedure will not take much of your time, and the result will pleasantly surprise you. You will find more information about data recovery in the section of the same name.

The MHDD program is a powerful tool that is designed to work with hard drives of computers, laptops, and external hard drives. Work with drives occurs at a low level.

Functions performed by the MHDD program:

• Hard drive diagnostics.
• SMART hard drive management.
• Possibility of password protection.
• Changing the sound characteristics of the hard drive.
• Changing the drive size.
• Recovery and low formatting of the hard drive surface

How to run the MHDD program

First, we need to download the program, it is publicly available to everyone and is completely free.

After you have downloaded the program, you need to write it to a flash drive; for this we will use the program. Open the downloaded image using the UltraIso program.

After we have opened our image, open the “Boot” menu item and select the “Burn disk image...” menu item.

In the window that opens, select the flash drive that we will use to record the program and click “Record”.

After recording is complete, you need to restart your computer and boot from the recorded flash drive. Don't forget to switch your controller to IDE mode, since the program only works with this type of controller. After booting from the flash drive, select the 2nd menu item and press Enter, the selection is made using the “Up”, “Down” keys.

Now we will see all available and connected hard drives to the computer. To select the desired disk, you need to enter its port number, in my case it is port No. 1.

After this, the program is ready to work with the selected hard drive. To reselect the hard drive, press the key combination “Shift” + “F3”, so you can select another drive to work with at any time without restarting the MHDD program.

The list of commands for the MHDD program can be seen by pressing the “F1” button. Press the down key to scroll through the commands.

Viewing SMART information

You can view the SMART status of your hard drive by using the “smart att” command and pressing the “F8” key after entering. Now we see the SMART information of the hard drive.

The main attributes that you should pay attention to:

Reallocated Sectors Count - this value indicates the number of sectors that have been reassigned by the hard drive, if the value in the “RAW” column is more than 50 (100), then you need to replace the hard drive, or urgently transfer all important information to another hard drive that is located in good condition.

HAD Temperature – this parameter shows the temperature of the hard drive, the normal temperature for hard drive operation varies from (Val) 20°C to (Worts) 40°C, (RAW) average value 30°C, if the value is higher, you need to think about cooling.

Ultra ATA CRC error rate - means the number of errors that occur when transmitting data over an IDE/SATA cable. The value of this attribute must be zero; if the value is greater, then you need to replace the cable, or remove the overclocking of the hard drive, if any.

By viewing the SMART of the hard drive, we can understand what state it is in and take action.

Scan your hard drive and check for errors

In order to scan the surface of the hard drive, you must use the “scan” command; when entering this command, press Enter, a window with scanning parameters will open. After selecting the desired parameters, press “F4” to start scanning.

Basic hard drive scanning parameters:

Start LBA and End LBA are parameters that specify the sector from which scanning should begin and the sector on which scanning should be completed.

Remap – this parameter will allow you to automatically reassign a bad (erroneous) sector that is detected during scanning.

Erase Delays – if you enable this option when scanning a hard drive, then when a bad (erroneous) block is detected, the program will erase such a sector. The drive will recalculate the ECC fields for each sector. This helps get rid of so-called “soft-bad” blocks, which are caused by system errors and not by physical damage to the hard drive.

If this is your first time running a hard drive scan, you must do it without activating the Remap and Erase Delays options, as these options can lead to data loss.

If the first scan detected bad sectors, you need to transfer all the information from the hard drive and scan with the Erase Delays parameter activated; to do this, when selecting scanning parameters, set this parameter to “ON” and start scanning.

After scanning with the Erase Delays parameter, we launch another scan without enabling any parameters to determine whether there are any bad sectors left. If the rescan identifies remaining bad sectors, we can be sure that this is physical damage to the hard drive, in which case it is worth resorting to a more radical solution, namely running a rescan with the Remap option enabled.

If, when you start scanning, you see that each block is detected as a bad sector, there is no point in performing low-level formatting. In this case, the surface of the hard disk or the service area is damaged; standard MHDD program tools will not be able to fix it.

Low-level formatting

You should resort to low-level formatting if you need to completely delete information from your hard drive so that it cannot be restored, since when you delete information in Windows OS, you can restore deleted files.

Or your hard drive has slowed down significantly and is running slowly, but no bad sectors are detected, then sector-by-sector erasing can restore the read and write speed of the hard drive.

In order to start formatting, enter the “erase” command and press Enter, we will be prompted to enter the block number from which we want to start formatting, and the block number on which we want to finish. If you are going to format the entire surface of the disk, then do not enter anything, since the standard suggests the first and last sector, but simply agree by pressing Enter. To start formatting, enter the value “y” and wait for completion.

Reducing storage capacity

The “hpa” command is used to reduce the storage capacity; when you enter the command, the MHDD program will ask for the new number of available sectors, enter the new number and press Enter. Also, in order to remove restrictions on reducing the size of the hard drive, use the “nhpa” command.

Password protection management

In order to install password protection on your hard drive, you must use the “pwd” command (not all hard drives support this function). Password protection is suitable for those who need to save information even if the hard drive is lost, since this protection cannot be cracked; in order to remove the password from the hard drive, the data must be completely erased. Also, when installing such protection, it will not be possible to start the system without first entering a password on the hard drive.

Please note that you will not be able to recover your password and if you lose your password, you will not be able to recover the information.

Managing hard drive noise characteristics

Now almost all modern drives support the Acoustic Management function. You can significantly reduce the noise of the hard drive when moving the head by reducing the movement speed, but at the same time the write and read speed of the hard drive will decrease. To configure this function, use the “aam” command and press Enter. Then you need to enter a value from 0 to 126, where 126 is the maximum quiet operating level, to cancel this parameter you need to enter the value “D”.

Conclusion

The MHDD program is a fairly functional solution for working with hard drives, but it is also quite dangerous, since improper use can lead to data loss or the hard drive becoming faulty. The program will allow you to work with different types of hard drives that have different controllers.

MHDD is a multifunctional program for accurate diagnosis and repair of hard drives.
The program is completely free and provides great practicality and reliability of scanning.

MHDD performs a high-quality disk check for various damages, including bads and so-called soft bads.
One of the most important advantages of the program is that it works with the hard drive at a low level, directly through the IDE controller ports.

The main features of the application are as follows:

Accurate diagnostics of the mechanical surface of the disc.
. monitoring IDE controller registers.
. high-quality use of the HPA function (reducing the volume of the hard drive).
. adjusting the noise emitted by the hard drive.
. Error logging.
. the presence of a function for completely destroying data on the hard drive without the possibility of recovery.
. HDD testing under extreme conditions.
. possibility of simultaneous testing of several hard drives.
. working with a password system on disk.

MHDD

This article was written for those who are interested and taking their first steps in the field of hard drives and is dedicated to the MHDD program and working with it.
At the time of writing, the latest version of the program was 2.9.

First of all, it should be noted that the program is universal; it works with all drives with an ATA interface, regardless of manufacturer and model.

This is explained by the fact that any interaction of an ATA hard drive with the outside world occurs through a standard set of ports and using a specific set of commands defined in the ATA standard specification (when developing all versions of which, compatibility considerations were taken into account, and thus it becomes completely unimportant which version of the interface equipped with this particular drive, and even more so the manufacturer, because when developing the drive he certainly had to be guided by the ATA standard).

The program is capable of running under pure DOS, and directly from Windows (95/98/ME).
True, when working from Windows, there are some restrictions (they are mentioned in the documentation: in this case, the drive does not need to be defined in the BIOS, and the controller on which it is installed is best disabled in Windows).

And although this option is workable, I personally still prefer to work under pure DOS, since even if everything works stably in Windows, the speed indicators obtained may not correspond to reality.
And then, Windows is still Windows...

Maybe I’m paranoid, but in “Varez” matters I try to stay away from “Windows”.
And since we mentioned controllers, it must be said that the program allows you to work with drives installed on external ATA controllers, but not in all versions.
This feature was announced in version 2.8, but version 2.9 available on the website does not have this feature.

The utility can be launched from any non-write-protected media that has some space for recording temporary files and work logs (minimum 70 KB required, 20 MB recommended).

Do not use the program from the same disk that you are diagnosing and treating, if it happens that you have only one drive (you are restoring bad things on your own and only one, for example) - use the program from a floppy disk.

The hardware part is your test machine, the program is not occupied at all: it can be anything, with an ATA controller, up to 286 (the documentation says so, I haven’t tried it myself, since I only have 386 available, but in theory it should) .

After startup, if there is more than one drive in the system, we are prompted to select the one we want to work with.

A hint about the main commands of the program will be displayed on the screen.

Having initialized the selected drive by clicking, we get comprehensive information about it:

Model name; logical disk geometry (logical number of cylinders/heads/sectors per track);
- serial number; microcode version;
- number of blocks addressed via LBA;
- supported ATA functions and maximum supported mode; SMART status (whether it is enabled);
- security system status (hardware password enabled/disabled);
- full size of the hard drive; the result of passing the main tests.

Some of this information is displayed in the second line from the top on the screen and is visible during operation.

In addition, the status of the disk and its use at a given time is indicated by indicators in the very top line.

They carry the following information:

BUSY- the drive is busy and does not respond to commands;
WRFT- recording error;
DREQ- the drive wants to exchange data with the outside world;
ERR- an error occurred as a result of some operation.

When this bit lights up, look at the top right of the screen.
The type of the last error will be displayed there: (valid only when the “ERR” light is on):

AMNF- Address Mark Not Found - Addressing a specific sector failed.

The likely cause is damage to this sector, damage to its identification fields (this is mentioned here).
But immediately after turning on the drive, on the contrary, it indicates the absence of problems and reports the successful completion of internal diagnostics;

T0NF- Track 0 Not Found - zero track was not found;
ABRT- Abort, command rejected;
IDNF- Sector ID Not found;
UNCR- Uncorrectable Error - Error not corrected by ECC code.

There is probably a logical bad block in this place (this was discussed here).

In addition to these, two more indicators may light up at the top - P.W.D.- signaling the installed hardware password, and HPA- if the drive size was changed using the “HPA” command (usually used to hide bad blocks at the end of the disk).

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Everything breaks down someday, and the hard drive is no exception. If your hard drive is faulty, then you should check it with the MHDD program. Previously, we looked at what factors can affect the performance of a computer and what hard drive errors exist.

MHDD is one of the most popular free programs for thorough diagnostics and self-repair of your drive. In this article we will look at how to restore functionality using this program.

Checking the hard drive with MHDD

Attention - you carry out all manipulations at your own peril and risk, since using this utility can harm the drive and all the information on it.

First, you should download the program image to burn onto a flash drive or CD. To do this, download the archive with the program from the official website: download MHDD for free.

Unpack the file and burn the disk image in any way convenient for you. I used one of the most popular programs Ultra ISO.

Restart your computer, enter the BIOS and select boot from a flash drive or any other drive on which you have the MHDD program stored.

You will see a program screen with a choice of download options. The first item is for owners of a SCSI controller; by default, the checkbox is on the second item. In our case, press Enter.

On the next screen we have to choose which hard drive to work with. Pay attention to the list of devices and enter the number with which the disk is signed. In our case, we have one disk in the system.

Let's start diagnosing the disk. To do this, call up the menu with the F4 button to identify the presence of bad sectors. Press F4 again and start the diagnostic process.

On the left you will see a disk map that displays the blocks currently being scanned by the program. If MHDD finds a bad one, it will mark it with a red X or green S.

If you find bad blocks, immediately copy all important data from the drive, since errors on the hard drive lead to the loss of all information, and the process of getting rid of Bad blocks involves completely wiping the disk.

If there is important information on the disk, it is worth repeating the scan with the command Erase Delays, which will erase all bad sectors. Otherwise you should use Erase for complete removal and cleaning.

If after all this there are still red bads on the hard drive, use the command Remap, however, it is better to immediately think about buying a new hard drive.