Mhdd disk formatting. We check and repair the hard drive with MHDD. Batch Run Commands in MHDD
Before issuing this command, issue the UNLOCK command
RPM Change spindle speed(operation of this procedure is not guaranteed)
Ff Burn disk sectors. Data for recording is taken from the specified file
Aam Set the noise characteristics of the drive
MAKEBAD BAD-block generation. It does not work on all drives
Randombad Generation of poor blocks randomly scattering them on the surface
Init Reset and Recalibration
Fdisk Make one partition on the entire disk. Only MBR changes
SMART / SMART system management and attribute viewing
STOP / Stop spindle
I / Send ID commands, then INIT
ERASE Selective erase sectors or complete erase the surface (low-level formatting)
To erase directly, bypassing the BIOS, you can disable the drive in the BIOS settings, or erase with the option / DISABLEBIOS.This parameter does not affect the erase rate.
FASTERASE Wipe surface at maximum speed (password system is used)
TOF Reading disk sectors to a file
Quite often, you can pay attention to the fact that users are afraid and do not know how to properly work with the MHDD program. It is for this reason that it is worth considering several practical recommendations on how to use this program and where its functions may be useful.
Today, MHDD is the most popular free utility designed for low-level diagnostics of various hard drives. It is worth noting that the program was developed by a domestic specialist Dmitry Postrigan. Using this utility, users can conduct full-fledged diagnostics of the mechanical part of the drive, view all kinds of SMART attributes, as well as engage in the so-called low-level formatting, correcting defective sectors. In addition, the program also contains a large number of other functions, but mostly experts and ordinary users download it specifically for these procedures.
What kind of program is this?
Since the utility is free, you can download it directly from the official site. MHDD works on the basis of the DOS operating system, and at the same time on the author’s site you can download not only the utility itself, but also images of a bootable floppy disk or CD. In addition, there is detailed documentation of authorship of the developer, as well as answers to questions that most often arise for users of this program.
MHDD is a fairly powerful tool with which you can not only restore a faulty drive, but also “finish” it, so you need to use it wisely and always understand what exactly you can achieve by performing certain actions. The author himself says that MHDD is an extremely powerful, and therefore potentially dangerous program, and no one can be held responsible for any damage that will be caused by its use in the process of working with a computer. First of all, this warning applies to any information that you store on the tested hard drive, because before you run any utilities, you must correctly understand what exactly they can do with this device and what consequences may be due to use of certain commands. In particular, for this reason, it is recommended that you first completely copy all the data from your media to some other hard drive or USB flash drive.
How does this program work?
Immediately it should be said that in the process of its operation MHDD does not use any BIOS functions or interrupts. Thus, the drive does not even have to be detected by your BIOS Setup, and it will be possible to turn on the device after the program and MSDOS are activated, because the utility functions directly with the hard disk registers and in no way reacts to any little things like file systems, partitions, and BIOS restrictions on your computer.
It is worth noting that certain defective devices, when trying to determine them in the BIOS, cause the system to freeze, as a result of which you simply cannot boot. Also, do not forget that the BIOS, which is used in a large number of old-style motherboards, cannot correctly determine the parameters of the hard drive if its volume is more than 130 GB. If this situation applies to you, then in the Standart BIOS Setup section you will need to disable the function of determining which drive you are going to test with this program.
If, having done the above procedures, you still couldn’t get rid of the hang when determining the drive and starting your operating system, then the drive will already be connected after the program loads. Of course, such operations should be carried out quite carefully, and ideally, a specialized dual switch should be used in the drive's power circuit, with which it will be possible to supply power through the +12 and +5 volts circuits.
The most important thing to remember is that the program should in no case run on the drive that you are going to test. In this case, you should not even use drives connected to the same IDE cable to which this device is connected, because in the end you can provoke serious damage in the data that is located on each hard drive. For this reason, with standard settings, MHDD will not work with the PRIMARY channel, because in the vast majority of users users use it to place their hard drives. In addition, in order to achieve safe operation of this program, it does not provide for the possibility of working with those drives that are in SLAVE mode.
To unlock the PRIMARY channel, you should first start the program, then exit it and edit the created file called MHDD.CFG. You can also use the key on the command line / ENABLEPRIMARY, which is a simpler solution to this issue. It will be most optimal to use a special 3.5-inch drive, flash drive or some kind of disk to download this utility.
Preparatory Settings
After you have completely finished all the preparatory activities, you can try to activate this utility. It’s worth mentioning right away that it will be much easier to get used to this program for those people who are approximately familiar with the internal arrangement of modern hard drives. If this is the first time you are running this utility, you should immediately understand that you will need to spend about several hours or even days in order to start receiving meaningful results from its use. For this reason, it is strongly recommended that you first test the drive on which there are definitely no defects before you start working with faulty devices.
How to scan a device?
To begin with, in the list that opens, you should select the device that you are going to scan. After the device is selected, you can press the key F1 and start using any commands you need for this program. Once again, it is worth noting that in the process of working with the MHDD program you should be as careful as possible, especially if you are working with the utility for the first time - check once again the correctness of the prescribed command, as well as whether you really know how it should be used and what result will give you in the end.
If you are currently a novice user of this program, we recommend that you first familiarize yourself with such commands as SCAN,STOPEid, Cx AND TOF. It is worth noting that some of them can be caused by keyboard shortcuts or simply assigned to certain hot keys. Thus, for example, using the F4 button, you can immediately start scanning the system for errors. Special attention should be paid to registers, the status of which is constantly displayed at the top of the screen. Any SATA or IDE device must necessarily display DRIVE SEEK COMPLETE ( DRSC), as well as DRIVE READY ( DRDY).
Check box BUSY says that at the moment the drive is performing a certain operation (it is reading or writing some data). Some flags are similar To0Nf or WRFT are outdated, so you should not see them while working with this utility. Also among them is the flag INDX, however, in some situations, the program still displays it. When a check box is displayed Dreq you can determine that the disk is requesting permission to transmit any information.
If the check box appears while working with this utility Err, then in this case you should carefully analyze the error register, and at the same time you should understand what type of error can occur when working with a hard drive. See the documentation for this program in order to understand which commands can be used, how to work with registers, and also to identify the main types of errors.
To view detailed information about your hard drive, you can use the commands ID and Eid. Using these commands, you can view detailed information about the operation of this drive, that is, its brand and serial number.
You can scan a particular hard drive only if it is determined using the above commands or after pressing the button F2. To conduct a full-fledged scanning procedure, you should press the command SCAN and click on the button ENTER(default hotkey F4) It is worth noting that initially a menu is opened in which, if desired, it will be possible to change certain settings, since by default the initial sector is zero, while the final one is equal to the maximum possible. Any functions that may be destructive with respect to information on the drive are initially turned off.
How is scanning done?
The scanning procedure using MHDD is carried out by blocks, and if we are talking about SATA or IDE drives, then each block includes 255 sectors. The diagnostic procedure itself is as follows:
- The program uses the command VerifySECTORS, marking it with the LBA number (the number of a specific sector), as well as the number of sectors in the form of parameters.
- The drive raises the above flag BUSY.
- MHDD activates the timer.
- After the hard drive executes the command indicated to it, the BUSY flag will be omitted.
- MHDD determines the time it took for the hard drive to complete the procedure, after which the corresponding block with the results is displayed. If any bad sectors have been identified, then they will be marked with the corresponding letter.
It is worth noting that all steps are repeated until the utility checks all sectors. If you want to get a detailed protocol of the scan, it can always be easily found in a file called log / mhdd.log. In the event that any errors were identified during the procedure, you should immediately copy all the information from this drive to a new device.
After that, it will already be possible to conduct a complete surface erasure using the command ERASEwhich will completely wipe every sector of the device. In other words, low-level formatting is carried out, after which any attempts to restore information will no longer be possible, but which will allow you in some cases to return the drive to a usable state.
In order to speed up this procedure, you can use the command with the option enabled Erasewaits, but it is worth noting that only the block that contains one or several bad sectors will be erased. Due to this, you can completely eliminate all kinds of soft-bad blocks that are a result of damage to the surface of the device and often arise due to all kinds of failures in the power supply of your drive, its overheating or too much vibration during operation.
If after erasing the hard drive did not start working normally, then in this case you should start a rescan, but with the REMAP function turned on. Thus, the hard drives that were often read without failures in some areas are already starting to determine a large number of all kinds of bad sectors and errors. This indicates that the surface was damaged, and it will not work to fix this damage. Often such hard drives are unsuitable for further use, and storing data on them is at least unsafe.
How to analyze the results?
If red blocks were found during the diagnostic process, you should understand that such a situation is unacceptable for a completely healthy device. If there are such sectors, you should immediately perform a complete erase of the entire surface of the disk, but if this did not help to cope with the problem, you can only conclude that the use of this device has become insufficiently reliable. All kinds of alphanumeric blocks, such as S or x are also unacceptable, as they indicate the presence of downed sectors.
If a letter begins to appear during the scan W then this indicates that the procedure is carried out when the EraseWaits mode is on, and in this section one block was completely erased due to an error in reading some sector. Moreover, if this letter appears again and again in a certain area, this indicates the presence of a bad sector.
The appearance of blue blocks indicates the enabled function Remapwhich has been used specifically for this section. The drive replaced the bad sector with a good one, which was previously located in the backup area, as a result of which the problem will not appear here.
MHDD and password management
The ATA / ATAPI standard provides the ability to use passwords on the drive, but in order to get a really correct password, the device will completely ignore any user attempts to read data or write to the hard drive. To lock the drive with a specialized password, you should use the command Pwd. In accordance with this standard, you will first need to restart the work of this hard drive so that your changes will start working.
MHDD provides for the use of two commands that completely unlock the work of your hard drive - these are DISPWD and UNLOCK. The latter is intended to unlock the ability to work with the drive exactly until it is turned off once. To completely deactivate the use of a password system, you should first activate this command, and then use DISPWD, but at the same time it is worth mentioning that you must know the password for its further use for your own purposes. In addition, do not forget that hard drive manufacturers also use the so-called master passwords, with which you can also unlock the operation of your device.
Commands for reading sectors
You can read an entire disk or several specific sectors into a specific file or created set of files. First of all, you should use the TOF command, which deals with the complete transmission of bad sectors. If you are going to create images that will be more than 1 GB in volume, then in this case you will need to use the ATOF team, which allows you to automatically cut reviews.
If you want to write sectors from a file to disk, just use the FF command. You will be prompted to enter the number of the first sector to which recording will be performed, as well as the total number of sectors that will be recorded in a row. These two commands are often required in order to perform a full recovery of data from faulty drives. Initially, a sector-by-sector image of a faulty device is created, after which it is transferred in the same way sector-by-sector to another, working hard drive. Later it will be possible to use specialized programs that allow you to recover various data.
Mhdd - 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 able to scan the surface of a drive having an IDE interface in CHS mode. The creator dreamed of a personal diagnostic equipment that inspires confidence in users.
Today, the capabilities of the MHDD program are not limited only by diagnostics. When using the MHDD utility, you can:
- Read;
- Record arbitrary sectors;
- To manage the SMART system, the password system, the system under whose power the noise characteristics are located;
- You can even change the format of the drive.
On the site http://www.ihdd.ru you can find a copy of MHDD. You can download the program for use in different forms: archived and in the form of a floppy disk with a self-extracting function.
Log / mhdd.log - The main log file created when you first run the installed program. It will record the actions you take in the future.
For the MHDD program to read information from some elementlocated on the drive, you need to send a BIOS request. And the BIOS starts searching for the ports of the required drive, checks the data, exchanges them with the drive. Then the data is returned to the operating system.
You cannot start MHDD from a drive located on an IDE cableto which the drive under test will be connected. There will be data corruption on both sides. Therefore, the program does not interact with PRIMARY. If you need to unlock the PRIMARY channel, you need to start MHDD, exit, edit the MHDD.CFG file. (command term with key ENABLEPRIMARY).
The program makes certain requirements for the software:
- To the processor: Intel Pentium or the latest developments in the world of computers;
- RAM at least 4 megabytes;
- MSDOS must have a version not lower than 6.22;
- A boot device is required (USB, HDD, CDROM, FDD).
Requirements for IDE / SATA controllers:
- Must have integration into the north bridge; PCI UDMAs have auto-sensing; specific RAID controllers are supported; in the form of a chip there are UDMA / RAID controllers.
- Requirements for drives: IDE or Serial ATA, the volume of which exceeds 600 megabytes, but does not overestimate 8388607 terabytes; A SCSI drive that has a sector size limited to 512 and 528 bytes.
- You should switch the drive, which is being diagnosed, to MASTER mode.
- You can scan the device if the process is curated by ID or EID commands (the F2 key is responsible). We type SCAN, press ENTER (F4 key). In the menu you can change the settings.
- You can view the attributes by pressing SMART ATT (F8 key). You can find out the number of reassigned sectors. A warning should be a value greater than 50. You can take a look at the attribute showing the temperature values. UDMA CRC error rate will show how many errors when data is transmitted over the cable.
- The HPA team is able to limit the cumulative 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 the help on using MHDD, dedicated to all the program commands, press F1. If this program does not help, try Victoria to analyze the disk by.
Copyright and disclaimer of warranties
You can distribute MHDD without restriction. You can disassemble and explore the MHDD code for educational purposes without restriction. You cannot sell MHDD.
Disclaimer of Warranties:
Use this software “as is”. MHDD is very powerful, and at the same time, very dangerous program. No one can be held responsible for any harm caused by the MHDD program.
About MHDD
MHDD is a small but powerful free program that is designed to work with drives at the lowest level (as much as possible). The first version was released in 2000 by me, Dmitry Postrigan. She was able to scan the surface of a drive with an IDE interface in CHS mode. My main goal is to develop trusted diagnostic software for drives.
Now MHDD is much more than a diagnosis. You can do anything with MHDD: diagnose drives, read / write arbitrary sectors, manage the SMART system, password system, noise management system, and change the size of the drive.
If you have the opportunity to financially help the project, here are the numbers of the MHDD author's purses in the Webmoney system: Z681153514525; R131877337643.
Where to get MHDD
When you need a fresh copy of MHDD, please always use the site. You can download MHDD as a CD image, as a self-extracting floppy disk image, or as an archive.
The documentation is constantly updated, therefore it is available only at the current address.
What is inside MHDD
mhdd.exe Executable program mhdd.hlp This file is used by the help system for SMART commands. cfg / mhdd.cfg In this file, MHDD stores the configurationDuring the first run, the program will create a file log / mhdd.log. This is the main log file. All your actions and test results will be written to this file.
How it works
Let's imagine how the MSDOS operating system works when it needs to read a sector from a drive. MSDOS simply asks the BIOS to do this. Then, the BIOS looks in its tables for the port addresses of the required drive, performs the necessary checks, and then begins data exchange with the drive. After everything is finished, the BIOS returns the result to the operating system.
Let's look at the chart. This shows how a regular DOS program works with a drive:
Program<---> Msdos<---> BIOS<---> IDE / SATA controller<---> Storage device
Now let's look at how MHDD works:
Mhdd<---> IDE / SATA controller<---> Storage device
The main difference: MHDD does not use BIOS and interrupt functions. Thus, you do not even need to identify the drive in the BIOS Setup. You can even turn on the drive after MSDOS and MHDD are loaded, since MHDD works directly with the drive's registers and does not pay attention to such "trifles" as, for example, partitions, file systems and BIOS restrictions.
Attention:
Never run MHDD from a drive that is on the same physical IDE channel (cable) to which the drive under test is connected to (cable, channel). You will have significant data corruption on both drives! In this regard, by default, MHDD does not work with the PRIMARY channel, since most users have MHDD there. To unlock the Primary channel, start MHDD, then exit, then edit the MHDD.CFG file. Or use the command line switch / ENABLEPRIMARY.
To access SCSI devices, MHDD uses the DOS ASPI driver. If you do not plan to work with SCSI drives, then you do not need any drivers.
Hardware Requirements and Supported Hardware
Platform:
- Intel Pentium processor or better
- 4 megabytes of RAM
- DR-DOS, MSDOS version 6.22 and higher
- Any bootable device (USB, CDROM, FDD, HDD)
- Keyboard
IDE / SATA controllers:
- Any integrated into the north bridge (port addresses: 0x1Fx for the primary channel, 0x17x for the secondary channel)
- PCI UDMA controllers (automatically detected): HPT, Silicon Image, Promise (not all), ITE, ATI, possibly others. Even some RAID controllers are supported (in this case, MHDD works with each physical drive separately)
- UDMA / RAID controllers integrated into the motherboard as a separate chip
Drives
- Any IDE or Serial ATA with a capacity of at least 600 megabytes. LBA mode is fully supported, however, I removed CHS code from MHDD in versions 3.x
- Any IDE or Serial-ATA with a capacity of no more than 8388607 terabytes. LBA48 mode is fully supported
- Any SCSI drive with a sector size of 512 to 528 bytes
Diagnostic IDE Drive should be switched to MASTER mode. All SLAVE devices must be disabled.
Other devices
- Any device such as SCSI removable media, for example, CDROM, tape. The maximum supported sector size is 4096 bytes.
Download the MHDD installation package
You need to decide which package you need: a CD image, a disk image, or just an archive. Visit the site to download the appropriate package.
You can burn a CD image using any software that supports recording ISO-images. Your CD will be bootable.
First start. Important information
Some people think that MHDD is a very complicated program. They assumed that MHDD should be very simple, but when they, without reading the documentation, started it for the first time, disappointment came. MHDD is very complex and dangerous program. MHDD is much easier for those who are familiar with the internal structure of drives. If you want to get the relevant knowledge, you can start your acquaintance with this site: http://t13.org.
It is very important to understand that you have to spend several hours, and possibly days, before you get meaningful results from MHDD. I highly recommend trying out several defect-free drives before you start working with bad ones.
When you first start the program will create a new file. / Cfg / mhdd.cfg. The Primary IDE channel is disabled by default. If you really want to turn it on - please.
You will see the drive selection menu. Choose any device you want. You can call this menu at any time by pressing SHIFT + F3.
Now you can click F1 and use any MHDD commands. Please, be extremely attentivewhen working with MHDD the first few times.
I would advise you to get started with the EID, SCAN, STOP, CX and TOF teams. Some of them are assigned keyboard shortcuts, for example F4 for the SCAN team.
Take a look at registers. Any IDE or Serial ATA device should report DRIVE READY and DRIVE SEEK COMPLETE, so you should see the DRDY and DRSC flags. The BUSY flag indicates that the drive is performing an operation (for example, reading or writing). Some flags, such as WRITE FAULT and TRACK 0 NOT FOUND, are obsolete; you should never see them. The INDEX flag is also obsolete, however, sometimes it may blink. The DATA REQUEST (DREQ) flag means that the drive is requesting data transfer.
If you notice the ERROR (ERR) flag, look at the error register. You can determine the type of error that occurred. See ATA / ATAPI standard
for further information on commands and registers.
Using MHDD Commands
Surface scan
Scanning of any device is possible only if it can be determined by the ID or EID commands (or by pressing F2) To scan, type SCAN and press ENTER, or use F4. You will see a menu where you can change some settings. By default, the start sector is zero (start sector). The end sector is equal to the maximum possible (end of the disk). All functions destructive with respect to user data (Remap, Erase Delays) are turned off by default.
Press F4 again to start scanning. MHDD scans drives in blocks. For IDE / SATA drives, one block is equal to 255 sectors (130560 bytes).
How scanning works
1. MHDD sends a VERIFY SECTORS command with the LBA number (sector number) and sector number as parameters 2. The drive raises the BUSY flag 3. MHDD starts the timer 4. After the drive runs the command, it drops the BUSY flag 5. MHDD calculates the elapsed time drive time and displays the corresponding block on the screen. If an error occurs (bad block), the program displays the corresponding letter that describes the error.
MHDD repeats steps 1–5 to the end sector. If you need a scan protocol, you can always find it in the log / mhdd.log file.
If the scan revealed errors, the first thing to do is copy all the data from the drive. Then you need to completely erase the surface using the ERASE command, which erases every sector on your drive. The drive will recalculate the ECC fields for each sector. This helps to get rid of the so-called "soft-bad" blocks. If erasing does not help, start scanning with the REMAP option turned on.
If you see that each block contains an error, do not try to erase the drive or scan with the REMAP option turned on. Most likely, the drive has a damaged service area, and this cannot be fixed with standard MHDD commands.
View SMART Attributes
You can dial SMART ATT or click F8 to view attributes. What do they mean?
Perhaps the most important attribute for a modern drive is the “Reallocated Sectors Count” (Raw value). This value tells you how many reassigned sectors are on the disk. A normal drive has a raw value of zero. If you see a value greater than 50, the drive has a problem. This may mean a power supply marriage, vibration, overheating, or just a defective drive.
Take a look at attribute 194 - temperature. Good values \u200b\u200blie between 20 and 40 degrees. Some drives do not report temperature.
The UDMA CRC error rate attribute means the number of errors that occur when transmitting data on an IDE / SATA cable. The normal raw value of this attribute is zero. If you see a different value, you need to urgently replace the cable. Also, overclocking greatly affects the number of errors of this type.
Other attributes are usually not that important. See ATA / ATAPI standard
for more information on SMART attributes and tests.
Drive Identification Commands
Try teams ID and Eid in order to view information about your drive.
Reading sectors to a file
You can read only a few sectors or an entire disk into a file or into a set of files. Try the TOF team. The program skips defective sectors. If you plan to create an image larger than 1 gigabyte, it is better to use the ATOF command, since it can automatically "cut" the images.
Burn sectors from file to disk
Use the FF command to write sectors to disk. You will be asked to enter the number of the first sector to record and the number of sectors recorded in a row.
Drive noise management
Almost all modern drives support Acoustic Management. You can reduce the noise emitted when moving the heads by reducing the speed of their movement. Use the AAM command to configure.
Drive configuration
Using the CONFIG command, you can view and change the drive configuration, for example, maximum UDMA mode, support for Security, SMART, AAM, HPA systems, support for LBA48 mode. It is also possible to change the size of the disk. Some manufacturers reduce the size of the disk by changing the configuration, you have the opportunity to restore the original volume.
Batch command launch
You can write a very simple batch file (see the example in the BATCH directory), where you describe everything you want to do. Press F5 when you want to run such a file for execution.
Other teams
Click F1. You will see a brief help on all the MHDD commands. For more information, please use the MAN team.
Command line options
/ NOPINGPONG Mute some sounds / DISABLEBIOS Disable ERASE via BIOS / DISABLESCSI Disable SCSI Module / ENABLEPRIMARY Connect Primary IDE / SATA Channel / RO This key is used to start MHDD on write-protected media. It disables attempts to create temporary files, and also disables logging.Frequently Asked Questions and Answers
A list of frequently asked questions and answers to them can be found at this address:
HDD (hard disk) 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 is simply impossible to overestimate. The stability of the system and the speed of reading data depend on the hard drive. However, as it happens with other components, the hard drive can also fail at any time, which brings a lot of inconvenience for any user. The reasons for this can be quite a lot, and not always such a device needs to be repaired. But the possibility of recovering the hard drive is still there. Therefore, if you encounter such a problem, it is not worth the first thing to run to the computer store and buy a new hard drive.
One of the best programs that can recover a hard drive, which has been considered MHDD for a year now. Every user will be able to understand her work, so she gained immense popularity. But this is not the main thing. It really helps in most cases to restore the hard drive, while you do not even have to pay anyone for it.
Description of the MHDD program.
MHDD is one of the most common programs that will help you diagnose and restore your hard drive. You can download it on various sites, and you can do it absolutely free, which also can not but rejoice 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 management
- removal of poorly functioning sectors;
- hard drive cleaning;
- change the volume of the hard drive;
- system password management;
- noise reduction during device operation. This significantly reduces the speed of the HDD;
- hard drive test at maximum load.
The main advantage of such a program can be called the speed of its work. You can run diagnostics and check the hard drive for errors in a very short period of time. Also, the advantages of MHDD include the ability to run the program from any storage medium, whether it be a floppy disk, disk or USB drive.
How does MHDD work.
The first thing to start 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, then it will look like this:After that, save all the changes and reboot the system. This will launch the MHDD program, which first of all will give a message whether ADAPTEC drivers should be loaded. For most cases, you do not need to download them. Therefore, select the appropriate item and proceed to the next step.
The program will give you information with the number of sectors that are on your hard drive.
Also, a specific channel number will be assigned to the hard drive, which will be necessary for further work with MHDD. You will need to enter this number, after which you can begin to work with the hard drive.
After that, you can 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, respectively, you will need to press F2 and F1, respectively. Next, you can start scanning the hard drive by typing 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 by indicating which sector should be used for diagnostics. You enter this data in the first two lines of the menu. All other items can be left unchanged. After that, you can start to run the test and determine the bad sectors of the hard drive, for this, press the F4 key. It will also sometimes be useful in the menu to change the last item from Off to On. This is necessary if you have suspicions that the system itself mistakenly assigns some sectors to broken ones. Defining this for ordinary users is almost impossible. With this scan, all sectors where read delays are detected will be erased.
After that, you will see a 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, with speeds of up to 3, up to 10, up to 50, up to 150, up to 500 and more than 500 milliseconds. A normal figure is up to 150 milliseconds. The presence of the characters "x" and "s" indicate bad sectors of the hard drive.
Checking the hard drive will last up to several hours. It all depends on the volume of the hard drive. After that, you will be given information about how many bad sectors are found on the hard drive. And only after that can we begin to eliminate them. For this, there are Erase Delays and Remap functions, which marks all bad areas of the disk and does not access them later. It is recommended to run exactly Erase Delays. So you can remove all the software failures of the hard drive. And after checking with this function, you can start running with the Remap function turned on. So you can restore all possible areas of the hard drive and delete all bad sectors from it. Information that was in bad sectors at the same time 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 is not required to be recorded. Accordingly, the volume of the hard drive will decrease, but it will be possible to successfully work with it.
