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Relocated HDD sectors

Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved C / C++ / MFC
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  • R Offline
    R Offline
    RomTibi
    wrote on last edited by
    #1

    I'm intending to make a program that erase an HDD. I know that modern HDDs relocate potentially deffective sectors by SMART testing, and replace with other not normally accessible. Is there a way to access ALL the sectors?

    VII. 36. When you surround an army, leave an outlet free. Do not press a desperate foe too hard. SUN-TZU - Art of War

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    • R RomTibi

      I'm intending to make a program that erase an HDD. I know that modern HDDs relocate potentially deffective sectors by SMART testing, and replace with other not normally accessible. Is there a way to access ALL the sectors?

      VII. 36. When you surround an army, leave an outlet free. Do not press a desperate foe too hard. SUN-TZU - Art of War

      A Offline
      A Offline
      AlphaDeltaTheta
      wrote on last edited by
      #2

      Relocation (remapping) is done transparently by the disk firmware. When a sector is detected as bad, all it's data are transferred to a special reserve area called sparse area and all further read/write attempts are redirected to it. See this wikipedia article.[^] Sparse areas are not accessible using any standard disk access methods as all LBA addressing to it automatically redirected. (But, it is possible that there may be some vendor-specific commands to do that) *TIP: You can use ATA Secure Erase[^] command to perform a firmware level erase of disk sectors. The GNU Shred utility is a noteworthy program using this command.

      Beauty cannot be defined by abscissas and ordinates; neither are circles and ellipses created by their geometrical formulas.

      ~ Carl von Clausewitz ~

      Source

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      • A AlphaDeltaTheta

        Relocation (remapping) is done transparently by the disk firmware. When a sector is detected as bad, all it's data are transferred to a special reserve area called sparse area and all further read/write attempts are redirected to it. See this wikipedia article.[^] Sparse areas are not accessible using any standard disk access methods as all LBA addressing to it automatically redirected. (But, it is possible that there may be some vendor-specific commands to do that) *TIP: You can use ATA Secure Erase[^] command to perform a firmware level erase of disk sectors. The GNU Shred utility is a noteworthy program using this command.

        Beauty cannot be defined by abscissas and ordinates; neither are circles and ellipses created by their geometrical formulas.

        ~ Carl von Clausewitz ~

        Source

        R Offline
        R Offline
        RomTibi
        wrote on last edited by
        #3

        Thanks a lot. Been a SunTzu fan I also like Clausewitz very much!

        VII. 36. When you surround an army, leave an outlet free. Do not press a desperate foe too hard. SUN-TZU - Art of War

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