I’m using SiliconDrive USB CF card, the card is failed when reading certain sectors of the card. The symtoms is that some of the sectors are unreadable.
We test the card with WD diagnostics.
The quick test failed, the test code is “08-Too many bad sectors detected”. The SMART Status is not available. But the extended passes test. The SMART Status is not available either for extended test.
I’m wondering why extended test past, in principle, it should also report bad sectors, right?
Could anybody explain this to me? I appricate any reply here.
Thanks for your time.
I don’t have much faith in Data LifeGuard when it comes to testing external drives.
Instead, the following WD/SiliconSystems document refers to a “SiliconDrive Utility” which is able to extract “SiSMART” information from the drive. “SiSMART technology … is integrated into all SiliconDrive Products.”
NAND Evolution And Its Effects On Solid-State Drive (SSD) Useable Life:
http://web.archive.org/web/20090122115715/http://www.siliconsystems.com/resources/Documents/Whitepaper/SiliconSystems_NAND_Evolution_0812.pdf
http://wdc.com/WDProducts/SSD/whitepapers/en/NAND_Evolution_0812.pdf
Unfortunately the abovementioned utility is only available to WD’s privileged business “partners”, not to their lowly end users. An alternative solution may be a utility such as HD Sentinel, HDDScan, CrystalDiskInfo, or smartmontools. The latter is arguably the most versatile and best supported SMART tool for SSDs.
