End LBA parameter?

[fancywriter]

I first was trying to check laptop hdd with something like MHDD and Victoria and failed. MHDD loaded correctly, but can't detect the hard drive on new laptops, Victoria simply can't boot. Both projects seems to be abandoned.
I found this project as something newer - looks nice and easy to run (from system rescue live cd). However, there are a lot of things to improve.

First thing I have noticed that I can set start_lba parameter for read test, but can't set end_lba, which looks strange for me.

I have no idea if I can or can't use remap or erase as I did with MHDD, probably these operations don't really make send on modern hard drivers. However, there are other things which I wanted to improve:

• Better interface. NCurses-like interface looks very familiar for those who used MHDD or other DOS tools, but I don't like it. I prefer UNIX-like interface for CLI-tools. I mean I want to run a command with several (or dozens) command-line parameter non-interactively, like whdd --read-test --start-lba=0 --end-lba=100 ... /dev/sda.
• Better logs. What would be great to have separated log file (big one) for "picture" of scanned hard drive and separated (small one) for list of errors (UNC and others) only or important things, like sectors with read time > 500 ms. In fact, I don't need the first one, I need only the second - I want to run command, leave the laptop for a few hours (have lunch, coffee, walk outside to breath some fresh air) and return and see some "report" log file.
• S.M.A.R.T. functionality looks useless for me here, smartctl is good enough for that (probably only needs better graphical interface than gsmartcontrol), but this is out of scope of this tool.

[fancywriter]

And I just found 12 UNCs on my HDD and few other errors - but no idea where - don't see numbers of blocks/sectors.

[andrey-utkin]

Thanks for your report @fancywriter!
Sorry, nowadays WHDD doesn't get that much of my love, shame on me.

Patches are welcome, as people say.

[fancywriter]

@andrey-utkin I am not such expert in C. Hope someone will take it one day. :) thank you anyway. Let this ticket to be opened just in case.

[dreamcat4]

It's still a good idea. And should be implemented one day... maybe never but heh! Still worth keeping track of this issue.

[SilverPuppy]

As far as the CLI thing goes, I see that as a fork. This project is what it is because MHDD became abandoned, and DOS has no idea what to do with modern hardware. Essentially it is a rewrite of MHDD for Linux. If you change the UI, those who like the way it is now (including me) will use the old version unless or until a compelling feature motivates a switch.

As for features like remap and erase, they were of limited usefulness in the days when MHDD was mainstream, and almost no use now. Remap is a way to try to work around issues on a drive which should be replaced because of its wear, and erase is readily available in hdparm, with a CLI no less. :)

More verbose logging might or might not help normal people. If a drive has multiple read errors, most likely it is because the drive is worn and should be replaced. This program is a test to identify such drives, with the assumption that such drives will be replaced. Tools like ddrescue can copy the data on a worn drive to a new one, working around bad spots on the disk without any need for prior input on where they are. Drives are cheap. Data is priceless. Don't jeopardize your data by using a drive you know is failing.

@andrey-utkin please know that I am very grateful for what you've created. I see no need for any changes. It does what it was meant to do extremely well. Thank you for creating it!

[AnterCreeper]

@SliverPuppy It's better to add the hdparm erase and remap function to it to make the things easier(just a warp). And the only things needed to do is fix the bugs.