The problem is, once you have even one bad block that can't be reallocated, you don't know how many other bad blocks there may be that you're writing/reading data from.

Optical disc verify tests ONLY verify that the data was written correctly from the source. If the data on the HDD is from a bad block/sector, that corrupted data is written EXACTLY as it is to the disc and the verify program will still say it's written correctly. Which it was, just with corrupted data.

With very, very, very rare exceptions, if you downloaded them before, you can download them again to a hard drive without bad sectors. Ideally from sites that provide a HASH to confirm what you've downloaded is the same as what's on their server.

It may take you a long time and cost you money to download them again, bu that is the ONLY way you can be sure they aren't corrupted without playing them all as a test.

You have ONLY two choices. Keep the possibly bad discs and risk playing a game and having it fail or download the files again.

Yes. If the original files are corrupt then the backup on he VD will be corrupt.

The "verify" tests only let you know that the disc was burned successfully, not that the files are good.

Does HDD and Windows not automatically allocate and separate defective sectors from the HDD?

No, it does not. If it did, you would not have a bad sector on your HDD.

the files downloaded are saved in bad sector of HDD?

is it possible for me to test one of my 4 copies of the DVD and assume that the others are good or bad because of files saved in bad sectors of the HDD and then recorded on DVD?

You said they were.

I know you're probably just trying to shut gamey up (which is impossible), but actually both S.M.A.R.T. (which is what CrystalDiskInfo reads) and Windows do block out and don't use bad sectors.

The reason S.M.A.R.T/CrystalDiskInfo reports bad sectors is because the preallocated spare sectors (reportedly in the thousands) to replace them are all used by previously marked bad sectors which ALL HDDs have due to manufacturing defects. When CrystalDiskInfo reports bad sectors, whether 1 or 144 (which is really high), it means the drive is out of manufacture specs and very, very, likely to develop more bad sectors that aren't yet reported.

Windows is known to be overly cautious about marking sectors bad when you get prompted to run a Surface Scan with Chkdsk. This usually isn't an issue and invisible to the user as long as there are still spare sectors available. Which in the case of gamey's drive, they're all used up.

The real issue with bad sectors is that it's like a cancerous tumor. You can remove the tumor, but you'll never know if there are other cancer cells left behind that can cause a cancerous growth somewhere else in the body. Those bad cells can live in the body for years before they're detected.

In the same way, S.M.A.R.T and Windows can remove/block bad sectors, but there are very, very, very likely to be other bad sectors that aren't detected and can cause corrupted data. For things like games, a single bad bit or byte can cause the game to fail unexpectedly.

As you say, it doesn't catch all of them. Every few months my cloning software reports that data is being misread from a bad sector that should have been blocked a long time ago.

No matter how many times you ask, the answer is still NO!

You like games, so here's a game scenario for you.

You're a detective who's trying to find out whether a story is true or not.

There are two witnesses who saw a crime, one sometimes tells the truth and sometimes doesn't. The other is someone who always tells the truth.

The liar tells the story to three people who are known to only tell the truth. All three of these people tell you the story they heard from the liar. YOU know the story as THEY heard is true, but you'll NEVER know if the story the liar told was true or not.

The only way to know if the story is true, you have to find the witness who always tells the truth, but has disappeared.

Your job is to find the witness who always tells the truth, no matter how long or hard you have to search.

This is where you're at with your discs. Without the true data (the witness how always tells the truth), you'll NEVER know if the data on the disc is true or not (this is the liar). All ANY disc verification program can do is verify that the data contained on the other discs are exactly like the one you're comparing them against (these are the three people who always tell the truth). It doesn't matter if you run the verification on three discs or 3 million discs, the truth about the status of the data on the first disc will NEVER be shown to be absolutely true/correct unless you redownload the original files to a known good HDD without ANY reported bad sectors.

Old games are always worth playing. True or false?

Lockey! Lockey! Lockey!

Hoping he's like lordsmurf and will appear if you post his name enough times! :cool:

Lockey! Lockey! Lockey!

True, but only if they're bit perfect! :D:congrats:

1) inside my 4 dvd discs contain zip compressed roms files and installer files is it possible for me to take one of these discs and test for any corruption or loss? the 4 discs are the same and were burned on the same day of that same HDD

2) only chkdsk allocates isolates defective sectors or has something automatic? many people don't know chkdsk to be manually

3) it is very difficult to get a HDD 100% free of badblocks, everyone I got had this

Most likely. But not 100%. Again, backup is a numbers game.

It should. But it doesn't always happen.

Depends on the game.
- Pacman? Always.
- Zork? Never.

Valid questions are still being asked, albeit between others no-so-valid/repetitious, so not yet.

Zip files have some degree of internal error checking, so if eveyrthing is a zip, then this may be easier than having to play/read/watch everything. Just copy all the zip files to a HDD, and unzip. Do all files un-archive without issues? If so, then you may be fine.

Lordsmurf I just have to thank you for the patience and support of optical media that you provide me, I learned a lot about optical discs with you

there are 4 DVD discs all of them with the same files and burned on the same day so I selected one of them to test and be a parameter for the others, these discs contain zip files, exe installers, emulators also inside zip

other disks with different files have mix of compressed files, bin files, img files

other discs contain only windows that burned the image on the DVD

I thought Windows or the HDD itself would automatically isolate bad sectors

I'm getting exhausted, and this will be my last post in this thread.

I take all kinds of backups.

Sometimes the backup as the source for degradation: backup HDD gets bad sectors, disc shows higher errors. Those are unreliable backups. New backups are taken.

For some backup, I 7z or RAR everything. That makes an archive. There two issues with this, one positive, one negative. The positive is that the archive acts as another integrity check. If it passes, I know the files are fine. The negative, however, is that if the archive is bad, ALL files in it could be lost. So again, just a type of backup that I take, not the ONLY backup I take.

I'm not a data hoarder. But I do try to backup all of stuff, in triplicate or more. I have files going back 30 years. I even have VMs with OS that still let me open some legacy files.

Trivia: I started messing with NES/etc emulation back in 1994. And I still have those ROMs and emulators. I've not really had time to play with games in a decade now. Video games just much less interesting that so many other things.

There's something seriously wrong if all your drives develop enough bad blocks/sectors for them to be reported by CrystalDiskInfo. Possibly due to bad electrical power, overheating or vibration. You should be more worried about your hard drives than your DVDs.

Oops...did I just open the path to "Why hard drive bad? How to keep from going bad?????" :huh1: :smack:

I have dozens of drives in use and right now only one of them has 5 bad blocks. I'm still using it, but for non-critical read only. Some of the drives are over 10 years old and have 10's of thousands of hours on them with no reported bad blocks/sectors.

As I posted earlier, all hard drives have hundreds or thousands of spare sectors from the factory, which means that if you see even one bad sector reported, your drive already has hundreds or thousands of others.

what is the name of the technology present in the HDD firmware that automatically allocates and separates defective sectors from the HDD preventing files from being saved in these sectors ??

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.M.A.R.T.

S.M.A.R.T. is what CrystalDiskInfo and other utilities report. And no, it's doesn't report how many of the spare blocks/sectors are used. It's only when there are no more spare sectors [available] and new bad sectors develop that it's reported. And no, there's NO way to reset or clear the bad sectors.

And, once again, it's ONLY when a bad block/sector is marked as bad is it blocked. Bad blocks/sectors can exist and be used as Formica reported to write/read data until they're marked as bad by S.M.A.R.T.

SMART is the function present in firmware that marks bad sectors and blocks them from receiving files? from what you said SMART is inefficient to block badblocks

SMART is present in year 2000 HDDs?

This will be my last post because as always you're not thoroughly reading the link I have, not understanding what I said and going beyond my knowledge and understanding about S.M.A.R.T.

If you read the Wiki link I posted, you'll have seen:

"The technical documentation for S.M.A.R.T. is in the AT Attachment (ATA) standard. First introduced in 2004,[10] it has undergone regular revisions,[11] the latest being in 2011.[12]". So S.M.A.R.T as we know it has been used in hard drives since 2004.

I'm assuming "SMART is present in year 2000 HDDs?" means drives made between 2004 and 2020, not year 2000 which would make your drive 20 years old! So yes, ALL current HDD and SSDs use S.M.A.R.T. If CrystalDiskInfo doesn't provide info about your drive, that means it's doesn't use S.M.A.R.T because that's the info it's providing.

As for S.M.A.R.T. preventing bad blocks/sectors, that's not what it does. It MARKS bad blocks/sectors and does nothing to PREVENT THEM. The marking of blocks/sectors as bad doesn't happen immediately. There's certain parameters, I believe a certain number of write/read errors before a block/sector is permanently marked bad [by] S.M.A.R.T. This may take days, weeks, months or years. Which is why I said bad sectors are like cancer or for you, fungus. Just because you block/remove the marked ones, it's still very, very likely there are others that haven't been detected and marked. AGAIN, MARKED, NOT PREVENTED OR REPAIRED.

As I've said, I've said what little I know about S.M.A.R.T. and bad blocks/sectors. I've never bothered to learn more because once CrystalDiskInfo gives a yellow caution for ANYTHING, I immediately stop using the drive for anything important since the drive may have write/read errors that I'm not aware of and the drive may die at any time, without an warning.

I hate to send you there, but if you really want to learn more about S.M.A.R.T., post your questions at reddit.com/r/datahoarder. There are lots of members there that know way, way more than I and probably the majority of members here do about the subject, as well as most things about HDDs and SSDs. If you're lucky, you may get some good answers before your endless questions cause the members to ignore you or the mods to ban you.