Does 18 hour extended test for 200GB drive with 26GB of data mean drive is no good

It's dead, I'm afraid.

>>  18 hours needed for extended test  - << this does not look normal; normal run times are between 1-3 hours.
It seems it is slowed down for some reason, can, be surface defects.
you may be helped with HDD Regenerator : http://www.dposoft.net/

you can also verify it by running on another drive

btw - is smart enabled on this drive (check in the bios - it should have given warnings)
here a monitor :  http://www.santools.com/smartmon.html

Thank you everyone.  I've got another 6 hours of extended test.  After that I want to check out the SMART stuff, although Data Lifeguard Diag claims SMART Status not available.  By the way drive being tested is in a usb-connected drive enclosure.  Mainboard is brand new so i do not question USB during the test.

nobus has supplied most detailed answer and taught me some new products so he will probably get the points soon.

again thanks everyone.  you are helping me with my little shop.

>>   By the way drive being tested is in a usb-connected drive enclosure   <<   i i i i i  screeech   iiiiiii
connect it directly to the IDE/sata port....check if it is faster then....on usb - no smart supportyed for most drives
i NEVER test drives on USB - you add an extra interface layer, causing trouble all the time : for reciognition, properties, speed, software  not running over usb...

thank you nobus.  my computer must sure be tired after running this test for 15 hours!  i didn't question the speed of the interface because it is definitely usb2, motherboard is new, machine is stable lab machine generally the enclosure can ghost up to 30GB of data within an hour.

once it finishes i'll use the IDE port and report back le difference in estimated time of job. (and i'll probably have some juicy bad sector errors)

mmm- with what sauce?

thank you for your insight meyersd.  4448 bad sectors was reported only by Ghost.  i am actually afraid to run a chkdsk before my customer takes his data (although I think I have most of it backed up).  bythe way, the manufacturer's fitness test reported error 08 which is described as 'handling error' .  i didn't try to repair bad sectors because i will just be giving the drive back to the customer and it will probably never be used again.

what's confusing to me is that Symantec people always tell me to check the box for "ignore bad sectors" in the Ghost 14 program.  they tell me this when I got their famous COM+ error and then they have me set a particular service to automatic (like the VSS provider or something).

the drive is 200GB which I believe translates to hundreds of millions of sectors so i wasn't convinced that a few thousand was a lot.  

here's a question.  on a normal, good drive, where bad sectors have been remapped and the remap area has not filled would ghost and chkdsk both not report bad sectors?  this has been a source of confusion.  does the event log not show disk error in this case.  when i see disk error in the log, i always think drive is on its way out although people are saying run checkdisk to map out the bad sector.  it is very confusing.  can you shed some more light on this?

nobus - ok i attached drive to primary slave IDE cable and time has increased to 26 hours.  interesting.

for kicks i called western digital.  they told me the following:
  Data Lifeguard extended test - the DOS version is more accurate than the Windows version
  Doesn't matter if you use USB or IDE but I do understand your point about the USB layer.
  For IDE doesn't matter if it is on master or slave

for more kicks tried the extended test on IDE (estimate was 26 hours)

i asked them what was error code 8 - the tech simply said the drive has too many bad sectors - drive is no good. he wasn't much help in pointing me to matrix of error codes.

final comments before I award points?

tried extended test on drive 1 - estimate was 42 minutes (drive is 80GB) - it certainly sails through the sectors much more quickly.  you're right about the fact that the drive (physical 2)  has 'slowed down'.

i am increasing points

Thanks guys assuming you are guys.

your remark:you only get the "bad sector" messages when the swap space is full already
has really helped my understanding - thank you so much!

well - that's the only way it works, if windows (or another OS) stall encountered the "bad" one's, there is no benefit from remapping them.

Thanks - glad I could help.

i think these products should give you some warning if a drive is underperforming, reading sectors too many times, etc.     For example, a message saying "the estimate of 25 hours to scan the disk surface exceeds xyz threshhold, there is a good chance hard drive needs to be replaced".

instead i get a message from WD "would you like to try and repair the bad sectors" like there is really
some point to that!  in my case there was no point.

all the mystery of these scans makes me feel like I'm practicing voodoo. -- testing a hard drive
shouldn't be that complicated.

how about some info to the screen such as average number of read attempts per sector.

or even a count of bad sectors as they are encountered.  some of these suggestions I think
would demystify the process for many people.  
or how about a message:    "the remap area has been filled" too many bad sectors replace the drive.

S.M.A.R.T. can help here. I used to have a S.M.A.R.T utility running on my desktop, but multiple minor warnings just led to me turning it off.

for your "How about" : Spinrite gives the info  - AND takes much longer even.
One of the best for harddisks : http://www.grc.com/spinrite.htm