Is my hard drive on it's way out ?

RobertM · 09-04-2011 5:22pm #1

Hello,

Recently, I keep getting a message "Windows detected a hard disk problem, please back up your files".. Also when I turn on the computer, I get a message at the beginning, something like

"S.M.A.R.T ........ etc something related to the hard disk"..

I am running W7 ultimate 64 bit.
The hd is a Samsung spinpoint f3 (hd105si)

Thank you.

chin_grin · 09-04-2011 5:42pm

Yeah sounds like something is up. Can you start backing up your files to the "cloud" (AVG LiveKive\Dropbox\etc) or to an external drive?

Download and run this to see if it says exactly what's wrong.

http://www.samsung.com/global/business/hdd/support/downloads/support_in_es.html

RobertM · 09-04-2011 8:03pm

Downloaded it.. but it says that the version is not compatible with my OS..

Anyway this is what it says when I turn on the computer..

http://img30.imageshack.us/i/09042011100.jpg/

Razzuh · 10-04-2011 8:07pm

If the status is 'bad' you hard drive is very likely to fail entirely in the immediate future. As the message says, copy anything you don't want to lose off that drive to an external before you do anything else. Then get a new hard drive for the computer.

If you want to double check the SMART reading you can download speccy (free):

http://download.cnet.com/Speccy/3000-2094_4-75181811.html

Go to the hard drives tab and look at the SMART section. The 'status' is on the bottom line. It should say 'bad' also.

RobertM · 10-04-2011 8:11pm

It says the status is good though

polyfusion · 10-04-2011 9:33pm

I'd heed what the SMART BIOS is telling you. Best to backup important documents immediately, get a new hard drive asap, and clone your current hard drive onto it.

It could be the "current pending sector count" decreasing that's alerting you. It was likely 100 on a fresh drive. The "reallocated sector count" is still high, so it may not be that it's going to fail soon, but because you're already getting messages, you need to take precautions if you value your data, and can't afford any down time on your PC. Your hard drive may indeed last a long time like this, but if it was me, I'd be taking precautions now.

I've been monitoring my hard drives for several years now using DiskCheckUp. I couldn't just rely on the BIOS SMART reporting after seeing a near-catastrophic loss of data on a work PC which wasn't alerting to it's impending failure. It's not going to guarantee catching a failure, but puts the odds in your favour. Anything relating to sector count is top of the priority list for monitoring. The "current pending" could relate to hard drive beginning to experience problems, but certainly, once you see the reallocated sector count start to increase (or it's raw value begin to decrease), it may already be too late.

The monitoring software (like DiskCheckUp) will allow you to look back at previous checkpoint values with current values. If you see values changing, you can check to see what it could mean, whether it's a critical value, or something less important.

Is my hard drive on it's way out ?

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