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Windows says my Hard Drive is dying, but...
11-07-2013, 08:15 PM
... other than the warning it's giving me, I detect nothing wrong with how it's performing. I have made a back-up to my terrabyte portable drive (GOOD GOD 14 HOURS to copy!!). And I've done a de-dusting with compressed air and I'm going to give it a thorough de-frag and checkdisk if I can. But how can I tell -really- if the drive is failing?
If I do need to get a new HD, I suppose I'll have to get a commercial version of Windows to go on it. In which case it's Windows 7 for me (none of this Windows 8 crap) so is Win7 still available retail, and if so, has the cost dropped any?
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I've got the opposite. I believe my hard drive is dying (occasional squeaky noises from my computer, windows jamming up with the hard drive light on, occasional drive scans) - but Windows isn't producing complaint messages - although often running really slow.
According to my internet research, I should be able to clone my hard drive if it's still running when the replacement arrives. And not even have to reinstall windows.
And I deliberately got the retail rather than OEM version, just for cases like this.
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If you get another replacement drive before your existing one dies, you can image the old to the new, then yank the old and have everything 'just work'.
You may need to reauthenticate Windows but that's a pretty painless process. I'm presuming here that the reason you can't reinstall is because you have an OEM version of windows that came preinstalled with no installation media.
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Same here. If I get a new HD, I'm going to need a retail Windows.
Here's the pop-up I'm getting. Which as I said is the ONLY indication of trouble.
![[Image: zA5FRvz.png]](http://i.imgur.com/zA5FRvz.png)
This is popping up every 15 minutes or so. I've already done my major back-ups. So if it does die I'm safe as far as my data goes.
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If the drive is reporting failure, replace it.
If the drive is making odd noises, replace it.
Either way, this is a sign that the drive is about to be unusable, for values of "about to be" that include "some in the next month." You can buy a half-terabyte drive for less than a graphics card nowadays, so you can probably afford to be safe rather than sorry.
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Any recommendations as to manufacturer for a new HD? It's been about 5 years since I shopped for a new PC.
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I usually buy Western Digital, though I hear that Seagate is a good brand.
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Watch out for Western Digital drives. Aggressive power management can cause them to go through cycles of parking and unparking the drive head every second or two. The idle timer on my laptop's hardisk was set to something like 3 seconds out of the factory, which caused it to do something like 50,000 cycles inside a few days of use... I ended up disabling the feature outright.
And that's the replacement disk. The predecessor died after 6 months. Presumeably for reasons that are now obvious.
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Logan, what you are seeing there when it says "is failing" is that the S.M.A.R.T. (Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology) status indicators indicate one or more measured parameters is no longer above a certain threshold. Probably a good idea to go ahead and replace it - you might have a couple more years before it dies, or it might die this week.
Here's the handy Wikipedia chart indicating the sorts of parameters S.M.A.R.T. tracks, and which ones are actually the most important for determining if the disk is closing in on failure. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.M.A.R.T. ... attributes
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Definitely, replace it.
As for drives, I often use Seagate drives. They've got the same kind of performance history, without the parking issue WD drives get.
Something I'm trying this time with my current PC, is a hybrid drive. It's mostly hard drive, but there's a 500GB SSD built into it. What this does is it caches the most commonly used files, so that they load lightning-fast, while still keeping regular hard drive storage for everything. This way, I'm covered in case the SSD component fails.
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Well I'm squared away on the drive now. And I did in fact get a Seagate. 750 GB drive. I could've gone higher, but my past experiences with power supplies left me wary of upgrading (and I really don't NEED anymore space. That's what my Terrabyte drive is for).
I REALLY lucked out in the software department, I think. The local Fry's Electronics actually still had a new unopened copy of Windows 7 OEM with registration key. about $100.00. If it works out I'll have really scored a real coup in terms of saving money AND I'll have a hard copy of the OS in case I need to re-install!
Right now I'm just going to use the current HD for the next few days and just keep my back-up on the 1TB drive updated until when or if the current drive craters. I have a friend local who actually does installations as a business I might be able to cut a deal with. But I might be able to install on my own.
Any pitfalls you guys think I'm falling into here? Or have I threaded the needle of good fortune?
Edit: Oh - one thing - I was still working with Windows Vista on the old drive. Is that going to be a problem in re-installing files from back-up?
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Quote:Dartz wrote:
Watch out for Western Digital drives. Aggressive power management can cause them to go through cycles of parking and unparking the drive head every second or two. The idle timer on my laptop's hardisk was set to something like 3 seconds out of the factory, which caused it to do something like 50,000 cycles inside a few days of use... I ended up disabling the feature outright.
And that's the replacement disk. The predecessor died after 6 months. Presumeably for reasons that are now obvious.
*Shrug* I've never had any problems with WD. Every time I've bought a new one, it's because I was upgrading space, not a drive failure. Would have to check to see what my oldest installed drive is, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was 5+ years old. Newest is 2.
edit for clarity
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Hitachi used to sell drives retail - do they still do that?
(We buy them by the server-rack at work. I trust them.)
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Replaced the hard drive with a SSD.
1) Order SSD2) Wait3) Unpack SSD and find the installation guide described several items not included.4) Do some research and work out that you don't think they're needed.5) Take side off computer case.6) Try and remove some of the dust.7) Find location that you can put in SSDs.8) You can't reach one with a suitable power cable.9) You can't reach the other without removing the motherboard.10) Work out you can get to the second by taking the front off.11) Install SSD.12) Turn on computer.13) Panic because you can't find the new drive.14) Because it hasn't been given a drive letter.15) Try to clone drive using supplied software. Stops at last second.16) Time out to breath in a brown paper bag.17) Try again.18) Try a different software downloaded from the internet.19) Try a third software and find it isn't compatible with your operating system.20) Try a fourth software. It's fiddly, but works.21) Change bios to boot from new disc.
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I looked up that Wikipedia article and followed a link to a freeware Hard Disk checker. I had been wondering how bad my HD is - whether it was just BARELY past a certain threshold to trigger the alerts.
Oof...
![[Image: eK4Gd6z.png]](http://i.imgur.com/eK4Gd6z.png)
I'm not going to claim I know what all the numbers really mean, but that first one - the Raw Read Error rate - CAN'T be good. Also the re-allocated sectors isn't good.
Seems my drive isn't suffering from a gross mechanical failure or in imminent danger of immediate catastrophic instant death. But if I'm interpreting this right, it is suffering from the mechanical equivalent of senility and slowly failing.
Well - I got 5 good years out of it. That's at least 2-3 past any possible warranty. Glad I've got a replacement ready to go. Think I'll avail myself of my friends help and get the new drive installed next week.
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From what I see, the Read Error Rate is not much to be concerned about. According to the Raw data, your drive has reported no read errors. See this post here for how Seagate handles it (see the second example in the post). Expert is just casting the raw hex data as an int, when it actually stands for two values (Seek Errors and Total Seeks). What is more concerning is the Reallocated (i.e. Bad) Sector count - there's a large number of sectors on the disk that can no longer be accessed, and I think that is what is giving Windows a red flag.
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Agreed. Even for a five-year-old drive, that number is rather high - time to replace.
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Well that escalated quickly... Drive just cratered about an hour ago. Thank goodness there was an auto-update of the backup that had just completed not 3-4 hours previous. Guess it's off to my computer tech friend in the morning to drop off the system to have the new drive and OS installed. (Sending this from my dad's computer)
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Mine is working now and there's no longer a high pitched whining sound coming from my computer - but getting there was frustrating.
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