Hard drive is giving "immininent failure" notification

My hard drive has been kept together with band aids for the past six months.

I ran a diagnostic program yesterday and it told me that my hard drive is giving an "imminent failure" warning.

What is the best case scenario for how much longer the hard drive can last?

 

You can't tell. It could fail while you're reading this or it could fail next week.

I'd get an external HDD and buck my files up ASAP.

 

Yes, back up your files ASAP.

Every hard drive *will* fail - it is just a matter of when. Most of them fail without any warning, taking all of their data with it. They will either fail to power on, or will exert the "click of death" sound that every computer geek knows and fears. Consider the fact that you have some kind of advance warning to be a blessing from the hard drive gods.

 

Best case? A year?

 

Best case a few months.

 

I'd be more concerned with worst case than best case. back up everything now, and replace as soon as you can. Could fail now, could last a while, but there's no way to tell. If you've been seeing problems for six months, I'd expect sooner rather than later.

 

No one can provide you with a "Best Case" answer. For each minute of life you still get out of it, consider yourself lucky.

 

Anyone who decides to cheap-out in the face of this kind of warning deserves what they get.

No sympathy from me.

 

I have backed up everything. I can get a good deal on a notebook right now, but if I can get another year out of this one, then I will hold off.

I am guessing it will fail in the next six months.

 

If it was me, I'd spend $40 and get a new HDD.

 

Ya, why are you worrying about buying a whole new unit? Just spend $40-$50 on a new drive.

 

Best case might be ten years. No one knows.

 

Bingo. +1. Ignoring this problem is like saying "My doctor is telling me that I have high cholesterol... but I think I'll wait for a heart attack before I do anything about it."

Your drive *WILL* fail. It's warning you that it is imminently close to failing. When it does fail, you will need to replace the drive. You do not need to replace your entire laptop, just the one faulty drive.

When the drive fails, you will need to get your hands on a new drive. You will need to replace your old dead hard drive with the new hard drive. You can choose to go against the advice of everyone in this thread and wait for your hard drive to die before you take action. If you do that, then you:

• Have an unusable laptop for the 1-2 weeks it takes for a replacement hard drive to arrive
• Have zero chance of recovering any of your data.

The people in this thread have gone through this before. Most of us are nowhere near as lucky as you - hard drives typically die without any warning. And dealing with the problem after the drive is already dead is a P.I.T.A.

You are supremely lucky to be getting any kind of notice. It is your decision whether to take action now and take advantage of the gift of having advance knowledge, or whether to ignore it and take action later. But I promise you, you *WILL* need to take action. The problem will not go away by ignoring it.