Question: Hard drive failure

Hi,

I have a question about hard drive failures/crashes: Are there usually signs or does it just happen immediately? Are there any sounds or changes in performance that warn a user of a potential failure?

THAANSA3

 

General Stuff --

Frequent freezes. You lose complete control of mouse and keyboard.

Losing files mysteriously. Another symptom is losing recently saved parts of files.

Lockup during booting....

Disk cannot locate file table. If the disk can't find the Windows Master File Table (MFT), especially after an unexplained crash, the disk is almost certainly dying.

CHKDSK shows bad sectors....

Sometimes, Software and Registry related errors....

Check out this site for a few diagnostic tools or you could also run a HDD checkup in HDTune....

When the drive actually fails, it is a mechanical failure.

Many times you will actually hear the drive making strange metallic noises. This is the read/write head thrashing around aimlessly and indicates failure. When your system has a crashed hard drive, it will not be able to boot. You may even get a blue screen of death.

 

Slow performance with lots of HDD activity and lots of clicking come to mind as a couple of symptoms.

In theory, the SMART data will record any problems and can be used to give warning of impending death.

ActiveSMART (see above link) watches the SMART data and gives alerts of possible problems. I used it 3 years ago to monitor a HDD that was getting very hot. It predicted failure within a few weeks but the HDD was still running when I sold the computer over a year later. Other software can also read the SMART data. Smartmontools is an open source application which reads the SMART data.

If you think you have a possible problem then go to the HDD manufacturer's website and look for their diagnostic software. That's the package which is most likely to correctly interpret the SMART data in addition to doing tests.

John

 

Thanks guys. That actually leads me to another question. When I look at my drive properties, it says that my drive is functioning properly and in device manager it says that the drive is healthy. Would it say that if I was experiencing some of the things that you two describe, or would it tell me that my drive was not working properly or is unhealthy?

 

I actually dont know since my drive properties or device manager hardware properties do not indicate anything regarding the health of the drive....Might be a feature in Vista, though I have got XP..!!
If it does mention health and shows something like 99 or 98% health, then yes, it must indicate you regarding the health of the drive..!!
I noticed that PC Wizard shows the SMART data and it said that my HDD health is at 96%..
Though I have never had a HDD failure.... *tuchwud*
I just broke my HDD once, when I opened a guy's head using my laptop, and when connecting that HDD externally, it just does click-click faintly and then dies..

 

How loud would these noise be?

 

Well, I dunno how a drive would sound when it is near death....
But here is my DEAD HDD singing..

 

Thanks again, angad.

 

No problem..
Check out youtube....there are some vids on dead and dying HDDs..!!

 

I will. I do have another question for you before I do, though. How would I know if my hard drive has bad sectors, if any?

 

You could check out this site, if it has your respective brand of hdd listed, then download and run its diagnostic tool.. (which hdd have you got..??)
or try out HD Tune.... (I have got Pro but the free version does allow scanning for bad sectors, do a thorough scan..!!)

 

After about four years, I would turn on SMART and watch for errors. After the first access error, your harddrive is quickly headed south. I'm trying to remember where I heard this advice from. I think Google did a study on HD failures and included rates and reasons why.

http://www.vibrant.com/blog/googles-hard-drive-study-on-sata-disks/
http://research.google.com/archive/disk_failures.pdf

 

Thank you both. This may be a silly question, but HDTune does work with Vista, right?