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I think my hard drive is bad.
- Thread starter metroid87706
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Thanks so much metroid! lol I downloaded this to compare your results, apparently my hard drive is failing!!
I have 7 relocated bad sectors.Hmmm, laptop is under a year old. Is the hard drive covered under warranty?
Thanks so much metroid! lol I downloaded this to compare your results, apparently my hard drive is failing!!
Hmmm, laptop is under a year old. Is the hard drive covered under warranty?
Oy vay, while I am not familiar with this program I am sure that your hard drive's are not failing. Are they making the clicking noise of death? Have you noticed decreased performance?
Well SMART Utility seems to think so.
I'm copying my hard drive as I type with SuperDuper.
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Eh it never hurts to be safe, but I think it's nothing to worry about. Well the best of luck to you and I hope it isn't really failing.
Actually, yes. I have noticed performance drops, and my hard drive does click quite a bit. I have noticed that apps will go unresponsive quite a bit lately.
Edit: Oh, didn't see that wasn't directed at me, but I am having those issues anyway.
Apparently my hard drive is failing too. I don't give this much merit though. But my data is backed up so I don't have to worry about it.
Oh it was directed at both of you actually. LOL sorry I know it wasn't clear.
Well then I suppose that your drive may be failing.
Yeah I don't give it much merit either.
I'm starting to agree... SMART Utility seems to have parameters that may not apply to all hard drives. Somewhere else online someone recommends running each company's own diagnostic software if possible...
You did. But now get yourself an external hard drive enclosure and you have a backup.
GUYS -- SMART UTILITY IS *TERRIBLE* AT INTERPRETING THE DATA IT READS.
It screams bloody murder and FAILURE when it shouldn't. One of my drives was once two degrees hotter than the manufacturer thinks it should get. This was in the dead of winter, when the heating in my room was maxed out, so the drive's temperature was that high because of the ambient temperature in the room, not because the drive was malfunctioning. (This was six months ago, and the "failing" drive is still fine.)
Nonetheless, the drive's SMART mechanism recorded that the drive had exceeded its maximum safe temperature theshold once, meaning that even though all other SMART values are "Never Failed", that single one is "Failed". Which in Smart Utility's illogical universe means that my drive is dead, which it's not.
I have another drive that had three bad sectors. It wasn't fun to fix them -- I had to move all 400GB to other places, low-level reformat the drive, then copy everything back -- but the fact that it had three bad sectors (that are now reallocated, i.e. "fixed") means that Smart Utility has given up on the drive.
Note that drives actually have a threshold for how many bad sectors they tolerate, and three is below that, so my drive didn't even fail the bad sector category in the SMART listings.
There's a lot of nuance to this, and while it's helpful to look at what the drive itself thinks are issues, use your brain to interpret what it means. Obviously, you should ALWAYS have backups, and obviously, if you hear clicking and have degragded performance, those are bad signs. For all the rest, keep a level head.
It screams bloody murder and FAILURE when it shouldn't. One of my drives was once two degrees hotter than the manufacturer thinks it should get. This was in the dead of winter, when the heating in my room was maxed out, so the drive's temperature was that high because of the ambient temperature in the room, not because the drive was malfunctioning. (This was six months ago, and the "failing" drive is still fine.)
Nonetheless, the drive's SMART mechanism recorded that the drive had exceeded its maximum safe temperature theshold once, meaning that even though all other SMART values are "Never Failed", that single one is "Failed". Which in Smart Utility's illogical universe means that my drive is dead, which it's not.
I have another drive that had three bad sectors. It wasn't fun to fix them -- I had to move all 400GB to other places, low-level reformat the drive, then copy everything back -- but the fact that it had three bad sectors (that are now reallocated, i.e. "fixed") means that Smart Utility has given up on the drive.
Note that drives actually have a threshold for how many bad sectors they tolerate, and three is below that, so my drive didn't even fail the bad sector category in the SMART listings.
There's a lot of nuance to this, and while it's helpful to look at what the drive itself thinks are issues, use your brain to interpret what it means. Obviously, you should ALWAYS have backups, and obviously, if you hear clicking and have degragded performance, those are bad signs. For all the rest, keep a level head.