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SMART Utility says my HDD is failing, what do?

D

dba415

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jun 18, 2011
938
1,202
Yesterday I noticed my MacBook Pro 2010 13 incher acting really slow. Odd because before yesterday it was completely fine. Kept seeing the beach ball no matter what I did.

Repaired permissions, ran disk utility and it said my hard drive was working fine. I was still suspicious so I decided to download SMART Utility, and I got this

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/842/smartfail.png/

One thing is though, I tried working on windows 7 which is installed on a different partition of the same hard drive and noticed no slow down it was normal.
 
Funny, I received that message too. A lot. And it turns out it wasn't even failing. Just false alarm. I'm not sure about you, but if I were you, I'd backup the drive while I still can. I saw this video from YouTube, the HDD went from perfectly healthy to completely dead in a matter of hours. The owner wasn't able to back the files all up.
 
1. Backup asap if you're not doing it regularly
2. Buy new one
3. Clone to new one
4. Remove old one
5. Put in new one
6. Secure erase old one and dispose of it in an environmentally friendly way

Done.
 
Take a drill to the old one.

I mean literally drill several holes right through it. Am I being paranoid you might think, maybe, but not once have I not had a restful night's sleep because I was afraid someone may have had the opportunity to retrieve some files off my old one after disposal.
 
If you smash the drive with a hammer that will also do the job. If they are made of glass or ceramic substrate the platters shatter into a million pieces...
 
iAppleseed said:
Funny, I received that message too. A lot. And it turns out it wasn't even failing. Just false alarm. I'm not sure about you, but if I were you, I'd backup the drive while I still can. I saw this video from YouTube, the HDD went from perfectly healthy to completely dead in a matter of hours. The owner wasn't able to back the files all up.
Click to expand...

How did you realize yours was a false alarm instead of an actual failure?

Did you experience any slowdown like I am experiencing now?
 
dba415 said:
How did you realize yours was a false alarm instead of an actual failure?

Did you experience any slowdown like I am experiencing now?
Click to expand...

Because I rebooted twice then checked disk utility for the S.M.A.R.T. status, it said it's fine. It's been fine for 1.5 years after that false alarm.

----------
RockPortTech said:
Take a drill to the old one.

I mean literally drill several holes right through it. Am I being paranoid you might think, maybe, but not once have I not had a restful night's sleep because I was afraid someone may have had the opportunity to retrieve some files off my old one after disposal.
Click to expand...

Wow. Unless you store your credit card no., your passwords, and your diary on that HDD, you will need to drill a hole. I on the other hand, want someone to discover the HD I've thrown and use it. I'll just write a message on the hard drive congratulating the one who found it. It seems fun.
 
iAppleseed said:
Because I rebooted twice then checked disk utility for the S.M.A.R.T. status, it said it's fine. It's been fine for 1.5 years after that false alarm.

----------



Wow. Unless you store your credit card no., your passwords, and your diary on that HDD, you will need to drill a hole. I on the other hand, want someone to discover the HD I've thrown and use it. I'll just write a message on the hard drive congratulating the one who found it. It seems fun.
Click to expand...

You see, ONLY Smart Utility says my HDD is failing, disk utility does not, and says everything is working like it should.
 
dba415 said:
One thing is though, I tried working on windows 7 which is installed on a different partition of the same hard drive and noticed no slow down it was normal.
Click to expand...
Nothing odd there. It's possible that Win 7 isn't using an affected area.
 
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