Hard Drive Failing?

[BChico]

I get an error at boot up that says "Pri Slave Hard Disk: S.M.A.R.T. Status Bad, Backup and Replace." This is a DiamondMax 80 Ultra DMA 100
98196H8 158,816 16,383 16 63 81.9 GB 81,964. This drive contains video for our school, alot of hours of editing. This would be very bad if it failed. Could you plese tell me if the drive is actually failing, are there any tests i can do?

Thanks,

 

[sohcrates]

d/l and run maxtor's utility's. if drive is failing it will tell you so and you can RMA it

when SMART is giving errors, chances are pretty bad that drive is ok

 

[AndyHui]

SMART error messages are usually pretty good. In my experience, you have about a day to backup everything before your drive actually dies. Don't worry about testing it for now, just back everything up. Once you have done that, you might want to do some testing.

 

[BChico]

Hmmm...i have no way of backing up 80gb...any suggestions?

 

[AndyHui]

Can you get/purchase/borrow another drive very quickly?

 

[dunkster]

As others stated, your HD is probably on the way out and you can expect 'bad sector' errors to flourish soon.

Get your critical data backed up ASAP (personal documents, financial spreadsheets, etc.) to floppy or other available media.

Don't worry about backing up the entire 80 Gigs, since you can re-install apps, games and OS from original CDs.

Hope this helps!

 

[HappyPuppy]

I agree. Even running the drive fitness test might be the action that pushes your questionable drive over the edge.

 

[BChico]

The whole 80gb needs to be backed up. Thats all video. Im in trouble.

 

[4824guy]

With Maxtor, you can request a replacement HD and have it shipped to you before needing to send back the defective HD. You have 30 days to do this if you give them your CC number. They only will charge you if you don't send the old HD back to them. But make sure you put confimration on the returned HD as a proof of shipping to them.

With the new HD, you can back up and image the going-back hd to the new one with the Maxtor software.

 

[BChico]

Thanks for the info, ill do that tomorrow!

 

[BChico]

Ran maxtor's test results:

Smart Process Check Failure, General Error.

Code: V80S57

Ill give them a call...

Thanks Again