How do you tell when a hard drive is dying?

[Saint Nick]

Noises? Applications to detect errors?

 

[Bobthelost]

Speedfan has a "health" section for your HDs.

 

[notanotheracct]

usually clicking noises or similar. you can also use SMART software to detect early warning signs. SMART is usually (i assume) supported by modern motherboards where you can enable it and get a warning in the BIOS for problems (i assume this too). you can also use programs like active smart to check your HDs SMART stats. SMART isn't 100% reliable though.

 

[DaveSimmons]

One of my 2 drive failures in the last year happened with zero warning. It just went into an infinite loop of syncs. Powering down and restarting made no difference, it went right back to click-click-click.

The second drive gave me a couple of days warning but in a way I didn't recognize: my email program (Eudora) complained off and on about its table of contents being out of date, apperently because the dying drive kept corrupting that one file. After a couple of days of that Windows suddenly stopped being able to read the drive at all.

Aside from the silent deaths, other signs do include excessive clicking from seek retries, and the appearance of bad sectors or corrupted files. Unfortunately corrupted files can be a false alarm, caused by program bugs or adware/spyware/trojans.

 

[Saint Nick]

Originally posted by: notanotheract
usually clicking noises or similar. you can also use SMART software to detect early warning signs. SMART is usually (i assume) supported by modern motherboards where you can enable it and get a warning in the BIOS for problems (i assume this too). you can also use programs like active smart to check your HDs SMART stats. SMART isn't 100% reliable though.

Are there any freeware programs out there that can check the SMART stats on my hard drive? How do I know if my hard drive has SMART? I *think* mine does, as I've seen something about it in BIOS about it being on or off or something...

 

[Saint Nick]

Originally posted by: DaveSimmons
One of my 2 drive failures in the last year happened with zero warning. It just went into an infinite loop of syncs. Powering down and restarting made no difference, it went right back to click-click-click.

The second drive gave me a couple of days warning but in a way I didn't recognize: my email program (Eudora) complained off and on about its table of contents being out of date, apperently because the dying drive kept corrupting that one file. After a couple of days of that Windows suddenly stopped being able to read the drive at all.

Aside from the silent deaths, other signs do include excessive clicking from seek retries, and the appearance of bad sectors or corrupted files. Unfortunately corrupted files can be a false alarm, caused by program bugs or adware/spyware/trojans.

is checkdisk or scandisk a very reliable tool? or using O&O defrag to check for errors?

 

[fartbag]

Bad blocks in the logs (eventvwr or syslog).

 

[HybridSquirrel]

what about when it is like kinda clicking and vibrating on boot?

 

[Steve]

Everest Home Edition will tell you S.M.A.R.T. values. Download from www.oldversion.com

 

[Steve]

Why not just get Western Digital's Data Lifeguard and run it? Should tell you. You could also use PowerMax 4.09 from the Ultimate Boot CD.

 

[notanotheracct]

Originally posted by: jndietz
Are there any freeware programs out there that can check the SMART stats on my hard drive? How do I know if my hard drive has SMART? I *think* mine does, as I've seen something about it in BIOS about it being on or off or something...

there was another program similar to active smart but i forgot its name and if it was free. most if not all modern drives support SMART. if the BIOS on your mobo says something abotu SMART chances are you can just turn it on and get warned of problems. like DaveSimmons mentioned though, sometimes things just die without warning and no amount of preparation will save you.

Originally posted by: HybridSquirrel
what about when it is like kinda clicking and vibrating on boot?

well, different brands and models have their own behaviors which are normal. generally, if there's just some clicking/vibrating on boot that's probably normal as long as it doesn't CONTINUE to sound like that when the drive does seeks. HDs make sounds when seeking too though, so don't confuse normal operating sounds with clicks of death.