HDD starting to fail. Need advice.

Hello. I got this "windows detected a hard disk problem" error yesterday for the first time. After reading up on it, I am pretty sure I am screwed. In a few days, weeks or months... My HDD will be failing.

What I need to ask... Is... How much time do you estimate? I think it's pretty hard to do, but who knows, maybe you know.

Here at the stats of my pc, etc. Screens of different programs I ran:

T5200 1.6Ghz
2GB RAM
Windows 7 Ultimate 32-bit
HDD SAMSUNG HM160HC

I think nothing else is needed....
What I should include, is that computer freezes pretty often for 1-5 seconds. It started like a couple of weeks ago, had no idea why, formatted, etc, problem continued.

Okay:



So... I have already saved my important files to an usb drive... But yeah, how much time do I have?


Thank you.

Almost impossible to say but if it were me I'd figure no time and prepare to move your system. Have you run chkdsk /r on the drive?

See if you can make an image of it with Free Macrium

:ar: http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/73828-imaging-free-macrium.html

roban said:

Almost impossible to say but if it were me I'd figure no time and prepare to move your system. Have you run chkdsk /r on the drive?

Click to expand...

No, I have not.

Would this possibly help? Or would it help to know the time left?


How bad is it, when watching the 2 images I posted?

Nothing will tell exactly how much time is left before a HD fails. I could be 1 hour, 1 day, 1 month, 1 year. How old is the drive ? It might still be under warranty. Backup now to protect your files & data.

It's a bit older than 3 years. Warranty is over.



Thanks for the inputs tho, I am going to start looking for a new HDD now.

The important thing is to keep all your data backed up. As has already been said there is no way to predict how long the drive will last or even if this is an indication that drive failure is imminent.

Run Chkdsk /r and see if it can recover any data saved in those locations.

I would keep a watchful eye on it and if you start seeing more errors then I would replace it.