Is my HD dying?

craney5 · 02 Jan 2011

Hi all,

I have noticed a few strange things regarding my HD lately. I have re-imaged my laptop a few times lately and once its completed i always run disk check after. The last 2 re-images i have done have shown a lot of cluster errors in disk check. I actually tried to create a new image with Macrium and it threw me an error half way through saying it could not read a part of the drive so again i did a disk check it found a few errors but after that i did manage to create a new image.

I have just downloaded crystal disk info and this is what it showed

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Is there a test i can run within the program or can i safely trust wat the program says with regards to caution?

hope you can help

richc46 · 02 Jan 2011

Welcome
Dont guess, take this test. Used many times for BSOD problems
Be sure to back up your stuff first. Not due to the test but the HD may go at any time
Test Hard Drive HD Diagnostic or this test Hard Drive Diagnostics Tools and Utilities (Storage) - TACKtech Corp.

thefabe · 02 Jan 2011

Not stepping on your toes richc46 but he can also use Western digital data lifeguard. here if the other isn't to his liking. Either way it will have the same result.
Fabe
WD Support / Downloads / SATA & SAS / WD RE2

Golden · 02 Jan 2011

Craney,

You didnt post the full image - there are items towards the bottom that are probably yellow that we cannot see. Can you redo the image?

Regards,
Golden

craney5 · 02 Jan 2011

No worries mate here you go

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I have run the WD tool from there site and i got an error pretty much straight away, all be it in the menu when i loaded it up it states it passed S.M.A.R.T

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Golden · 02 Jan 2011

Ok. Its inconclusive at this stage. Can you try richc46's suggestion a few posts above, and see what the gives you?

Regards,
Golden

craney5 · 02 Jan 2011

Thanks mate i will try the HD test richc suggested, just for future reference though wat exactly should i be looking for in the crystal disk application with regards to a possible bad HD?

thanks again

Golden · 02 Jan 2011

Hi Craney,

From my limited knowledge in the area, I look for:

Reallocated Sectors Counts
Spin Retry Count
Read Error Rate
Uncorrectable Sector Count

These are some of the common S.M.A.R.T attributes that disk manufactures use to try and predict when a disk will fail. The 4 above are ones that are known to be critical to disk failure. Different disk manufactuers have different values for the attributes. CrystalDiskInfo reads the type of disk, then loads the manufactuers SMART attribute tables and compares that to the the values "stored" in the disk. When it finds issues, it flags warning in different colours (yellow as you have seen is a warning, red would be really bad).

You can read up more about SMART here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.M.A.R.T.

There are many other utilities that do a similar (possibly even better job). Perhaps some of the really knowledgable hardware guru's will also offer some comment, and correct any errors I have made.

Regards,
Golden