Is My Hard Drive Failing?

The firmware in the drive controller monitors parameters and when it detects "out of range" values it reports this.

This has nothing to do with the operating system. The message is sent from the BIOS before the operating system takes over.

The BIOS must be enabled to monitor the drive if you want the message sent. YOu BIOS has been enabled.

The hard drive must have the monitor embedded. Most modern drives have this capability.

Please do not ignore these warnings. Back up your drive and replace it ASAP.

A hard drive is a spinning magnet. The program is probably able to detect "immanent failure" by either sensors on the drive itself or by how quickly the discs are rotating and information is being retrieved.

It is possible the hard drive will still work for years after that warning but is it worth the risk?

IDE hard drives haven't been used in new systems for over 4 years now. SATA is much faster at transferring information and with hard disk prices being so cheap there is virtually no reason not to upgrade even if your older IDE drive was fine.

As for backing up your data, even a brand new hard drives fail, it happens all the time. You should have a backup solution in place for anything you remotely care about regardless of your setup.

GA for a short and perfectly correct answer.....the first one reading down from the top!

Thanks all.

I remember now that the message started with SMART. The link is interesting.

My PC/motherboard is kind of old. I don't think it has SATA, but I'll check.

I'm an old timer and I'm still trying to find where they put the core memory in the box.

You can convert IDE to SATA with a $10 adapter.

There is no point to buying IDE today. All SATA at the PC superstore that I shop at Microcenter).

Best to back up data ASAP!

S.M.A.R.T. has been around since before SATA, it was on many earlier non SATA drives too.....

There is (free) software around for people with older mainboards that cannot read the S.M.A.R.T. data out.....also for some Linux versions too....

Just finished replacing an old drive for some friends. The SMART notification came up a few days ago and yesterday the machine failed to boot. Hard drive had many bad sectors which MULTIPLIED during the scan itself. Owners were SMART and backed up all their data at the first sign of the problem.

SATA is the new standard, but there are plenty of good IDE/ATA drives still available. This old machine was very satisfied with a surplus, $5, 20GB IDE. Spending any more money on a 1TB SATA drive and adapter for "this" machine was not worth it. Your case might be different.

Regardless of which replacement you choose, get your data safely backed up NOW!

Buy a new hard drive and Ebit from Tiger direct. Follow the instructions. It makes a bit by byte copy of your current hardrive onto the new one.

I opened up the case tonight. The motherboard is an ASUS A7A266. The manual, found online at the ASUS website is dated 2001.

I just missed the computer fair here. I think it was last week, so I'll have to order a drive online. I'll stay with IDE. It's the machine that my daughter leaves on all day.

Oh, and it wouldn't boot up tonight. Sigh. I guess she's lost 11GB of music, but my data should be backed up online by Norton/Symantec.

Thanks again.

This worked for me several times...

I found some good deals on ATA/IDE drives inside an external USB cases. I removed the new ATA/IDE drive from the USB case and installed it in the main PC. Reloaded windows and drivers to get a working system.

Put the old drive into the USB case and connected it to the main PC. Even though it did not BOOT the main PC, it was still able to be accessed through the external interface and 4/5 times I was able to get some or all of my DATA transferred before the old drive finally stopped for good.

If the external interface can't read it, your data is gone unless you take it to a data recovery specialist. I would only do that for really critical data.

Best wishes.

P.S. They Stopped holding computer fairs around here a few years ago. I suspect it was because you could get better qualty parts online which were cheaper delivered to your door.

You can buy cables that allow you to connect any IDE or SATA drive to another PC's USB port. This set comes complete with an external PSU to power the drive.

If you want to try to recover the data (music) on the drive, you could try a method that has worked for quite a few people in this situation. Put the drive in an external drive enclosure, then into a zip-lock bag, then into the freezer! It sounds strange, but it has worked many times. Do a google search on the subject. The reason for the ziplock is to keep condensation off the drive as long as possible, while you try to get your data off as quickly as possible. You can do the same thing with the drive in the original machine, hooked up with the IDE ribbon cable, but it's not as convenient, and having it in an external enclosure, hooked up to a working system, gives you the host machine to save your data to. Good luck!

Tom