Joe Videtto asks:
Recently, I’ve been a little concerned about losing all the data on my hard drive that I’ve spent years collecting.
How can I make sure my hard drive will warn me before it is about to fail, so I have time to back it up ?
Are these ‘warning’ programs reliable – and do some work better than others ?
Browser: Firefox 13
System: Windows
Tagged: best software, hardware failure, hardware tips, internal drive
System: Windows
Tagged: best software, hardware failure, hardware tips, internal drive
8 Answers -
DalSan Mack
June 30, 2012http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/5-signs-hard-drive-lifetime/
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/all-the-tools-you-need-to-predict-the-death-of-your-hard-drive/
http://www.pcworld.com/article/226663/the_10_best_free_hard_drive_utilities.html
http://www.techsupportalert.com/best-free-disk-health-monitoring-utility.htm
Here are some articles that would tell you more of what you would like to do. Crystal Disk, which I have used before, is highly rated to check the health of your harddrive.
Be aware that there are times that harddrives will fail without warning. Using harddrive fans and case fans for better ventilation will help extend the life of your harddrives some.
There are times where you have enough warning to backup much of your data should you get a warning, but often times the warnings could wind up showing too late and not all data will be able to be backed up due to corrupt data. I ran into such a problem when the bios warned of the harddrive in eminent danger of failing, and could only backup 70% or less of the harddrive, and even the restore partition failed to even start, so much of the data and the entire Windows system was completely damaged and had to install a different operating system on a new harddrive.
Laga Mahesa
June 30, 2012SMART is unreliable. Do regular maintenance, develop a habit of backing up, use multiple partitions and sacrifice a drive for pagefile/temp/downloads/torrents/scratch.
Above all, pay attention to your ears. If your drive makes any sudden noises out of the blue, an errant click or an odd whirr, do a backup.
agree
July 27, 2012FIDELIS
June 30, 2012Hello, one of the first symptons that a harddrive is starting to fail is usually by the appearance of bad sectors or often corrupted drives. Once you are start seeing this often, this is the best time to make sure you have backups of your important data.
The following link will show you some software that can be used to get info about the health of your drive:
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/all-the-tools-you-need-to-predict-the-death-of-your-hard-drive/
To get info about the common symptoms of drive failure, you could read the following:
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/5-signs-hard-drive-lifetime/
There are several different software available to get info about your drive’s health, the following is an example:
http://hddlife.com/index.html
Chris
July 1, 2012I am sure you will hear many different views on this, but warning programs are unreliable (e.g. RAID). It all comes down to some common sense. Have at least two copies of your important files (on your computer and on an external hard drive). Better yet – store your backups in the cloud. Store it with a company that has back up drives in multiple locations (e.g. America and Australia). Therefore, should there be a big flood, you won’t lose your data. As a general rule, replace your back-up hard drive every five years. Hope this helps
Muhammad Ahmad
July 1, 2012There is no exact prediction of the system or hdd failure, you should always prepare for disaster situation as it can happen any time. You should use any good cloud synchronization service like SkyDrive from Microsoft (25GB Free) and DropBox 2GB initial free space. Both services provide realtime file synchronization service that will upload your data to online storage. These software provides a folder and you will be able to put your data into that folder. You can try dropbox from this link http://db.tt/wtEz7lqk
Thanks
Ben
July 1, 2012I use a tool known as Acronis Drive Monitor. Use this link to download it http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/…/drive-monitor/
jessemanalansan
July 1, 2012You really never know, sometimes it just suddenly fails.
It’s best to always have a backup of your important files.
Paul Pruitt
December 10, 2012I think looking for repeated blue screens in Widows might be an indication. Dust buildup inside the PC will increase the operating heat of a drive leading to overheating sometimes and a blue screen or unexpected crash. Wouldn’t a blue screen sometimes come from a failing drive rather than a failing copy of an OS?