Hardware SMART Failure Predicted on Harddrive

[acoustic.digital]

hey guys,
i've got a problem.

every time i boot up my laptop, its says : SMART Failure Predicted on Harddrive on 0: (harddrive)
i found out that i the SMART system is implemented into the BIOS, and that it isn't always accurate. no prob, i thought, just use the laptop, because you can skip it by pressing F1.

but 2 or 3 weeks later, the system crashed completely, and I couldn't boot it up anymore. i tried re-installing windows xp (with the recovery cds), and it booted up normally. the next day: bam, same problem. 'windows couldn't start up because a file is missing or corrupted'.

is the hard drive broken or can i fix it with a software?

thanks for help,

chris

 

[lewjay]

Your drive is probably dying. Find out who makes the harddrive and use their diagnostic software to test.

 

[Richy Freeway]

Don't bother about diagnosing it. It's faulty. Get a new drive and use Acronis True Image to clone your bad drive to the new one.

There's a 50% chance it will just work after that. If it doesn't then booting from an XP CD and running a chkdsk c: /r over the new drive might sort any file corruption.

If that doesn't work then you might need to do a repair install on the good drive. If THAT doesn't work, then at least you've got all your data safe.

Failing hard drives have a habit of getting gradually worse then suddenly dying all together, so don't waste time running the drive more than you have to.

If your data is important to you...

GET IT CLONED!

 

[Veho]

Run a diagnostic (SCANDISK or CHKDSK is enough), and see if you have bad sectors. Then format the disk. But if you have bad sectors, it's safest and easiest to buy a new one as the system drive.

And always backup your stuff.

Edited; I forgot it was a laptop.

 

[Richy Freeway]

If the drive is less than 3 years old there may still be a warranty on it. You can usually check on the manufacturers website by entering the serial number into a form.

 

[phoood]

Run a diagnostic (SCANDISK or CHKDSK is enough), and see if you have bad sectors. Then format the disk. But if you have bad sectors, it's safest and easiest to buy a new one as the system drive.

And always backup your stuff.

Edited; I forgot it was a laptop.

Before going out to buy a new hdd, at least try out spinrite to check/repair bad sectors. find it on demonoid or some other public tracker.

 

[Richy Freeway]

Before going out to buy a new hdd, at least try out spinrite to check/repair bad sectors. find it on demonoid or some other public tracker.

Which is all very well until spinrite is the straw that breaks the camels back and makes the drive die.

It does happen, I've had the problem of trying to recover data from a customers drive with a fried circuit.

Attempting a backup should always be the first port of call if the data is at all valuable.

 

[Lodis]

I wouldn't advise using Spinrite because it really stresses out the drive in its thorough testing. Hard Drives are so cheap nowadays that I would just get a new one, clone the old one or backup the entire drive first using Acronis True Image or Drive Snapshot. Write the old image onto the new hard disk drive and use that.

 

[Richy Freeway]

Exactly.