Is my hard drive about to die ?

BenjAii

My laptop is getting on for 4 years old & has been used fairly heavily, so I wouldn't be surprised.

I have been having some very odd problems with it in the last few days that have got much worse today. It started with clicking on "My Computer" taking 2 or 3 minutes to load up. Today in any program where I am trying to save something and in the process look up directories or folders applications like firefox/photoshop are freezing for a couple of minuites.

The disk has recently been defragged.

yoyo

More than likely! I'd backup everything and replace the drive, Clicking can mean the drive is struggling to read part of the hard drive, the loading my computer lag could be due to this

Nick

Voodu Child

Yeah, I agree. The drive is likely on it's last legs, and I would make sure you have everything important backed up asap, and then look at getting a new drive.

If the laptop is your only computer, I would also look into downloading a light Live-CD or Live-USB operating system (see the unix forum for help). Just in case the drive goes kaput, and you're stuck with no computer and no internet access to help order the new one.

BenjAii

Thanks for the replies, I'm backing up as we speak and will be getting a new HD tomorrow.

lenovoguy

Are you hearing any strange clicking or scraping noises when you're using the machine - they are usually indicative of iminent hard disk death. You might also like to try out the smartmontools utility suite, it gives a detailed breakdown of your drive's SMART (self monitoring and recovery technology) attributes and their values.

towel401

BenjAii wrote: »

Thanks for the replies, I'm backing up as we speak and will be getting a new HD tomorrow.

go for a SLC SSD. its the only way if you want something reliable nowadays. well that and drive mirroring

Capt'n Midnight

towel401 wrote: »

go for a SLC SSD. its the only way if you want something reliable nowadays. well that and drive mirroring

Fine if you only want a few GB and yes there have been dodgy SSD's too.


The good news - if you wear out an area on an SSD, it becomes read only

The band news from last year - OMFG :eek::eek::eek::eek:
http://www.engadget.com/2008/03/18/consumers-returning-ssd-laptops-in-droves/

A new study shows that flash-based laptops are being returned at a rate of 10 to 20 percent for technical failure, compared to the 1 to 2 percent of regular laptop returns due to HDD issues.

Capt'n Midnight

if running windows get hdtune m it will report on the health of the drive. SMART errors predict drive failures half the time, the rest of the time drives just dies with no warning.

backup before you need to .

towel401

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

Fine if you only want a few GB and yes there have been dodgy SSD's too.


The good news - if you wear out an area on an SSD, it becomes read only

The band news from last year - OMFG :eek::eek::eek::eek:
http://www.engadget.com/2008/03/18/consumers-returning-ssd-laptops-in-droves/

the unreliable SSD's are mostly MLC ones - although not the one shown in that article. most SSD you see for sale like OCZ, Intel and those are MLC. SLC you really have to look for (and pay through the nose!) they complain about lackluster performance but MLC is fairly lackluster in every way. manufacturers trying to make a few bob passing these things off as better than hard drives in every way. but ya can't blame em for trying

i have the MCBQE64GBMPP-03A myself. it has served me well. but nothing lasts forever and you should have 3 backups, 1 in a remote location, more if you're paranoid like me

Capt'n Midnight

Ta so SLC is one bit per cell, and MLC is 3 or 4 or more bits per cell
so SLC has to detect charge or not
MLC has to be reliably detect 16 different distinct charge levels

Does anyone use this for RAM ? in theory it would make it 4 times cheaper, but much more unreliable

Nichololas

The importance of reading comprehension: he didn't say the drive was making a clicking sound, he said it was taking 2-3 minutes for My Computer to open after clicking on it.

If it's been 4 years without a fresh windows install you might try that instead of getting a new hdd.