Is Your Hard Drive Going to Crash?

Bob, I've been told that if CHKDSK starts finding and blocking damaged sectors, you should take that as a warning that your hard drive is "starting to go" and you should consider replacing it soon. What do you think?

EDITOR'S NOTE: Sounds like good advice.

Well for as long as I been working on computer's I have to say I never had one go bad not to say they don't but personally I never experienced one and I been working on them for a long time.

This article should be updated to include a discussion of SSD's. The review should differentiate between the electromechanical nature of HDD's
and the electronic memory of SSD's.

I lost a hard drive to Hurricane (Tropical Storm) Irene two years. Long story short, I eventually bought a 1.5TB Seagate external hard drive (on sale at Costco) and sent it with my damaged hard drive across the country for data recovery. When I got it back, I could read the recovered files with no noise from the external hard drive. Yet a few days ago, when I tried to back up my current computer files to that same external hard drive overnight, I woke up the next morning to a message that the backup had failed (error code 0x80070015). There was a loud repetitious clicking noise coming from the external hard drive.

I am totally unused to backups and doing unfamiliar things in order to deal with problems like this. I see many online complaints about backup error code 00x80070015, so I'm not alone, but is it possible that my "new" external hard drive is damaged?

Thanbk you for the reminders, my only comment concerns the disposal of the old drive. Once all the data is transferred I take the old drive apart, by force if necessary. Rmove the magnetic disc and put it through a shredder! Then I beat on the remains of the hard drive with a big hammer. Not only does it make it impossible to get information it makes me feel better to get retribution for the work of replacing the hard drive. If you want to make evem more sure collect the bits of magnetic matter from the shredder, put them in an envelope, give it a good shake and put envelope and contenrts through the shredder.

I had an old Sony from pre-pentium days (e.g.3/486 chipset). I run my computer 24/7 ever since I learned about World Community Grid (a distributed computing program, like the better known SETI). It chattered for a good 18 months before a video card got lose and it was too old and slow to bother trying to unpack it from it's corner, break the case, and fiddle with the card to get a huge black monitor to turn from black and black to color.

But eventually I had to fix the disk and get rid of the especially critical datum on the hard drive since it contained FAR too much confidential student information and memos to Administration to have it even accidentally fall into the hands of folks outside my department.

That's when I used the 'DOD WIPE' -- AKA "Maffia Disk Doctor". You go out into the desert, hang the drive from a tree limb or put it in the brush, and use (SAFELY) a pistol or rifle to break open the case. When you get the platters lose, you hang those as well and use them for target practice.

The end result is a disk which has warped before letting the bullet penetrate. You have just used the time-tested-and-proven-right way to stop the unauthorized spread of information. Only one person can keep a secret, in this event, it's only you.

To make it even nicer, just frame it on yellow stock paper upon which you have printed 'MAFFIA DISK DOCTOR' and a photo of a 'hit-squad' -- and it's VERY unlikely ANYONE will EVER *EVER* be able to make it talk again.

Before I left that college, my 'ego wall' was NOT filled with degrees and certificates since they generally don't mean much (a 1978 convention of professionals that gives out 'certificates of attendance'. They often tell you more about the personality of the person than it does their knowledge-base).

Rather, I put up disks that some 'unknown hit-men' (and women) had 'taken out' - each labeled in the form "name, college president, 19zx-20xx" with an engraved brass plaque at the bottom of the nice wooden frame. Or 'Name, Department Chair, 198x-200x". Not only does it give people a chuckle, I was handing them back to the people who'd given me the hard drive that needed destruction, and for the price of a good hand-frame, glass, and professional mounting they, too, had a 'trophy' wall of their own.

Some skeet and duck hunters would also have a friend toss the disk into the air and they'd try to hit it with shot - but only heavy shot will penetrate the metal disk. I find it MUCH more fun, faster, effective, and gives a peace of mind that the data on the disk is right there, hanging on your wall. So you KNOW where the disk is, and where ALL of that VERY sensitive information is. Right there in front of you.

Kind of like "The Governor' and his fish tanks. The Spinning Dead.

In re: to Disk wiping.

As inexpensive as hard drives (and Memory, in general) have become, I am of the opinion that a 3/8" Electric Drill and bit will do a superb job of disk-wiping.

I haven't checked lately, but MTBF Data used to be almost impossible to find online; got any sites that provide this handy 'Bench-Mark"?

I have been using Acronis Drive Monitor for a while. It is a free utility from there web site and works great as long as the drives are a newer ones with SMART drive monitoring built in (most have for some time now). It shows current readings (including temperature) and a history that rates your drive up to 100%. It monitors all drives attached to you computer, even the external hard drives.

QUESTION: Bob, a friend just gave me an Android tablet while I await the arrival of my new lap-top. (thanks by the way) - I've noticed that to use my LAN I have to give permission to ALL the apps (even NPR's) to access any part of my 'computer' -- is that the tablet only? or is it ANY part of ANY computer that happens to be live on the LAN? (generally I am hard-wired [Cat-5] to my router and the wi-fi part has been 'disabled'). The lap-top will generally be about the same I suspect. (oh, BTW, did I mention a thank you for your help?). thanks again - pg

I opened command prompt & as suggested, I typed CHKDSK C: /F /R & clicked enter but it said access denied, as I do not have sufficient privileges. I have to invoke this utility running in elevated mode???? I have NO IDEA what it is talking about! What do I do now to run this check on my hard drive?

I have been running the same Western Digital 74g Raptor drive for the past 10 years and so far without any problems. When I purchased it I also got a second one in case of failure.
If, in the event of failure, there will not be any great loss as I have only the OS and programs on C: therefore I see no real need for myself to make any back-ups.
However, for someone with only one hard drive it would make perfect sense to make back-ups on a regular basis (perhaps once a month or more often if you constantly edit sensitive files).
As always thank you for a very well-written and useful article.
Keep up the good work! :-)

Thanks Bob...Since 1986, I've had 3 hard drives go on me, the last one was the most devastating. It was a 1 year old 1T hard drive inside a WDTV Live Hub with a half-a-ton of movies, pics and music on it. WD replaced the thing with no problem at all but since the drive was relatively new I always said "tomorrow I will back it up." One day I turn it of and it told me there was no local storage and all it did was "click". No warning at all. Since then everything the I don't want to loose gets a back up.

Hurrah! At last I got a webpage from where I be able to actually obtain valuable facts regarding my study and knowledge.

I have a lot of computers over the years that have crashed and I strip them and usually take the hard drives and slap them in an enclosure and turn them in to an external hard drive. Thanks for sharing with us all.

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