Questions about hard drive mechanical failure.
Questions about hard drive mechanical failure.
Questions tagged [hard-drive-failure]
256 questions
52
votes
3 answers
What do the current, worst, and threshold SMART values mean?
I have a 2TB internal hard drive that might be failing. It spends several minutes at 100% usage when I first turn it on since I installed Windows 10, and yesterday it reported a corrupted Recycle Bin.
I downloaded CrystalDiskInfo, and the pertinent…
Celarix
- 653
31
votes
9 answers
Hard Drive suddenly became unresponsive, recovered on reboot. What to do next?
So I have a desktop PC with an SSD and an HDD. Windows 10 is installed on the SSD, all my data is on the HDD. Today while I was playing a game, it suddenly became unresponsive. At the same time, the video I was watching on my second monitor froze as…
MoritzLost
- 619
24
votes
2 answers
How to prevent programs (e.g. Process Monitor) from killing my SSD in 2 weeks?
I just got my first SSD - Intel 320 Series 120GB yesterday. And I have SSDLife monitoring in the background. I have TRIM enabled.
After I have installed all software, and did some basic testings. SSDLife said "Total Data written, GB" = 52.1 (40GB…
user68795
21
votes
5 answers
How can I recover dead SSD drives?
I haven't lost any mission critical data or anything, but I have in my possession a large number of SSD 2.5" drives that were pulled for unreliability or being "dead". I am curious if there's any way to bring them back to life, but purely as an…
geodave
- 856
16
votes
5 answers
How to prolong the life of an external hard drive?
In ten years, across several different machines, different companies, and different operating systems I've noticed a trend that external hard drives die long before their internal counterparts. Everyone I've spoken to who has used external hard…
Django Reinhardt
- 4,454
14
votes
6 answers
Are SSD's really reliable enough for power users?
TL;DR (though please read my full experience before jumping in with a quick answer.)
A power user performs a certain amount of write cycles. Does an MLC SSD drive support enough write cycles to last a power user around 5 years of usage. In my first…
JL.
- 5,818
13
votes
3 answers
Why do SSDs tend to fail much more suddenly than HDDs?
Modern PCs tend to use one of two types of internal-storage devices:1 2
Hard-disk drives (HDDs) store data on spinning disks coated in a magnetic recording medium, a technology dating back to the 1960s. HDDs are very cheap and available in…
Vikki
- 289
12
votes
6 answers
Is my hard disk failing?
I have a problem with my computer: I'm using Windows 7 x64, and when I try to acces the Downloads folder, it takes a long time. After waiting for half a minute or more, I can open it, see the contents, copy and move files, etc.
And now, when I open…
mHouses
- 221
11
votes
4 answers
Mean Time to Failure (MTTF): When disk manufacturers post this, how should you interpret their numbers?
Mean Time to Failure (MTTF) is usually given in terms of hours, and by doing some calculations, it seems that a disk should fail only after a good number of years have gone by.
It seems that disks need repair more often than that. Does anyone know…
Kaitlyn Mcmordie
- 769
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9
votes
4 answers
External USB hard drive and risk of internal condensation?
Apparently you can kill a USB hard drive by moving it from a cold to warm environment and powering it up. The killer being internal condensation.
Q1: How real is the risk? What kind of temperatures are we talking about? I don't want to waste time…
misha256
- 11,543
- 8
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8
votes
5 answers
How do I fix a boot process that broke because of a failed hard drive? (Windows 7)
I used Windows XP for years, before I was able to get my hands on Windows 7 RC, which I bought a new HDD for, and setup to dual-boot. About a month ago, Windows XP started acting funny, and I thought the disk might be dying, so I started using…
MasterCorban
- 145
7
votes
3 answers
What is the fastest way to force hdd to reallocate bad sectors and discard the data?
I either own or am in charge of (at work) a lot of HDDs that are either part of raid arrays, or there are backups of the data elsewhere.
When a disk is starting to fail and going slow because it's repeatedly trying to recover data out of an area is…
BeowulfNode42
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- 25
7
votes
2 answers
SSD – smartctl – Status
I have a SAMSUNG SSD 830 Series SSD in my MacBook Pro. In my work, I need to analyse huges amounts of data. I have php scripts that extract the data, build csv sheets, then gnuplot generates hundreds of graphics. The graphics are browsed. A few…
PeterG
- 73
7
votes
0 answers
Reading data from a 23 year old IDE harddrive
I have a 200 MB Western Digital 2.5" IDE drive, originally from an Amiga 1200, that I would like to try to get an image file of, so I can keep the data that is on it.
Since the drive is very old, and has been sitting in an attic for 20 years, I want…
Joakim Hårsman
- 171
7
votes
1 answer
need to find out if my hard drive is broken - windows corrupted and wont boot
OK, so a short story long: I had windows 8. It was working fine. When updating to Windows 10, the process interrupted, corrupting my windows installation.
I formatted and reinstalled windows. fine.
After some month, it wouldn't boot anymore. OK.
I…
msa
- 71