S.M.A.R.T. and Hard Disk Failure

[TPJerematic]

ARGH!!!

My laptop was fine last night and now .... poof, I'm getting this alart telling me my harddisk is about to fail.

Only when i press F1 to try and back up my files nothing happens followed by the machine turning itself off and rebooting.


so HELP?!

 

[Rayne]

Hm, the failure could be any number of reasons: Old disk, damaged from a tumble, nearing capacity, etc.

Were you running something that was taking up memory before the failure? While I'm at it, how old is it and has your laptop been banged around (just minor things like a 3 foot drop could jostle something you don't want if the laptop was on when it happened).

If your hard disk isn't functioning as it should, you may be at the threshold of bricking it. There are remedies such as freezing your hard disk, but I wouldn't recommend it especially since I don't know for certain it's a hardware issue and that you'd have to pry it out of your laptop and such and this is only done in the more extreme cases. I'm not entirely sure on the nature of your hard drive right now, so more info would be appreciated.

If this is a hardware issue, then you probably have to take it to a specialist to recover the data. Attempts to do it yourself may damage the disk even further. Of course I could be wrong. I'll reserve judgment if I can find out more about the state of your hard drive.

Also can't rule out the suspect Virus, though it doesn't quite sound like it.

 

[TPJerematic]

the laptop was brought on the 20/10/2008 so it's not old, with a 160GB HDD cap ... and i was nowhere near that.

It hasn't received any rough treatment more than normal. definatly nothing more than a foot of dropping onto my bed.

It has however seen a lot of use (i could average somthing like 6 hours a day) so maybe i have just worn out the disk. but it should have given me a better warning and a chance to back up IF the disk was beginning to fade.


But its going to cost me a lot of monies to fix the damn thing. hopefully the warrenty will cover some of the costs

 

[Rayne]

Oh, you still have the warranty? I'd say use it.

I've had my laptop for nearly five years running off a 60GB HD. I've near maxed it down to the kb a dozen times and worked it to the bone. It's been on 24/7 for the better part of the past month. It's recovered from several nasty viruses. I've probably been very lucky, but for the most part I think your hard drive is alright.

If your laptop were from before 2005 and were running on modern applications, I'd have reason to be concerned, but it seems that maybe the hard disk isn't at fault. It's too soon to go sour. (Of course I've heard of viruses bricking hard drives. It happened a long while back when my mom mistakenly opened a virus from an e-mail that locked her hard drive by infinitely copying itself over. I lost a few good files on that computer :/)

Considering your hard drive seems OK, but your computer is constantly resetting itself and you're not able to access the hard drive, it could be a BIOS issue. If that's corrupt you either have to reflash it or go the safe route and let the manufacturer do that, ie go with the warranty if you have it (that should actually cover all the costs depending on what its terms are). That happened to my Sister's HP a while back. She sent it in and it came back with everything in tact.

What computer model do you have? Can you access the BIOS settings before starting up?

 

[TPJerematic]

I have a HP ... er i can't remember the model of the top of my head

Running Vista erm ... I'm not too good and remembering things about it. without being prompted. so tell me what you need to know.

I can access BIOS before it goes to SMART thingy. It tried to scan the HDD and just came up saying it was broken and needs replacing.

It can't be a virus, well i don't THINK it's a virus. The computer and Kaspersky was telling me it was clean.

The last thing i did before turning it off was updateing Firefox to version 3.6

but it couldn't be the burning fox? ... could it?

 

[Rayne]

No, I highly doubt it's related to that update and unfortunately, I don't know much more about what else you can try.

Seems if your computer is indeed detecting a Hard Disk failure, then I'm not sure what else you can do without getting overly intrusive.

But like I said, best thing to do is if you still have that Warranty, use it.

 

[NismoZ58]

My dad has a trick to keep files and stuff when Windows/your hard drive crashes. Just put all of your files on the D drive.

Of course, that would only work before it happens.