Questions tagged [hard-drive-failure]
Questions about hard drive mechanical failure.
254
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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.
...
31
votes
9
answers
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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 ...
24
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2
answers
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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. ...
21
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5
answers
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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 ...
16
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5
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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. ...
14
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6
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Are SSD's really reliable enough for power users? [closed]
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 ...
13
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3
answers
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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 ...
12
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6
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2k
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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,...
11
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4
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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 ...
9
votes
4
answers
3k
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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 ...
8
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5
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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 ...
7
votes
1
answer
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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.
...
7
votes
2
answers
5k
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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 ...
7
votes
3
answers
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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 ...
7
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0
answers
3k
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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 ...
6
votes
1
answer
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2TB Seagate External GoFlex external hard drive failure: Is there anything I can do?
I have a 2TB Seagate External GoFlex—which has a Seagate 2TB 9VT156-570 installed—that I’d like to recover the data from. It was working and I was going to make a backup. I bought a SATA docking ...
6
votes
1
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Computer doesn't boot up, shows PXE error and/or "operating system not found", "no bootable device", "insert boot media", or other similar error
My computer no longer boots Windows or the installed operating system. Instead, I may get this error:
PXE-E61: Media test failure, check cable
-or-
Check cable connection!
PXE-M0F: Exiting PXE ROM.
...
6
votes
1
answer
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How many drives can I safely lose in a RAID-10 array?
In a 4-drive RAID-10 setup, how many drives can I "safely" lose before the data becomes unrecoverable? It's a bit unclear to me whether the setup provides one drive or two drives worth of redundancy.
...
6
votes
2
answers
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Seatool's Short Generic test fails, but Long Generic test passes
I've got a new Seagate Expansion External hard drive, model STEB5000100 (5TB) from Amazon. It is connected to a computer via USB 3.0
Even though it is brand new I decided to run Seatools tests.
It ...
5
votes
1
answer
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Whole working Windows 7 partition (on SSD) suddenly became "Unallocated Disk Space"
I have an HP 2540p with Windows 7 installed on a Plextor M3 SSD that sits in the upgrade drive bay (that used to house a DVD drive). The system has been working fine for months until this morning when ...
5
votes
1
answer
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Are SMART Data Address Mark errors a concern on an SSD in particular?
I have a Crucial 500 GB SSD (CT500MX500SSD4) which is reporting a non-zero number of data address mark errors. Other parameters appear fine (wear leveling is occurring, there are currently no I/O ...
5
votes
4
answers
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SSD testing equivalent of Memtest for RAM?
How does one check if their SSD is failing? I randomly started getting BSOD's for memory and storage related issues... memtest checked out fine, how can I test to see if the SSD might be the culprit?
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4
votes
2
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My harddrive failed SMART check and short drive self test. What should I do?
I used SeaTools for Windows to test my harddrive and i failed the S.M.A.R.T check and Short Drive Self Test.
What's wrong with my hard drive?
Is it a big problem? Do I need to do anything to solve ...
4
votes
1
answer
147
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Effect of HDD age on disk failure
I've got an old 1TB Seagate external drive I've been using to backup a laptop for years. The disk started making a periodic noise this morning approx. every second. It's softer than I'd describe as a ...
4
votes
2
answers
4k
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Windows 7 hangs with 100% disk activity but only when online
I have the same problem as seemingly many other people here, and I think we might all be experiencing the same issue: a compatibility issue in Windows 7 between hard drive and network controller or ...
4
votes
3
answers
8k
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Windows detected a hard disk problem — what should I do?
I'm using Windows 7 x64 Ultimate, I'm getting windows error popups like this one for about 3 days, multiple times a day:
This Samsung SpinPoint F3 HD502HJ 500 GB is about 2 years old and I already ...
4
votes
0
answers
211
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Any way to tweak Windows' kernels or drives to handle I/O and reduce or eliminate hangs with failing drives?
I frequently work with failing hard drives for data recovery and various tasks. These tasks are usually short lived in nature, but important. The way Windows seems to handle any failing drive that's ...
4
votes
1
answer
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Can't access external harddrive in OSX
For some reason i can't access my external HDD anymore. It's not showing up in Finder, although i can see it in the Volumes folder and in Disk Utility app.
When i access the HDD from terminal and try ...
3
votes
2
answers
1k
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Hard Drive Failure? - Reallocated Sector Count
I recently noticed Windows was extremely slow and some programs failed to run.
The hard disk is checked during boot randomly. Sometimes checks go to Stage 5: 100s of thousands of sectors.
After a ...
3
votes
3
answers
3k
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External hard drive clicks - doesn't read
My external hard drive isn't being read. I can hear the head begin to spin, then click, and stop. The process repeats a couple of times. Then it stops spinning altogether.
I have given the drive to ...