Windows says Hard Drive is Failing (prompts me to backup data)

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jaybertboy

Jun 5, 2018
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Whenever i boot up the system, a windows pop up dialog tells me that it detected a hard drive failure and i must backup all my data.

The first time i saw the popup window was when i exited a game i was playing. The popup window was present in the screen when the game screen was gone, so i think it showed up while i was playing.

I opened up the case and i cannot hear any unusual noise from the hard drive (a light grinding noise was present for like.. years) so i think the hardware may not be the issue.

i have booted up the pc several times now and it has worked fine.
i ran an sfc scan yesterday night and now it runs better than ever.
however, windows still shows the popup window on boot.

any idea what the problem might be? what things can i try to solve the issue?

(please excuse my english, it is not my native language)

thanks in advance!
 
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pineapplenotonpizza

Mar 5, 2018
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First thing I would do is download a program like Defraggler or Auslogics Disk Defrag and defrag it.

Second thing I would do is run chkdsk. Type CMD into your computers search bar, right click it and run as admin. Then type "chkdsk /f". It should say "This needs to be done on boot" or something. Type Y and hit enter. Then reboot and let it do its thing.

Chkdsk will check the drive for bad sectors (area's of the disk platter that can no longer be accessed) and will tell the drive to not write there anymore.

If none of this helps, it means the drive is actually physically dying because of age. The light grinding you hear is probably just the drive's arm spinning around the disk platter.

EDIT: In which case if it is dying I would strongly reccommend moving important files to a different drive just in case it actually does fail on you.
 
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USAFRet

USAFRet

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Dying or not, the first thing I'd do is set up a comprehensive backup plan.
Do that. Today.

The drive may or may not be dying right now. But it is simply a hard drive, and it WILL die one day.

Defrag, chkdsk, sfc scan....all that may make it die faster. Or it may fix it.
Are you a betting person?
 
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pineapplenotonpizza

Mar 5, 2018
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I agree with USAFRet. The very first thing to do is to backup (move) your files to a healthy drive or USB. Then (personally) I would try my steps I have given to ensure that the drive is at least healthier. None of my steps would make it worse.
 
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punkncat

punkncat

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Yeah, at this point if Windows is seeing fit to tell you, it already knows. Defrag and "other" systems run in the background to keep your drives optimal. Once that popup arrives you are already having bad/failing sectors or trim issues. Don't take it out or do anything more than you have to in order to make a copy of what you NEED to back up.
 
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D

Dugimodo

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Sep 22, 2011
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Back up your important data, NOW. If there's nothing critical on the machine then that's your call. Never keep only a single copy of anything you can't replace on a hard drive.

I disagree with the defrag suggestion, the rest I agree with. Defragging a suspect drive is a good way to lose data, also defragging is of minimal use in a modern system anyway.

What does defrag do? it moves files around. What do you not want to do on a faulty drive? move files around.
 
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punkncat

punkncat

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To qualify that, I would say it was according to what threshold of operation you were expecting. The program will allow for a percentage of "optimization" to be off, and then will defrag. According to other factors it will often wait to do this when user activity is low, like at night. If you have a computer that you turn on, do your thing, turn off, often it won't even try to do certain background tasks due to proc management.
If you are the type of person to actually pay attention to it from time to time, check it, and take action when it needs it, the program is more than sufficient.

 
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J

jaybertboy

Jun 5, 2018
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update: i just did chkdsk and at stage 4, 3 bad clusters were replaced. i checked the hard disk space and nothing has changed.

the window still pops up.

i already did a backup of important files (which were really few, actually.) so now i have nothing to lose.

the system is pretty old so i guess its time may really be up soon. i am planning to buy a new hard drive later this year when i have saved up enough once school starts, never knew i would need one sooner..

so now i would like to try defrag and diagnostics.
if it gets fixed or fails completely or the problem still persists, i'll update here. i'm a betting person actually.. :)

after that, if the drive still works, i wont be using the pc for a while until i have a new drive where i can backup all the data in the current drive.

thanks for the answers! it was a great thing that you gave me the idea that the drive is a lost cause because i just might make things worse by trying out more things..
 
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zachbaueris

Jun 5, 2018
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Make a backup asap. I got this warning yesterday, figuring nothing will change today. My hard drive is no longer readable. Not showing up in Device Manger or anything. Only thing I see is it in BIO's. So I highly suggest to back it up some how or another.
 
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D

Dugimodo

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Sep 22, 2011
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I've always found that if you look at what's actually fragmented and not just the percentages windows does a pretty good job because it's always been temp files and old windows install files and other less frequently accessed files that are fragmented and none of that matters.

But I wasn't really basing any of my comments on that, but rather several tests I've read online that show performance gains before and after real world tests to be minor at best.
 
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jaybertboy

Jun 5, 2018
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this may be weird, i dont know what happened. the popup message suddenly stopped showing up. o.o
the last thing i did was boot into safe mode, with the 'active directory repair' ticked. the popup did not show up in safe mode and i did another sfc scan which was successful and it said the integrity of the disk is fine.
i then restarted to the normal windows and the message was gone.

before this was the chkdsk, and the message was still present when i booted.

i have no idea what fixed which.
however i dont trust the hard drive anymore.
 
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stdragon

stdragon

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Apr 5, 2018
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I wouldn't have trusted the first time you got the warning to be honest.

That warning isn't a "check me, fix me" message. That's a "drop everything I'm doing now and backup my data ASAP".

Only the lucky ones get a warning. The others get nothing but a dead drive at the drop of a hat.

Been there, done that, got the T-Shirt.
 
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punkncat

punkncat

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Totally want a "like" button for that comment. Have backups of everything you wish to keep. I never worry about OS drives. IF they fail I just install new and rebuild....but DATA? Having lost EVERYTHING I value once, I decided not to do that again. I backup all important data to a redundant drive/mirrored on a whole different machine on a different (electrical) circuit. In addition, all my photos are also cloud backed now.

 
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