Disk Read Error But works???

[Neutrolizer]

I recently woke up this morning and found that this error had occured. Went on my laptop and found this, tried to turn on my computer again trying to go into bios and pressed del and my computer loaded fine. Now I'm afraid to turn off my computer! I'm wondering what steps I should take?

I have windows 7 and im basically posting this off of newegg .

GIGABYTE GA-870A-UD3 AM3 AMD 870 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX AMD Motherboard

AMD Athlon II X4 635 Propus 2.9GHz Socket AM3 95W Quad-Core Desktop Processor ADX635WFGIBOX

Western Digital Caviar Black WD5001AALS 500GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive

Please and Thank you !!

 

[WyomingKnott]

Back up, just in case.

 

[Neutrolizer]

i did the error-checking and it says its fine. I'm just curious as to why the error popped up and why my comp is still fine. I probably will back it up, the back up is the same in that tool tab on computer properties right?

 

[pjmelect]

In my experience of hard drives that give disk read errors is that they can die rapidly thereafter. Back up your data immediately. Try downloading your hard drives manufacturer diagnostic software from their web site. I have found that prolonged testing of the hard drive can cause it to fail if it is not 100%.

 

[Neutrolizer]

ok i just ran the diagnostics test that WD had to offer and it came back with a pass. Though you're saying that its not going to last long? I did the extended test, but yea prob gonna get that back up up tomorrow night

 

[pjmelect]

If the manufactures diagnostic utility passes the drive then the chances are that there is nothing wrong with the drive. I would suggest that you run a memory check program such as memtest86 overnight,

 

[Neutrolizer]

how does memtest 86 work? I was reading that you burn it to a disk and it runs and keeps running until you restart your computer?

also thanks for all the help

 

[pjmelect]

Memtest86 is a bootable CD in that it boots up when the computer starts instead of Windows. You must of course set the option in the BIOS to make the CD drive the first bootable device and not the hard drive. When you download the program and extract it from the ZIP file you will find that it is an ISO file (disk image). You will then need to burn the image to a disk in a program such as Nero or Roxio (there are other free programs that do this) using the command “Burn from disc image file” There are full instructions on the www.memtest86.com web site.

 

[Neutrolizer]

Best answer selected by Neutrolizer.