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Windows 7 seems to think my hard drive is failing

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I've googled the issue, most of it is support for checking the problem, which doesn't seem to be turning up much for me. My question is simple. Could windows be mistaken, or is this warning always accurate? My hard drive should still be within the 3 year warranty period (Samsung Spinpoint F3 1TB, bought a year or so ago), so I may see if I can do something with that.

All I've done today is partition the drive a couple times, and put it into a new system and installed Windows 7. I'm about to re-merge the partitions to see if that hopefully fixes the problem, but I'm not holding my breath. After that's done I'd like to try some hard disk check software. One site seemed to recommend Seatools from seagate. Would this be an adequate check? And if nothing comes up, what might the issue be? The hard drive was running fine earlier today before I put it into my new system. Prior to that, the drive seemed fine with one exception a few months ago in which a folder seemed to have become corrupted and inaccessible, but then became accessible again with no issues. Nothing really happened after that and I've been using it just fine ever since.

Note: I've already run ChkDsk /F /R. As far as I could tell, nothing came up, but I keep getting the same error message anyway.

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mubin said:
If windows tell harddrive is failing and back-up all data then it is not virus. I have a bad samsung harddrive, but it is 4 years older. Windows tell me to back-up data.

Agreed, assume that it IS failing and backup important data.

Finished doing a couple tests with Seatools. Specifically the Smart test, short generic and long generic. All failed unfortunately, so I'm just about convinced. I'm going to try out Crystaldiskinfo to see what it'll do just in case anyway.

As for the notification, it is a popup, but I'm pretty sure it's an actual windows pop up. The last one I got was last night, and I told it to stop telling me about it, and I haven't had it saying anything since. I should note that the OS was saying the drive may fail soon prior to installation , and that it COULD NOT be installed to this drive, but it allowed me to install it anyway.
And despite the fact that the drive is failing tests, it still bugs me. I wasn't getting any problems like this yesterday when it was my secondary drive. Is windows unable to detect a failing drive if it isn't the main drive? And why does it still claim the drive is 'healthy' when I go to manage them if the OS clearly thinks something is wrong? Could I really have caused this just transitioning into a new machine?

Anyway, dl'ing crystaldiskinfo now. Will update on the results from that if it matters.

Finished with CrystalDiskInfo I suppose. I took a screenshot to kill..well, several birds with one stone.

http://i.imgur.com/9dhqh.png

There's the info, but the other thing I wanted to point out was that big outline. That's me dragging the window. This happened yesterday when I was partitioning the drive originally. Normally the entire window gets dragged, but instead I'm getting an outline, with the window then bouncing over? It's not the end of the world but that's not normal, and I suppose that alone tells me something is wrong. Maybe.
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AFAIK you will not get a Windows Disk Management failed status until you have data loss -- it is not a "sensitive" indicator for potential failure like SMART testing software. So don't rely on DM for that because you will already know the disk died.

HERE is the MS information on volume status descriptions.

Best solution

I agree. It sounds like a bad drive for sure. My Western Digital 2TB lasted only two months and died but the second one is great.

A drive can be working fine one day and bad the next, but it doesn't matter. When diagnostics say your drive is bad it WILL FAIL COMPLETELY at some point.

Western Digital has an option to send you a drive immediately (you need to provide Credit Card information in case you fail to return your bad one). I'm not sure about Seagate.

*When you get your new drive. Do this:
1. Run the most advanced Seagate diagnostic test (should take hours), then:

If the drive is to have Windows installed on it then do nothing further. If it's to be a secondary drive then:
1. Add drive using "Disk Management"
2. format with FULL NTFS (full means it checks the entire drive to build a "bad sector table"; never install data before this. That's why Windows XP would ask about quick or full formatting, but they should have always done full by default.

Have fun.

*I recommend you create occasional backup IMAGES of Windows using a program like Acronis True Image. You can then RESTORE Windows in case it's corrupted or even if the drive fails completely. Backup must be on a separate hard drive.

Soraiku said:
Finished doing a couple tests with Seyou atools. Specifically the Smart test, short generic and long generic. All failed unfortunately, so I'm just about convinced. I'm going to try out Crystaldiskinfo to see what it'll do just in case anyway.

As for the notification, it is a popup, but I'm pretty sure it's an actual windows pop up. The last one I got was last night, and I told it to stop telling me about it, and I haven't had it saying anything since. I should note that the OS was saying the drive may fail soon prior to installation , and that it COULD NOT be installed to this drive, but it allowed me to install it anyway.
And despite the fact that the drive is failing tests, it still bugs me. I wasn't getting any problems like this yesterday when it was my secondary drive. Is windows unable to detect a failing drive if it isn't the main drive? And why does it still claim the drive is 'healthy' when I go to manage them if the OS clearly thinks something is wrong? Could I really have caused this just transitioning into a new machine?

Anyway, dl'ing crystaldiskinfo now. Will update on the results from that if it matters.


Hi I can't see the date on this thread and I have the same problem. Basically It is windows but I believe it is BS.

Ill Explain and this is hypothetical ok? supposing you had a copy of windows and used Windows loader (the #1 crack) so I have heard will only work if you have a MBR master boot record as it inserts the SLIC in before windows loads.. You have to run the drive in legacy mode and use a Generic HDD Controller. Not all Bioses support it.

The Warning even came up AS I WAS RUNNING a backup. The solution to this problem is making sure you have all the updates you need, then uninstall update kb971033 and disable the background intelligence service, which is basically a back door for windows to install updates serves no other purpose.


The messages are sour grapes because it knows you've defeated it. ANON :)  :whistle:  Someone told me this mind but my copy is genuine ;) 

If this is not a windows 7 problem and is due to a dying disk then can anyone explain why this week I purchased a brand new Asus M/b with 16Gb 1600 Mhz RAM and an AMD FX 8 core chip.
Took apart an existing AMD based system to use the trouble free hard disks.....continual SMART errors being reported.
I have now spent two days and nights checking the system with other drives from working error free PC's. (I've run my own IT company for over 20 years so have collect a lot of kit along the way).
A total of 12 Hard drives had been formatted and built on 4 different sets of the above mentioned sytem....all come out with the same errors....Spin Up too slow. Put the drives back into slower systems and they all test perfectly and run without errors.
I seems to me that although SATA drives connect to SATA sockets on boards...speed difference is the culprit here.

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