Windows 7 64bit claims my harddrive is going to fail?

cm0scm0s

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Hi , i just got this window message telling me i need to back up everything NOW or else all my data will be lost because of hard disk failure,

i performed CHKDSK completely with clustor repair (nothing)
i defragmented my HDD completely (nothing)

Im getting the feeling this message was an error in the knee? :eek:

i have a wdc wd400kd-00nab0 wich is pretty old ( Western Digital 372 gb).

do i now go to the store like a madman or..ignore it,



 
download the disk checking tool from Western digital and run the tests.
If that comes back clean you should be OK.

However, you should have a backup anyway... even if it passes today - it does not mean it wont fail completely tomorrow/nextweek/next month/whenever.
If you are happy to gamble with your data... fine. But dont cry when/if it happens

Cheers
 
As a rule, a hard drive will not announce it's imminent demise.
Another user on this forum had a similar message.
Consider the possibility that you may have a malware infection.
Do not click on any messages until you have eliminated the possibility.

Modern hard drives have s.m.a.r.t recording capabilities. You might check those statistics.
A hard drive will be overprovisioned with some spare sectors. If a sector goes bad, it will be reassigned to a spare. If the spares are nearing depletion, you may in fact get such a warning.

At the very least, protect any data you don't want to lose to some sort of an external device.

To repair, the hard drive, a full destructive reformat will probably work.

Perhaps this is a good opportunity to install a SSD for the os and some apps.
 

cm0scm0s

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i have smart tactically disabled in the bios, should i enable it ?

my diagnostic tool also gives me a SMART fail ,

i dont want to slow down my hdd with useless diags.. ima gamer without ssD:p
 
Here is your situation, the longer you continue to use your drive, the greater the chance that it will totally fail on you. Instead of spending time trying to run scans, checkdisks, etc... on it, get a new drive, make an image of your drive, and dump the image on the new drive. Unless you have current backups and want to see a drive failure first-hand. Your drive can run another 6 months, it could crash while you're reading this. Why take the chance?

I was working on a laptop drive that a user brought in after it started clicking. Instead of making backups of the files and replacing the drive right there, she used the laptop for another day. That one day cost her all her files because when she got the drive to me, it was unreadable by a computer.
 


Windows can read smart values from your drive even if it's disabled in the bios. It's effect on performance is minimal.
 

cm0scm0s

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are you sure that windows 7 does not have such a function, because it seemed legit and it offered me assistance in backing it up , not by 3rd party software but microsoft it self , and it told me to shut down the pc to prevent further damage? ..
really strange
 

tomatthe

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Windows 7 absolutely has this function. You mentioned above that the drive failed the smart test you had run, which is the same data windows used to inform you the drive is on the way out.

Backup data and get a new drive.
 

cm0scm0s

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sorry i wanted to focus the subject on the Raw Read error i thought the title might ring a bell to a person who has had experiance with this, can i delete my own threads?