Journal #7512 by Alabastor_Twob

Striker

Commented 12 years ago2011-12-18 17:51:44 UTC Comment #54372

Well, since I have nobody else to ask, I'm going to put my curiosity here.

-Do you use some kind of program that announces you when the HDD is about to die, or is Windows telling you this? (if yes, what does the error look likewhat does it say?)

-How old is your Hard Disk? What brandmodel is it?

-Have you been putting a lot of stress onto it?

-Ever used a defragmenter?

-What are the symptoms of these hdd errors, how they started happening?

It's important for me to know as I don't own an external storing device. I never experienced problems with hdds(not even on my old Pentium 2), but I know it can happen to me too. I defragment my hdds each week or each 2 weeks.

Alabastor_Twob

Commented 12 years ago2011-12-18 18:37:08 UTC Comment #54370

It came with Windows. About a year or so ago each time I would start up my laptop, before loading Windows it would tell me one of my disks has an error and needs to be checked for consistency. Allowing it to do so would start a process that took several hours and appeared to have no effects. It gave me no options or information at the end of the process and it would ask to start the process next time I would start it up. I never got round to looking it up, although I was already intending to backup everything when I could and reformat, reinstall Windows, hoping it possibly have been a software related error. (not to mention I had a load of crap I didn't need and couldn't be bothered to hunt down and get rid of)

My laptop crashed yesterday, and when it booted up again (I selected start Windows normally), it was loading for about 20 minutes before it stopped and told me it couldn't complete the startup operation, and to do a diagnostic. I accepted, and 8 hours later (these disk checks take bloody ages) it told me the problem was that there is a critical disk error and to back up everything that I can. About an hour or two after starting Windows a popup appeared, telling me I need to back everything up and then shut down my computer until it could be fixed. It gave an option to access a text file that helps with backing up.

It's about two years old, and I believe it to be a Samsung HM250HI. Although looking at the Samsung product page it comes with (Self-Monitoring Analysis and Reporting Technology, which is supposed to inform of disk errors, so it might not be a Windows function to inform the user of disk errors.

Depends on how you would define stress. I have had it filled to near capacity for a while, and on a few occasions I have had as few as 100MB space left. However each time I became aware of this, I would do my best to get rid of anything unnecessary as soon as I could. Also, the errors began appearing at least 6 months before any of this happened.

I would start up the Windows defragmenter about once a month, maybe every two weeks, but each time it would tell me there was less than 2% fragmentation, so I never manually used it. It may be set to automatically run on a schedule.

I don't really know anything else than that unfortunately.