Failing Hard Drive

[i_am_brucelee]

Hey, new here. I keep getting "windows has detected a hard drive problem" error. Ran HDDScan and got these results.

001 Raw Read Error Rate 200 200 00000000-0000 051
003 Spin Up Time 186 186 00000000-067A 021
004 Start/Stop Count 100 100 00000000-01E7 000
005 Reallocation Sector Count 140 140 00000000-01DD 140
007 Seek Error Rate 100 253 00000000-0000 051
009 PowerOn Hours Count 070 070 00000000-566C 000
010 Spin Retry Count 100 100 00000000-0000 051
011 Recalibration Retries 100 100 00000000-0000 000
012 Device Power Cycle Count 100 100 00000000-01B6 000
192 Power-off retract count 200 200 00000000-0012 000
193 Load/unload cycle count 192 192 00000000-6633 000
194 HDA Temperature 094 084 53 C 000
196 Reallocation Event Count 183 183 00000000-0011 000
197 Current Pending Sector Count 200 199 00000000-0000 000
198 Uncorrectable Sector Count 100 253 00000000-0000 000
199 UltraDMA CRC Error Count 200 200 00000000-0000 000
200 Write Error Rate 100 253 00000000-0000 051
just wondering if i really needed to install a new HD or if these 'errors' were just S.M.A.R.T. being picky. Thanks.

[DBCooper]

Hi i_am_brucelee,

It's possible that the hard-drive on the computer is going bad. Is the computer able to boot to Windows at least? One thing I recommend is to take the hard-drive out of the computer, connect it to a working computer via USB HDD adapter, and transfer the important files you have on the hard-drive onto the working computer.

Hope everything works out well for you.

[i_am_brucelee]

Forgot to mention, it is a laptop. It does boot to windows and i am able to use the computer. I have been transfering important file off of it to a portable hard drive all afternoon. just hoping to avoid all the hassle of installing all the new software. thanks for the tip.

[joeten]

Hi finish save your data and try running chkdsk /f/r and see if it fixes anything
How to Use Check Disk in Windows Vista — MAXIMUMpcguides – Windows Vista tips, tricks, help, and how-to guides

[i_am_brucelee]

ran chkdsk and the only thing that happened is when i restarted a black screen came up and said 'SMART failure predicted on HD:2 Replace hard disk, failure immanent.'
and chkdsk didn't actually do anything either that i can tell. after i pressed f1 to continue past the black screen computer started as normal.
pretty sure i have to get a new one... bummer.

[raptor_pa]

SMART is a physical drive check, CHKDSK only fixes logical errors in the filesystem, or maps bad sectors to the OS bad block table, which is different from teh G-List of the drive. CHKDSK should never be used on a drive that exhibits physical errors. Looks like the reallocated error count is high, time to replace the disk. Bad sectors get added to the g-list and the LBA is remapped to a spare sector. There is a limited number of g-list entries for the drive, once it is full, the drive will completely fail.

[joeten]

Sorry my error