The Race Against Hard Drive Failure Time

  • Thread starter Thread starter Dave
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Dave

Well, I got the blue screen and subsequent forced shut down, which ussualy
means a hardware problem, with WinXP. After some troubleshooting, I've
found the culprit to be a failing hard drive. The problem with having
nearly 250 GB of data on a drive is that there is almost nowhere to put it
besides another large drive. Which is what I am in the process of doing,
all the while hoping that it holds on for just a little while longer.

Time nearly stops when transferring irreplacable files under such
conditions. I'm pacing very softly.
 
Dave said:
After some troubleshooting, I've found the culprit to be a failing hard
drive. The problem with having nearly 250 GB of data on a drive is
that there is almost nowhere to put it besides another large drive.
Which is what I am in the process of doing, all the while hoping that
it holds on for just a little while longer. Time nearly stops when
transferring irreplacable files under such conditions.
Click to expand...

If they are irreplaceable, keep a backup. You can buy a good 250GB hard
disk drive for $140 shipped.
 
250 gigs of important data? and no backups done? obviously, your data
is not that important.
 
Dave said:
Well, I got the blue screen and subsequent forced shut down, which ussualy
means a hardware problem, with WinXP. After some troubleshooting, I've
found the culprit to be a failing hard drive. The problem with having
nearly 250 GB of data on a drive is that there is almost nowhere to put it
besides another large drive. Which is what I am in the process of doing,
all the while hoping that it holds on for just a little while longer.

Time nearly stops when transferring irreplacable files under such
conditions. I'm pacing very softly.
Click to expand...
I'm sure you're correct that the drive is failing, but how exactly do you
know?
Sometimes error messages, such as in the event viewer, are incorrect.
I've been getting failing hard drive messages for one of my drives for 2
years now, as well as smart drive warnings also. I use that drive at least 8
hours a day. After you get your data backed up I would try to reformat the
drive and see what happens.

The drives I've had go bad make a loud grinding noise, so there is no doubt
that they are going fast.
 
Not life and death important, no, but every time I buy a new hard drive to
do a backup, I end up using it to store more movies, music and the like, as
the allure of having more precludes me from ever backing up my data. Now I
have nearly a terabyte of storage, but only my important documents are
backed up because I just don't have the heart to waste a perfectly usable
hard drive on redundancy.
 
I'm sure you're correct that the drive is failing, but how exactly do you
know?
Click to expand...

It was working very slowly, making strange noises, won't pass even basic
hard drive tests, and was making windows crash. The replacement I have now
is the same exact model and is quieter, faster, passes the tests. It is not
the ussual failure you describe, as it could still be used for some time, I
think, but it was enough for me to never trust it.
 
redundancy = backup


Dave said:
Not life and death important, no, but every time I buy a new hard drive to
do a backup, I end up using it to store more movies, music and the like, as
the allure of having more precludes me from ever backing up my data. Now I
have nearly a terabyte of storage, but only my important documents are
backed up because I just don't have the heart to waste a perfectly usable
hard drive on redundancy.
Click to expand...
 
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