Is my harddrive dying?

[crazyman143]

lately, one of my hardrives (it is quite old, I got it recently from sombody else) has been making a skipping sort of noise. I doesn't seem to be doing it now though, but just a few minutes ago, the computer suddenly rebooted itself. I am highly suspious that my harddrive is dying. what do you think?

 

[airiox]

Your Bios may have a function that can detect such problems. Just search through your manual or just through your bios for something about you hard drive. Turn that on and it is able to detect if a hard drive is failing.

 

[crazyman143]

really, cool, maybe I'll check it out. I am usually scared of the bios, and stay out of there, but I guess I could try it

 

[TheSickness]

lately, one of my hardrives (it is quite old, I got it recently from sombody else) has been making a skipping sort of noise. I doesn't seem to be doing it now though, but just a few minutes ago, the computer suddenly rebooted itself. I am highly suspious that my harddrive is dying. what do you think?

Usually when a hard drive is dying, it will take longer to boot into your OS, you may get a few beeps when the hard drive 1st boots up itself, and may get crashing upon loading of the OS. Though the symptoms you're having maye also be due to hard drive failure. There are a few programs out there that can test the integrity of your hard drive, though i cant think of any of their names off the top of my head. Do a search on google for something like hard drive integrity test. These should show up any problems with your hard drive, and give you an indication as to if its dying or not.

Also, what OS is on the hard drive, if its XP. Right click on the hard drive in My Computer, choose properties, then hit the tools tab., Click check now, tick the 2 boxes then hit start. It will say it cant carry out the check now and will check next time windows boots up. This will perform a full scan disk on the hard drive, and fix alot of probelms with it like bad sectors e.t.c which may be the cause of your problem

Hope this helps

 

[root]

a good (free) one is hitachi drive fitness test.

 

[crazyman143]

looks cool. thanks root.

 

[bluto]

lately, one of my hardrives (it is quite old, I got it recently from sombody else) has been making a skipping sort of noise. I doesn't seem to be doing it now though, but just a few minutes ago, the computer suddenly rebooted itself. I am highly suspious that my harddrive is dying. what do you think?

You are getting a message,copy your data now to a new hd or lose it.
Have you noticed how cheap the new 7200 ultra dma hd's are ?
Why sweat it.

 

[root]

thats a good point.
why worry about having to loose data/spend time reinstalling. when a new fully working drive costs so little.
if it's an old drive I guess the capacity isn't that big either.
If I were you I'd save up £30 or so and get your self a shinny new 40GB drive. (thats the smallest you can buy now) (unless you go to PC world and you pick up the overpriced stock they've had on the shelves since forever!)