"Windows has detected a Hard Disk Problem"

[Perfect_N]

Well I had problems with my phone, which resulted in me downloading a whole bunch of software. I never got my stuff back on my phone and the backups were corrupted. After uninstalling the software, I've been getting an error messages from windows saying that a problem has been detected by windows. It says Hard Disk failing. I've made an image backup, and copied everything from "This PC" Folder. So I should essentially have two backups.

My HDD model # is 

st1000lm024 hn-m101mbb 

Do I just buy another one of these, put it in and all is okay?

 

 

I've seen HDD repair software, not sure if they work.

[Ian W]

I would not risk the data by trying to repair the hard drive. You will save yourself much effort (and potential grief) by buying a new hard drive and by copying your data to it.

[Perfect_N]

Ah I see. Well I tried HDD Regenerator, and DiskChecker. They didn't even find any bad sectors. When I press more info on the error message, it says "Your Hard Disk is Failing. Drive C:/", and model number.

 

So all I have to do is search the current model I have online, buy it and insert it in? This current one is 740gb, I've seen okayish priced 1TB ones. Postage is an annoyance.

 

Eh, just when I thought I could start saving money.

[Sikh]

Ah I see. Well I tried HDD Regenerator, and DiskChecker. They didn't even find any bad sectors. When I press more info on the error message, it says "Your Hard Disk is Failing. Drive C:/", and model number.

 

So all I have to do is search the current model I have online, buy it and insert it in? This current one is 740gb, I've seen okayish priced 1TB ones. Postage is an annoyance.

 

Eh, just when I thought I could start saving money.

 

If smart status says bad, then the drive is bad. Its failing so its time to replace it. Just by reading the model its a Seagate and I personally would recommend against it. At the same time, if this is just for yourself and your computer isnt mission critical / you have backups, I would get whatever 1TB HD is on sale right now. Prices have been anywhere in between $62-80.

If you want to buy a hard drive that will last you awhile, buy Western Digital / Hitachi (WD owns them now) and Toshiba. We order 40-60 HD's a month and they are 2Ts and weve been ordering Toshiba's and they have been fine. Ive had 5-8 go bad out of every 2 batches we order, so not bad at all. We also get them at $51 a piece with free shipping since we order so many and regularly.

[Ian W]

So all I have to do is search the current model I have online, buy it and insert it in? This current one is 740gb, I've seen okayish priced 1TB ones. Postage is an annoyance.

Yes. Based on what you have already said, that should suit your needs. Hopefully, the hard drive that is failing on you had performed nicely up until that point (i.e., it did not fail in a short amount of time after purchase). You will not want a repeat of this event, so you may want to consider a different HDD if your current one failed early on in its lifespan. But of course, your decision is ultimately up to you.

[DevTech]

Every hard drive you own will fail sooner or later, including SSD.

 

You are fortunate that you had an early warning.

 

Backblaze is unique in publishing real world reliability data from a significant data set and could be your guide in purchasing a new drive provided your purchase the exact models since every manufacterer makes drives that fail.

 

Reliability Data Set For 41,000 Hard Drives Now Open Source:

https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-drive-data-feb2015/

 

 

Hard Drive Reliability Stats for Q1 2015:

https://www.backblaze.com/blog/best-hard-drive/

 

A quick look seems to indicate HGST drives are significantly more reliable.

 

Hard Drive SMART Stats:

https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-drive-smart-stats/

 

SMART data meanings vary by brand and model and they have found a couple that correlate to predicting failure

[binaryzero]

Go out and buy a new disk, you've had your warning. Next time you'll have nothing...literally.

[Raa]

Buy a new drive, clone it across (seems like it should be successful) and bin the old drive if it's not in warranty.

 

Good luck!

[John.D]

Or run this see if there's a firmware update for it

[Mindovermaster Moderator]

Or run this see if there's a firmware update for it

 

I don't think that will help the drive. It may prolong it, but in reality, it is on its way out.

[Perfect_N]

Thanks for the reply guys. Yeah, it's a Samsung, that I spent around 900 on when I was at Uni to get work done. Now I use it for personal use / freelance work.

 

I'll browse around on different websites and compare prices, I've only had this error message once before, but it "Repaired" it, so I'm guessing it was a software issue, not hardware. That was over a year ago.

 

Is Seagate unreliable? I did an image backup, and a copy/paste of all my files/folders, which is about 700gb each, maybe a little more. The external HD I have is also Seagate, 3TB Desktop.

[Obi-Wan Kenobi]

I've had success with seagate for quite some time, samsung....not so  much.

[The Evil Overlord]

I'll throw in a vote for a replacement Hitachi of your choice, (I've got some <3 or 4> 8-12 year old Hitachis and they still run)

[DevTech]

Is Seagate unreliable? I did an image backup, and a copy/paste of all my files/folders, which is about 700gb each, maybe a little more. The external HD I have is also Seagate, 3TB Desktop.

 

Every brand is unreliable. Depends on exact model. I already posted the best information available on the subject. Backblaze tracks the failure rate of 41,000 hard drives and is the only organization nice enough to share real scientific figures with the public:

 

https://www.backblaze.com/blog/best-hard-drive/

 

Every other available information is either guesswork, random personal experience or Voodoo. If you are considering a model of hard drive that Backblaze did not use then obviously there is no way at all to predict what will happen. If you don't want to read the article, then go with Hitachi.

[+BudMan MVC]

While yes backblaze uses lots of different disks - they are not using them how they were designed to be used that is for sure..   They beat the ###### out of them in their pods, that have gone through multiple revisions which changes the temp and vibration the drives see.  What revision of the pods where these drives in? Clearly this is NOT an environment the home user would be doing no matter how you look at them..  So saying drive X failed the most is not really valid when comparing how that drive would/could perform in the environment it as meant to be used in.
 
So while their report is data, doesn't mean that you should not buy a drive they say fails more than other disks..  Come on do you think a company could stay in business if they had a 25% or 30% failure rate of disks in the 1st year??  Come on really!!!  Clearly some piece of the informational pie is missing..
 
This is FACT.. "Every brand is unreliable."
 
The thing you can be sure of is that at some point if you use it long enough that disk will fail!!  And clearly backblaze doesn't really care since they continue to buy based upon best GB/$  when if they were worried about failure rate they would be buying disks rated for something more like the environment they are using them in vs home/retail disk models..
 
And while they seem to have a lot of drives spinning.. In the big picture of how many drives are in use, its a drop in the bucket.. How many MILLIONS of drives ship every quarter??  Clearly is over 100 million, from a quick google I fine "In the third quarter of 2014, a total of 143 million hard disk drives were shipped across the world."

 

So if you ask me I wouldn't put so much into what disks they show with higher rates than other drives..  Again all DRIVES fail.. What I would suggest is as they do and buy best bang you can get GB/$  count on that drive failing at some point - keep good backups of your critical ######, keep an eye on the disk smart info, etc.  And you would hope you should get some warning of when to replace it, etc.

 

To be honest how long do you plan on keeping that drive before you buy faster/cheaper/larger disk or replace for one aspect or another faster most likely the biggest factor -- shoot for that matter most everyone will be on SSD here soon to be honest as SSD get bigger and cheaper - how much longer do you think home users will need traditional hard disks?

[Perfect_N]

Thanks. Interesting info. I'll most likely purchase one online, ones in store are overpriced. As long as it's 2.5" I'm guessing it's okay.

[DevTech]

While yes backblaze uses lots of different disks - they are not using them how they were designed to be used that is for sure..   They beat the ###### out of them in their pods, that have gone through multiple revisions which changes the temp and vibration the drives see.  What revision of the pods where these drives in? Clearly this is NOT an environment the home user would be doing no matter how you look at them..  So saying drive X failed the most is not really valid when comparing how that drive would/could perform in the environment it as meant to be used in.

 

So while their report is data, doesn't mean that you should not buy a drive they say fails more than other disks..  Come on do you think a company could stay in business if they had a 25% or 30% failure rate of disks in the 1st year??  Come on really!!!  Clearly some piece of the informational pie is missing..

 

This is FACT.. "Every brand is unreliable."

 

The thing you can be sure of is that at some point if you use it long enough that disk will fail!!  And clearly backblaze doesn't really care since they continue to buy based upon best GB/$  when if they were worried about failure rate they would be buying disks rated for something more like the environment they are using them in vs home/retail disk models..

 

And while they seem to have a lot of drives spinning.. In the big picture of how many drives are in use, its a drop in the bucket.. How many MILLIONS of drives ship every quarter??  Clearly is over 100 million, from a quick google I fine "In the third quarter of 2014, a total of 143 million hard disk drives were shipped across the world."

 

So if you ask me I wouldn't put so much into what disks they show with higher rates than other drives..  Again all DRIVES fail.. What I would suggest is as they do and buy best bang you can get GB/$  count on that drive failing at some point - keep good backups of your critical ######, keep an eye on the disk smart info, etc.  And you would hope you should get some warning of when to replace it, etc.

 

To be honest how long do you plan on keeping that drive before you buy faster/cheaper/larger disk or replace for one aspect or another faster most likely the biggest factor -- shoot for that matter most everyone will be on SSD here soon to be honest as SSD get bigger and cheaper - how much longer do you think home users will need traditional hard disks?

 

Well the OP keeps using wonky logic so I think any more facts just won't fit in that universe. He has now decided that all drives are magically the same if they are 2.5"

 

There are lots of ways that the Backblaze data won't fit typical home usage, but until Google or Microsoft or Amazon releases similar data for their millions of hard drives spinning in the cloud, the Backblaze data incredible as it might seem is the only scientific non-anecdotal data available. The first link in my first post is to a downloadable database where anyone can attempt to slice and dice the data for insight.

 

SSD's will just introduce a new variation on "every hard drive you own will fail sooner or later." SSD drives fail instantly and silently with SMART data being completely useless in my personal experience. Also the last time I investigated, SSD's encrypt the flash storage with a unique key and if they fail there is no way to recover the data even from an expensive recovery service but I would love to hear I am wrong on that since I last looked into it about 2 years ago. This leads me to prefer SSD for O/S & progs with comfy spinning drives for everything else.

[Obi-Wan Kenobi]

Thread needs to be closed. To much information given on how to solve the problem. Drives die. Fact of nature.

[Perfect_N]

Friend of mine swears by SSD.

 

Said he uses NAS for storage and 4x3tb in RAID.

[+BudMan MVC]

Devtech are you talking about SEDs (self encrypting drives)

 

I was not aware that normal SSDs do any sort of encryption out of the box - you sure don't have to auth to them in anyway upon boot, etc  Are you saying I can't take my samsung 840 pro from one computer/controller to another and access the files?

 

The smart info even on SSDs should give you warning of failure/life of drive nearing end, etc.  While its true they could just fail instantly - the same can be said for normal hard drives.  They can fail instantly as well.

 

Not saying the backblaze data does not have some value - my point, which may have been badly stated?  Is if you find a drive that is a great $ per GB value is of the right size and speed for what your after with the warranty you want 1, 3, 5 etc. years I wouldn't not buy it because the BB says it failures more often than some other disk of the same speed/size.

 

I am with Obi-Wan as well - there is no FIX to bad disk, other than getting new disk..

[nekrosoft13]

Every brand is unreliable. Depends on exact model. I already posted the best information available on the subject. Backblaze tracks the failure rate of 41,000 hard drives and is the only organization nice enough to share real scientific figures with the public:

 

https://www.backblaze.com/blog/best-hard-drive/

 

Every other available information is either guesswork, random personal experience or Voodoo. If you are considering a model of hard drive that Backblaze did not use then obviously there is no way at all to predict what will happen. If you don't want to read the article, then go with Hitachi.

 

at work i buy 100-200 drives a year, and came to similar conclusion, avoid seagate and western digital green drives.

[iogbrideau]

I would avoid Seagate as well. From personal experience and what drives fail the most at work, they often are seagate. We haven't had a single WD drive fail yet (we usually have black or blue drives depending on the machine). Even at home appart from the couple of Seagate drives I had that failed within 3 years, I have always bought WD, and haven't had one fail yet, even my 10 year old drive that is running almost 24h/day.

 

On the other hand, a SSD could greatly improve speed and performance with the computer, but at a higher cost.

[DevTech]

Devtech are you talking about SEDs (self encrypting drives)

 

I was not aware that normal SSDs do any sort of encryption out of the box - you sure don't have to auth to them in anyway upon boot, etc  Are you saying I can't take my samsung 840 pro from one computer/controller to another and access the files?

 

The smart info even on SSDs should give you warning of failure/life of drive nearing end, etc.  While its true they could just fail instantly - the same can be said for normal hard drives.  They can fail instantly as well.

 

Not saying the backblaze data does not have some value - my point, which may have been badly stated?  Is if you find a drive that is a great $ per GB value is of the right size and speed for what your after with the warranty you want 1, 3, 5 etc. years I wouldn't not buy it because the BB says it failures more often than some other disk of the same speed/size.

 

I am with Obi-Wan as well - there is no FIX to bad disk, other than getting new disk..

 

There are a variety of failure modes in hard drives where if you take the magnetic platters out of the drive in a clean room you can recover all or most of the data. It is just a characteristic of that technology that it is even possible to do that.

 

If the controller electronics on your Samsung 840 Pro failed, it might be logical to think that like hard drives you could desolder the flash memmory and move it to another 840 to recover the data or just mount the chips somehow and grab the bits. AFAIK this is prevented at a low level by encryption tied to that controller or something equivalent.

[Mindovermaster Moderator]

There are a variety of failure modes in hard drives where if you take the magnetic platters out of the drive in a clean room you can recover all or most of the data. It is just a characteristic of that technology that it is even possible to do that.

 

If the controller electronics on your Samsung 840 Pro failed, it might be logical to think that like hard drives you could desolder the flash memmory and move it to another 840 to recover the data or just mount the chips somehow and grab the bits. AFAIK this is prevented at a low level by encryption tied to that controller or something equivalent.

 

Let me know how much that costs to do any of that. I'd rather buy 20 new drive than do that.

[Perfect_N]

Ouch, I was about to order a Seagate too. Until I read these posts, my friend said the same thing.

 

Still haven't ordered, trying to compare prices. Also wondering if I want a 1TB or 2. I was also considering getting an SSD but perhaps later. 

 

I was considering 2TB since I currently have 900gb full, but I'm sure there's stuff I could delete completely.