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Questions tagged [hard-drive-failure]

Questions about hard drive mechanical failure.

Questions about hard drive mechanical failure.

248 questions
36
votes
3 answers

What do the current, worst, and threshold SMART values mean?

I have a 2TB internal hard drive that might be failing. It spends several minutes at 100% usage when I first turn it on since I installed Windows 10, and yesterday it reported a corrupted Recycle Bin. I downloaded CrystalDiskInfo, and the pertinent…
Celarix
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32
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9 answers

Hard Drive suddenly became unresponsive, recovered on reboot. What to do next?

So I have a desktop PC with an SSD and an HDD. Windows 10 is installed on the SSD, all my data is on the HDD. Today while I was playing a game, it suddenly became unresponsive. At the same time, the video I was watching on my second monitor froze as…
MoritzLost
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24
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How to prevent programs (e.g. Process Monitor) from killing my SSD in 2 weeks?

I just got my first SSD - Intel 320 Series 120GB yesterday. And I have SSDLife monitoring in the background. I have TRIM enabled. After I have installed all software, and did some basic testings. SSDLife said "Total Data written, GB" = 52.1 (40GB…
user68795
21
votes
5 answers

How can I recover dead SSD drives?

I haven't lost any mission critical data or anything, but I have in my possession a large number of SSD 2.5" drives that were pulled for unreliability or being "dead". I am curious if there's any way to bring them back to life, but purely as an…
geodave
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16
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5 answers

How to prolong the life of an external hard drive?

In ten years, across several different machines, different companies, and different operating systems I've noticed a trend that external hard drives die long before their internal counterparts. Everyone I've spoken to who has used external hard…
Django Reinhardt
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6 answers

Are SSD's really reliable enough for power users?

TL;DR (though please read my full experience before jumping in with a quick answer.) A power user performs a certain amount of write cycles. Does an MLC SSD drive support enough write cycles to last a power user around 5 years of usage. In my first…
JL.
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6 answers

Is my hard disk failing?

I have a problem with my computer: I'm using Windows 7 x64, and when I try to acces the Downloads folder, it takes a long time. After waiting for half a minute or more, I can open it, see the contents, copy and move files, etc. And now, when I open…
mHouses
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11
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4 answers

Mean Time to Failure (MTTF): When disk manufacturers post this, how should you interpret their numbers?

Mean Time to Failure (MTTF) is usually given in terms of hours, and by doing some calculations, it seems that a disk should fail only after a good number of years have gone by. It seems that disks need repair more often than that. Does anyone know…
Kaitlyn Mcmordie
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11
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3 answers

Why do SSDs tend to fail much more suddenly than HDDs?

Modern PCs tend to use one of two types of internal-storage devices:1 2 Hard-disk drives (HDDs) store data on spinning disks coated in a magnetic recording medium, a technology dating back to the 1960s. HDDs are very cheap and available in…
Vikki
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9
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4 answers

External USB hard drive and risk of internal condensation?

Apparently you can kill a USB hard drive by moving it from a cold to warm environment and powering it up. The killer being internal condensation. Q1: How real is the risk? What kind of temperatures are we talking about? I don't want to waste time…
misha256
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How do I fix a boot process that broke because of a failed hard drive? (Windows 7)

I used Windows XP for years, before I was able to get my hands on Windows 7 RC, which I bought a new HDD for, and setup to dual-boot. About a month ago, Windows XP started acting funny, and I thought the disk might be dying, so I started using…
MasterCorban
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SSD – smartctl – Status

I have a SAMSUNG SSD 830 Series SSD in my MacBook Pro. In my work, I need to analyse huges amounts of data. I have php scripts that extract the data, build csv sheets, then gnuplot generates hundreds of graphics. The graphics are browsed. A few…
PeterG
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Reading data from a 23 year old IDE harddrive

I have a 200 MB Western Digital 2.5" IDE drive, originally from an Amiga 1200, that I would like to try to get an image file of, so I can keep the data that is on it. Since the drive is very old, and has been sitting in an attic for 20 years, I want…
Joakim Hårsman
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1 answer

need to find out if my hard drive is broken - windows corrupted and wont boot

OK, so a short story long: I had windows 8. It was working fine. When updating to Windows 10, the process interrupted, corrupting my windows installation. I formatted and reinstalled windows. fine. After some month, it wouldn't boot anymore. OK. I…
msa
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6
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1 answer

2TB Seagate External GoFlex external hard drive failure: Is there anything I can do?

I have a 2TB Seagate External GoFlex—which has a Seagate 2TB 9VT156-570 installed—that I’d like to recover the data from. It was working and I was going to make a backup. I bought a SATA docking station, and plugged in the drive, connecting it to my…
kindasimple
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