And when should you start thinking about backing up?
How about now?
From my experience, your typical hard drive lifespan can range anywhere from….you ready?
10+ years down to…the day you bought it.
That’s right…you just never know. So what do you do? Backup…Backup…and more Backup.
With the advent of static drive technology, that is viable option as well.
Boy…don’t I wish we live in a perfect world?
So what if you can’t afford 10 levels of technology? How can you monitor and be able to predict when your drive will fail to a certain degree?
HDTune for Windows…and yes…it’s FREE.
For you Mac users, there is a program called SMARTReporter that has different attributes and interface but it does much of the same and that is also FREE.
This particular post, however, is going to focus on the usage of HDTune in Windows. There may be a future post addressing the SMARTReporter program for the Mac.
After installing the HDTune program, go ahead and fire it up so that it can detect all your drives and give you immediate feedback as to the stats of the drives. (NOTE: USB attached devices may show up as well but will not exhibit comprehensive stats that you would see with internal drives.)
Ideally, you should start the computer in a CD-ROM boot environment to avoid scanning a hard drive that you are also running the HDTune program on, but given the unpredictability of hard drives, it shouldn’t make a huge difference…especially if you know what to look for.
Five main things to observe for early signs of drive failure:
1. Scan Errors
2. Reallocation Count Errors
3. Offline Reallocation Errors
4. Excessively High Average Temperatures
5. Excessively Slow Average Transfer Rate
So let’s take a look at where you find these errors:
First let’s check for surface errors…if even one exists, your drive is doomed and it’s time to get replacement before files start getting corrupted on your system.
- With HDTune open, click on the Error Scan tab.
- Check off the Quick Scan radio button
- Click on Start and watch the scan go!
- If any RED boxes appear. Replace your drive. Back it up!
Next we will check the next two criteria…these are easy:
- Click on the Health tab of HD Tune
- Highlighted yellow items in the list are warnings
- If Reallocated Sector Count is yellow…start shopping for a drive.
- If Offline Uncorrectable is yellow…yup…start shoppin’!
At the top of the drive identification list there is a thermometer looking temperature gauge. If the drive is running well into the 50 °C zone, drop an egg on it, make an omelet, and then buy a new drive.
The last test is for transfer rate:
- Click on the Benchmark tab in HD Tune
- Click on Start and watch the graph go
- You want to observe the Average: field at the end of the test.
If the average ends up being below 20MB/sec…then that means the drive is struggling. You may still be able to use the drive for a while if none of the other criteria have shown but at the rate hard drives are being sold at these days…it’s not worth the risk.
As previously mentioned, hard drives are cheap now. So why take a chance? Back it up! But at least now you can have a little bit of control on getting a better idea of where your hard drive is health-wise.
Look for a post on the main Make It Work blog about a more detailed breakdown on hard drive health!
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