I have a Dell 5000 and Dell's PC Doctor says that 2 tests failed on the Hard Drive ... 1 .. Targeted read test .. Fail ... 2 Smart Short Self Test ... Fail.
The advice was that my HD is soon to fail ... and to backup my files and get a new HD.
How seriously should I take this advice ?
Mike P the 1st
Very. It might last a while, or it mail fail at any moment.
Do you care if your hard disc fails? If not, relax. Otherwise, act.
Seriously Mike.
At the very least, I would suggest that you backup any important files, along with any programs and drivers that you don't have CD/DVD ROM disks for.
As with many things, the hard drive could run for a long time in this situation - or fail quite quickly. Better to be safe than sorry data wise. Cash
Very, if you care about the data.
The nature of the failure sounds not so good. You can get bad sectors that will not read, but will be remapped on write using a few spare sectors all modern drives keep for the purpose.
Sometimes, you can run the drive recovery tool (CD or floppy), the bad sectors can get remapped and the drive can last for years more. Sometimes it just gets worse, fast.
If it's under warranty (which is usually more than 1 year), request a replacement. If not, back up the data if possible and consider running a drive fitness test - downloadable from the manufacturer's website. If this has a non destructive write test (ie reads a sector, writes some test data, checks, writes original back) this can sometimes recover the disk[1]
[1] Depending on the tool, it can force a remap of the failed sector if a read is not possible and you will get the consequant damage to that sector (ie the new one is full of zeros or unknown data). You might even be lucky and this is not even in a used area of the filesystem.In message , Mike P the 1st writes
Are you telling me that it's not all backed up already?
On Sun, 18 Dec 2011 22:53:24 -0000, "Cash" gently dipped his quill in the best Quink that money could buy:
There is sooo much to backup .. files .. programs I have downloaded .. all this NG stuff and more .. pics .. 130Gb all told.
I had better do some research as I am sure you just cannot ghost a HD onto anotherHD and expect it all to work. Dont even have XP disks from Dell. Gulp !
Mike P the 1st
+1
I had an 8400 before my present optiplex, the 5000 seems to have the same case and it's a joy to work on if you need to replace anything.
The 5000 is a bit long in the tooth, but it has SATA drives so new replacements should work. If you do decide to rebuild, consider putting in an SSD for the OS and a new hard drive for data. The SSD kits usually come with the necessary software for cloning the OS, it's all very straightforward. (I didn't have a spare bay for the SSD in my Optiplex, but it wasn't difficult to cable-tie it on to the chassis).
You might want to pop the old hard drive into an external enclosure or just get one of those USB to SATA/IDE cable kits
Mike P the 1st wrote, on 18/12/2011 23:16:
might help. The destination disk must not be smaller than the source disk.
On Sun, 18 Dec 2011 23:14:16 +0000, geoff gently dipped his quill in the best Quink that money could buy:
Yes ... very little backed up, considering how much I have collected over the years.
Mike P the 1st
On Sun, 18 Dec 2011 23:18:59 +0000, Newshound gently dipped his quill in the best Quink that money could buy:
Thanks for that, and other posters on here for the advice.
A rebuild would be something I would like to do.
Mike P the 1st
"Mike P the 1st" wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com...
I just cloned my old drive to a new one using Paragon Partition Manager which was free on last months PC Pro magazine. Its easy, just put the new drive in a USB enclosure, plug it in, and select copy disk and let it use the whole drive and away it goes. It will take a while. Don't take the old drive out before you clone it as its safer where it is.
Don't skip backups, drives can fail without triggering any warnings. The warnings are there so you can plan a time to swap them, not to protect the data.
Dell one art fouquet.
Proprietary stuff you can't just load Ubuntu or whatever real operating system on.
But if you have good hard drive you can just copy sections at a time. But you will have to get down to it as some of the files might turn out to be blanks if you go at it in huge lumps.
With a duff hard drive I would do a few folders at a time and open half of the files to make sure they are not crumbed. And hope the others are fine too.
If you have Opera you can use that to transfer files. Just post them on Unite. I'd keep the thing running in the background from now until you finally load the last file. It might fail to start and then you will wish you spent less on research and more on instigation.
You can put 100 pictures a time on abums in myOpera, IIRC. It all depends on how good your connection is. Then there's Google. Use their online documents and email services.
Then put them on another drive. So you will have three copies, the minimum required for safety. When you have done all that, get a disc like: Ultimate Boot CD. (I have no idea if that is any good. I just bought it today on a computer stall at a fair. Others will suggest better, I am sure, if they have any experience. I haven't)
Pretty sure you *can* expect it to work. Personally, I would boot it to linux using a live USB boot (eg Ubuntu) and then install and use a program called ddrescue which is forgiving of bad sectors (it skips them). Copy one disk to the other, eg:
dd_rescue /dev/sdb /dev/sdc
Just be sure that sdb and sdc are the input disk and output disk respectively. The USB disk will appear as a /dev/sd? device too which confuses things.
You can check by doing:
cat /sys/block/sda/device/model
etc and checking the disk's model number against what you physically see. If the new disk is identical to the old disk, try doing
od -cv /dev/sdb
(etc)
The new disk will show all zeros (well it should). The old disk will spew random numbers.
HTH
Tim
Let this be a lesson to you, good sir!
And be grateful for the warning.
There's a difference between "real" data, eg your photos and documents vs eg some downloaded movies or CD rips which are potentially expendible.
How much "real" data do you actually have.
Get thee some sort of backup drive immediately and back it up, in addition to fixing the problem. If small amounts of real data, a USB key (decent quality) is a reasonable backup device - keep it on your keyring, so if the computer smokes you still have your files. For larger amounts of data, a USB disk if convenient for most people and inexpensive. And if you leave it unplugges bar backup operations, it's resistent to a sudden virus/trojan attack too.
In message , geoff writes
However ...
I got a similar message for a drive I use as a backup drive about 6 months ago
It's still going strong
Done it many times. It just works. I've even changed major components such as mobos too, but it's a gamble there. Usually better in that case to remove hardware specific drivers first so it uses mickysoft generic ones during the changeover, which can be ugraded afterwards.
Had more problems with some flavours of Linux, where disks were recognised by there hardware IDs. Also easily circumvented by changing the fstab entries from a cd booted version.
OK, hard drive clone and swap is no problem. However I would keep your laptop off until you are ready to clone it - i.e. don't push your luck with the current drive. It may last for ages, or it may fail imminently.
No need to panic.
Using another PC, search for Maxblast[2] and download it from the Seagate web site. Install that, and then have it make a bootable CD.
Buy a new drive in an exteral box (handy because externals are not quite as silly money as internals at the mo). If you fancy a performance upgrade, then consider a SSD if you can get one large enough for your needs at a sensible price.
Plug USB drive in, and boot from maxblast CD[1]. Have it clone internal to external (make sure you get that one the right way around!) If the new drive is larger it will adjust the partition sizes on the fly if you want.
When done, put the new drive in, and retire the other to a shelf to act as a backup. Windows etc probably won't even notice.
[1] Maxblast may whinge if one of the drives is not either a seagate or a maxtor. Normally at this point it throws up a dialog saying "naff off" and click ok to reboot. At this point do ALT+T, ALT+O and it will then let you carry on ;-) (possibly in violation of the licensing terms, so I will let that rest with your conscience) [2] Basically a branded version of Acronis True image - a very good imaging product.
Backup all your data ASAP. If your data is of any value to you, get a new hdd. If not, just carry on, many such discs last years without incident, some dont.
You dont need software to backup data, just copy it over in a file manager, to another itnernal hdd or a usb hdd.
NT
+3.1415
@Mike P - Second drives[1] are essential these days (backing stuff up to DVD is pointless as the £/GB is poor) but make sure to use 3.5" ones. IME 2.5" drives are not reliable long term; I've had a couple die just sitting on the shelf doing nothing. Conversely, I've got a 10YO 10GB
3.5" drive that, even after a long service life, gets woken up every now and again and is problem free.Scott
[1] Drives plural - two drives, two caddies, do backups to both for redundancy.HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.