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Thread ID: 21824 2002-07-04 19:51:00 Hard Drive Failure? Bodger (857) Press F1
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59910 2002-07-04 19:51:00 I am running a HP8513 with Windows 98SE. For some weeks I have been getting message on intitial start up that warns of imminent hard disk failure - something to do with SMART. I hit F1 and then it wants to do a disk scan. I have done this several times - once using Nortons scan and once using the standard Windows one. Both took nearly 7 hours on a 10Gb hardisk and both did not fix the problem apart from finding bad clusters and moving them somewhere else. Now I cannot even run Virus Scan as it jags in after about 18 seconds. Not sure if I should bite the bullet and buy a new hard drive or is there another option?
Any advice appreciated
Bodger (857)
59911 2002-07-04 21:52:00 Try running scandisk from a win98 boot disk, Bad clusters are marked by the letter B. It won't fix your hard drive if it is on its last legs But it will give you a visual idea of how many clusters are dead.
My mates looked like it had been shot with a shotgun full of B's
or if you know the maker of harddrive you can download a utility from their website that will diagnose your HDD.

cheers Steve
Steve Askew (119)
59912 2002-07-04 22:06:00 make sure you have got good backups then start looking for new harddrive. tweak'e (174)
59913 2002-07-05 02:09:00 Sounds like it's going to die. After you've done all the things that are mentioned above. You could try to low-format the disk, see if it helps with the bad sectors. boom23 (176)
59914 2002-07-05 06:04:00 That's what the SMART system does. It is warning you that the disk is likely to crash :-( . "Immanent" means "Soon". :-( I would believe it. Make your backups anyway. Immediately, if not sooner. And do your comparison shopping for a new drive. Graham L (2)
59915 2002-07-07 03:29:00 Back up all essential data and get a new HDD they are cheap as these days and reinstall Windows 98 sec edition or 2000 95 if you have an older machine , a 40 gig is about $250 kiwibeat (304)
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