Harddrive going out

[bluetailfly3]

I am pretty sure my harddrive is about to take a crap on me.I keep it formatted and cleaned up, but I have noticed lately that it is starting to make weird noises when it tries to access certain parts of the harddrive.I can't even get into some of my folders because it says that my harddrive is not formatted.It's not a virus either.I have ran adware, spybot, avg, and trends online scan with no reports popping up..Basically, I just wondered what you guys think.How much longer do you think I have to get my info off the harddrive before it takes a complete dump..BTW my comp is about 4 years old, and I think the harddrive is probably 5 or 6 years old.

[rastagard]

How much time do you have? Two words, "Not enough."


Hate to scare you, but when you start having the problems you mentioned on a 5-6 year old HDD, you are on borrowed time. It is time to replace the drive and clone as much of the data as you can. A prolonged CD burning session may not get the job done. Although judging by it's age, I am guessing it is not a very large drive. You might be able to squeek by if you hurry and the force is with you..............


If the drive fails completely, you can usually get some more time out of it by freezing it. This causes the metal to expand and can usually allow some more data extrtaction.


When it comes to HDDs the question is never if they will fail, but rather when. You have gotten a good long life out of yours, it is time to take action and transfer as much data as quickly as possible.


Good luck!

[LPDad]

rasta is right--he speaks from experience. Get your data off ASAP..and count your blessings it lasted as long as it did. I figure anything over 3 years on a well used drive is good.

Get yourself a nice new 80-120GB and get the old stuff copied off your old drive..like YESTERDAY.

...and Freezing the drive does work...but not for long.

[Wolfie]

I have throw my voice in with these guys too since I lost harddrive recently and it was acting exactly the way you are describing.

I lost half of data on it that was not backed up on CD and am in process re-downloading right now.