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General discussion

Inevitability of Hard Drive Crashes?

by Mrssparks50 Jan 25, 2011 4:25AM PST

I have owned PCs since my first Packard Bell in 1991 and never had a hard drive crash until 2010. Up until now, my hardware has outlasted the OS. Today, reading the forums, I get the impression that the current generation of PC users accept HDD crashes as a normal occurrence. My Dell XPS8000 is on its third HDD which also just failed. I would like to know WHY these hard drives are failing. So far in the forums all I can find is how to recover from a crash, not how to avoid them. Please enlighten me. Thank you.

Discussion is locked

5 Posts
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There are two types of crashes in my view.
by r. proffitt Forum moderator Jan 25, 2011 4:42AM PST

One is the usual crash most often sited on external drives. While some may be simple "replace the case" failures, ALL of these will be labeled as "My HDD crashed."

The other type of crash is file or file system corruption. Again I would write that's not a HDD crash, it won't matter to the average owner.

My thought here is about 1/2 of all crashes are not true HDD crashes. Then again you find folk continue to have no backup plan.
Bob

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Avoid?
by Bob__B Jan 25, 2011 6:15AM PST

You can't.....but as RP said....define crash.

I'll take a guess that your PB did not have a modern OS on it with it's insane amount of disk activity.

Boot w7....load the resource monitor/disk....let the machine sit idle.....the disk activity never seems to quit.

Today's HD's have a gazillion sectors on them......sectors go bad....data goes POOF.

Sometimes that's fixable......sometimes not.

Keep a spare HD on the shelf.
Backup/backup/backup.

And then there are the folks who schedule defrag and multiple anti products...set to deep scan....to run daily........hmmmm.

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Thanks for your input.
by Mrssparks50 Jan 28, 2011 3:53AM PST

You are correct, "crashed" could have so many meanings. I should have said the hard drive "needs to be replaced". At least that's what Best Buy/Dell told us when the computer stopped working (Twice).

I was wondering what could cause different hard drives to go bad (need to be replaced)in very short periods of time. It seems that it's just the unreliability of the new computer technology.

My first computer (PB) had an operating system called DOS. This was right around the time that Windows first came out, because I remember a guy on the BBSs bragging about this marvelous multitasking OS. That was when the active "operator" became a passive "user", and everything went downhill from then....

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I treat BB diagnosis as highly suspect at times.
by r. proffitt Forum moderator Jan 28, 2011 4:00AM PST

They are under a lot of pressure to get jobs done and out.

This is where we have to learn more to protect ourselves. SIMPLE things like knowing how to check HDD connections (I won't write how here or about static control during such work) and bootable HDD non-destructive to the data drive tests clear up in just a few minutes if the internal drive has failed in some way.

Look at today's HDD warranties. I see most are down to 3 years.

But all that is moot in my view as I see HDDs lasting 5 to 10+ years. The usual "failed" HDD is nothing more than a scrambled data issue. I wipe the drive and start over. Then again you have owners with no backup and no restore media. The costs mount (at many shops) so fast that a new machine is cheaper!

Protect yourself?
Bob

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hi
by camelback Mar 24, 2011 4:42AM PDT
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