Drive health reporting T.E.C date within 3 days!! :(

snow patrol

snow patrol

snow patrol

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According to drive health, my main windows / games / programs disk is going to die in 3 days. It's actually the newest of my 4 hard disks (a samsung 250gb). Is there anything i can do? I'm going to order one of those seagate 320gb ones and start backing up tomorrow for sure (i was going to order one any way really).

Is the drive definitely going to die? Can i repair it somehow? Any advice appreciated.Thanks!
 
Back everything up firstly. Then toy around with the drive - it could be that it's just too hot.

I'd be tempted to low-level format the drive, or fill it with zeros, and reformat it.

If all else fails, RMA it. That's what it's there for.
 
so there's no way to fix it then...or it's not a mistake - the drive IS going to die on me?

At the very least i need to format? Bah, guess i'll have to reinstall windows on my new seagate 320gig.

How exactly do i go about doing a low level format or filling with zeros?
 
Go to Samsungs website and look for a HDD diagnostics and utilities application. Normally you stick this on a CD or Floppy and boot from it. Should have all the tools you need to diagnose your drive and do various formats.

In fact, you will probably be shown this app if you go through the RMA process since Samsung will likely want a diagnostic code from you.

EDIT: It is not always clear what drive you are working on, so for the love of porn disconnect ALL your other HDDs!

SiriusB
 
thanks for the advice guys....all of a sudden i'm getting another possible TEC date on one of my IDE drives!! 12/6/06....

surely i can't have two drives dying in the space of 3 days!! The temps are about 40c with an out-take fan there...how does that sound?
 
hehe, i'm starting to wonder how reliable drive health is.

For a start, my IDE drive is no longer showing a TEC date...all appears fine. Also, my Samsung TEC date has gone from 9th of june to 10th of june!
 
now i have my 2 sata drives showing as TEC candidates...so that's 3 out of my 4 drives which have shown up as about to die today...hmmmn...i think i'm going to back up my crucial stuff any way, and just carry on as normal and hope for the best.
 
I also use Drive Health but it's the registered version.

I sometimes get warnings like this but usually the warning doesn't come back.

I have only ever had Attribute changed (white) and Dangerous change (yellow) and never Pre-TEC warning (orange) or TEC warning (red).
 
basmic - i'm using 'Drive Health'.

Update on the rather odd situation. 3 of my disks are now showing as fine, and one of them is showing as having a tec date of 29/06...i'm actually starting to feel a bit less concerned. I think it might be a heat issue to be honest.
 
Use SpeedFan > S.M.A.R.T. > Select your hard-drive and press the "Perform an in-depth analysis of this hard-disk" button.

By my reckoning, you could do with running the drive manufacturer's diagnostic software on all your drive, and consider ways of cooling your drives.
 
You should have more than one application which can read SMART data because as highlighted one could blatantly lie to you lol. By the sounds of it Drive Health doesn't have a clue!

ZOMG DA HDD IS 1C TOO HOT ITS GOING TO GET PWND!!!111111oneoneone

....ahem.

SiriusB
 
Efour2 said:
what does TEC stand for, i guess its meaning but....
Click to expand...
Q: What is T.E.C.?

A: T.E.C. is "Threshold Exceeded Condition" and basically it means a disk failure. When your Drive Health software reports a "Nearest T.E.C." you should consider it as a "Failure date".



SiriusB said:
By the sounds of it Drive Health doesn't have a clue!
Click to expand...
I have been using Drive Health for a number of years and I often get these types of warnings but they usually go away as they are only temporary glitches.

All SMART utilities can only report what they see and if they see a high number of errors on the Seek Error Rate threshold for example, then they are only doing their job by reporting it.

If I ever got a Pre-TEC warning (orange) or a TEC warning (red) then I would run Western Digital's diagnostic tool just to confirm that the drive is on the way out.


Here is my Drive Health stats BTW:

 
I really think this program will be inaccurate quite a bit of the time.

If the day is hot then the hard drive will be hotter than usual and the case might not be getting as much cooling as it should meaning this hard drive health thing might say it's going to fail within the next week. But then the next day the drive might have cooled down or something and the program might not even have a TEC date for it yet because it's nice and healthy.

As someone said above hard drives have good and bad days, so I'm really not sure if this program is really that accurate. I've tried it, but am probably not going to use it - i'll just back all my stuff up every week or so like I usually do :)

Craig.
 
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