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Hard Drive Health

post #1 of 9
2/9/08 at 4:07pm
Thread Starter 
Hey.

I've had this hard drive for quite a while now. I leave my laptop on pretty much 24/7 and was just wondering how the health of my HD is. I have a lot of important stuff on this and I was thinking of just buying a new HD and putting this into storage for safekeeping.

Here are some stats from Everest:

http://img292.imageshack.us/my.php?image=hdmy3.jpg

Can you tell anything from this? Is there a chance it could die soon?

Thanks,

Andy.

P.S I was thinking of getting the Hitatchi 200GB 7.2k RPM 16MB buffer HD but it's quite expensive. Has anyone any experience with this drive?
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post #2 of 9
2/9/08 at 5:25pm
Hard drives are fragile. You can have a perfectly running hard drive one night, then the very next night it could go out on you. They are moving parts, very hard to determine exactly when they may malfunction, especially if it's from human error.

I had a hard drive in my laptop go out this past month. Had no problems at all from it, was about 2 years old. The laptop BSOD with the lid down, and it got extremely hot for too long with no ventilation, hard drive stopped working after.

Bottom line is, back up OFTEN. Might seem like a waste of time, until the day does come that you lose everything and wish you had spent more time backing everything up. Some things simply aren't replaceable with a reinstall/download again.
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post #3 of 9
2/9/08 at 6:20pm
or get a usb flash drive to save files
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post #4 of 9
2/9/08 at 9:25pm
Yea I use a flashdrive/MP3 player too.
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post #5 of 9
2/9/08 at 10:13pm
If you are interested in archiving files I suggest you get a desktop HD in an external enclosure. That way, you can get a relatively cheap high capacity drive.

An alternative would be to buy some DVD-RW's and burn data onto them but that's not really ideal. I'd imagine a flash drive wouldn't have the capacity to hold all the data you want so that's why I can't recommned it.

Another option is to get the new HD and then buy secondary HD caddy (either SATA or PATA depending on the format of your old drive) and to use your old drive as backup. While its true that either HD could fail, its very unlikely that they would fail at the same time. Note that this last option prevents you from using your DVD drive at least as often as you want to make backups.
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post #6 of 9
2/10/08 at 3:32am
If you are looking for backup solution for your important documents that aren't important for strangers, then I suggest you to use gmail to archiving.

There are plugins for it, or you can just to email yourself. If that's not enough for you, u can use hotmail as well. just in case.
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post #7 of 9
2/10/08 at 8:21am
senses is ur 3dmark06 score correct for ur gateway? I thought one 8800gts was supposed to be faster then the 8700SLI. I get like 8770 in 3d06.
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post #8 of 9
2/10/08 at 6:41pm
Once you start gettuing files errors it usually means it's too late

as other have said, back up you important files several times, and often.

I use a Raid (Mirror) setup, back up those files to a second Sata drive, and have a master NAS drive. and still back up some onot DVD-r
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post #9 of 9
2/11/08 at 3:07am
I never keep important files on my laptop, i always back them up to another media. I keep everything i want to keep safe on a spare drive which is backed up to dvd also.
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