I think my hard drive is about to die...

I restarted my computer this morning, after noticing it was rather sluggish, only to notice a screen that hit me like a freight train.

"SMART hard drive may suffer imminent failure" or something like that.

I have no idea what that means, though it sounds like my version of the apocalypse!

Luckily, there was an ignore option, so me being a computer addict had to choose it. But damn, the computer is so fucken slow now!

*cries*

 

Better start backuping...

 

Oh, that sucks! I'm still crying over mine. (In short, I have no idea how to help you.)

Mine crashed (Not crashed, my computer is dead, totally unsalvagable *sob*) a few weeks ago, I lost over half of my stories, and most of my edits (because I am an idiot and don't remember to backup my files). Sad, sad day! So I moved in with my father, lol! How sad, move back just for the computer, I'm sure he was feeling appreciated. Anyway, while we are on the subject of computers...

Anyone know where I can find a cheap, reliable computer? A particular company not to buy from... I'd appreciate it.

 

That warning means time to go shopping now. If you have a cd-burner on the box or better yet-- a DVD burner start burning all your important files now. If you can afford to replace the hard drive and copy everything over to the new one that'd be better of course but if not and you have a burner start burning NOW. If you have DSL or broadband and a friend with a FTP server you can trust with your files see if you can start moving things to his server temporarily.

As opposed to the Windows error which would be just a few sectors were written to wrongly; this is an actual hardware issue. You hard drive is living on borrowed time now. It may not happen today it may not happen tomorrow but some time in the near future you'll be unable to read or write anything off that machine. Until you buy a new hard drive.

If you know what one is I'd recommend trying to use a 'live-cd' version of Linux and living there as much as you can (assuming you can make the live cd connect to the net) so as to reduce the wear and tear on the hard drive as much as possible. You know that slowness? That's the end approaching...

If you're tech savy I'd recommend shopping around for a new hard drive at various computer stores as well as odd places like Target which is where I picked up my secod drive for under a hundred.

Since I doubt you're as tech savy as to install it yourself (else you'd not be asking about the SMART warning message. I'd recommend you save up your money and bring it to a shop to buy and have a new hard drive put in. Given the cost of 'labor' these days I'd check and see if buying a new box were an option beofre shelling out to have the box serviced. Depends on how old it is.

--bornagainpenguin

EDIT - added some more information

 

Total amount of damage i've done to computers over the years....1 fried motherboard...4 crashed harddrives.

 

Get to newegg.com or ebay now and snag you a cheap as hell HD until you can afford one with more space.

 

how long have you had the computer and drive?



SMART is just a self-monitoring system for your hard drive, that gives you a message when your hard drive is going to die. But ya, definitely time to buy a new drive or computer.

 

The thing that worries me is the fact that he says the machine is slowing down...

--bornagainpenguin (who recommends that if nothing else Spacks be sure to export his bookmarks to a safe place! If I had a half cent for every post I saw with the words.. 'I lost my bookmarks due to a hard drive crash...")

 

Is a "Windows virtual memory to low" anything to worry about?

 

:shock:

it doesn't really matter that much, does it? I mean, sure, in the long run it will have adverse effects, but hopefully you'll buy a new comp/new drives later anyway.....

...huh?

 

I know how to install a HDD into a PC but not a laptop. It's probably the same way, but I don't want to tinkle around inside a rented computer.
Since it's rented it's on a 3 year contract, meaning we have to use it for 3 years, so no computer until the 3 years up (1 more yr w00t) so we'll probably end up getting a new HDD.

I'm going to put my backup my entire /Application Data/Mozilla folder. That's pretty much all I care about

Though it'd be sad to see my Lost and SGA and SG1 go but I can always download them again

 

If you've got a burner try burining them.

--bornagainpenguin

 

Change your page file to be 1.5 times the amount of your physical ram if it isn't already, and uncheck Let Windows manage my swap file, change that to custom and enter the above amount, preferably on a drive that is not your windows installation drive.

I followed the above tips and stuck a 2 gig swap file on my D drive (windows is on C) and the improvement I got in memory intensive stuff like video editing and BF2 was astonomical.

 

Err. . . one word, what?!

 

I think he's partitioned his drive and allocated 2GB on his HDD for page file?

 

I really need to take a computer course. . . I'm clueless.

 

You're not the only one. :?

 

I would but the HDD would probably die...

I backed up my bookmarks/extensions for firefox onto my gmail account using an excellent little extension called Gspace