Could by hard drive be dying?

I have lately noticed some slight issues with my computer. I was sent a bunch of audio files from a friend. I went to go listen to them and they wouldn't play. I checked them out, to find some of them didn't have any size to them, yet the night I downloaded them, they all had size. It's as if my computer is loosing information.

If I download a file, wait over night, and try to use it, it's as if it's damaged. I tried it today for fun and haha chuckles with a torrent for some relaxation songs, I downloaded them, waited an hour, they all played fine....yet I went to play them and they wouldn't work, I forced a recheck and they were 56% complete! Could it be the hard drive dying?

 

Hi Grendal,

What capacity is your HDD? What OS are you running (This will tell me what format your disk is)

Is your HDD near full capacity? - I have seen this type of behaviour on both Windows and Mac where the disk has been near full to capacity.

Imagine this -

There's a fruit bowl on your desk in front of you, infact right under your nose. You can grab a piece of fruit without even looking down. Now move the fruit bowl away at arms length, ok you can still grab a piece of fruit but now you have to actually look at what your doing. Next we move the bowl 10cm's of your arms reach and now you not only have to look down, but you have to stretch and whilst this is physically possible it's not "comfortable" - Just translate the this analogy to the platter of a HDD, the read arm can read information from the edge of the platter but it doesn't really like doing it - Hence why you get weird behaviour like this. At least in IMHO.

If it is not due to this then the only thing I can think is that there must be some form of corruption in your OS.

I would try downloading the files from your friend again on a seperate computer.

 

74.5 gig drive, 10.5 gig free, running xp. How can I check for corruption and fix any corruption there might be? Prefereably without a disk as I don't have one.

 

Hi Mate,

Have a look at this youtube link, it will show you how to use the CHKDSK facility

It sometimes can take a while, so I would recommend doing it when you have some time spare or do not need to use the computer.