Is My External Hard Drive Dying?

Hope someone can clarify please.

I have CrystalDisk installed on my PC which checks the health of the installed drives and warns of any issues. When I plugged in my portable hard drive into the desktop PC a caution was issued by CrystalDisk indicating that the drive was not healthy.

When I had finished my backup I checked within the Tools on the external Seagate drive itself and this did not suggest any problems.

I don't know whether I should continue to rely on the portable drive now or not. It is only about 3 years old so I am not keen on replacing it if I don't need to.

 

It should be noted we should NEVER rely on one backup location. We should always keep multiple backups, preferably with at least one off sice.

If, for example, you keep your external hard drive on your desk, next to your computer, what happens if your house burns down, is flooded, or blown off the map by a hurricane? Or if a bad guy breaks into your home and steals your computer and back up drive too?

So IMO, even if that was a false alarm and your backup drive is okay, I would not take any chances and get another backup drive and use both. Then keep one of those elsewhere, at least in a different part of the house.

 

Hi Digerati
Many apologies. I didn't get notified that I had a response. Thanks very much for the advice.

 

Download hard disk sentinel trial & this will give you a visual indication of the drive:
https://www.hdsentinel.com/hard_disk_sentinel_trial.php if this shows caution then the drive is failing.