Is my hard drive failing?

For the past couple months I've noticed my hard drives, both, have become fairly noisy. Programs, games especially, don't seem to run as ****, and choppier. And the most annoying is my windows boot time is up near 3-4 minutes. Never was like this. These hard drives are about 2-3 years old maybe.

I've run several Spyware removable programs, defraged both drives, to include: Spybot S&D, Ad-Aware, RegScrubXP, Cleanup!, ATF-Cleaner and AVG Virus Scanner.

One is a Western Digital Raptor WD740GD 74GB 10,000 RPM SATA-150 Hard Drive
Other one is a Maxtor DiamondMax 10 6B300S0 300GB 7200 RPM SATA-150 Hard Drive.

The 74GB Raptor is the one Windows is installed on.

Here are some graphs of both hard drives under DiskSpeed32:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v666/ICantRead/HDD.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v666/ICantRead/HarddriveD2.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v666/ICantRead/HarddriveC.jpg





BelArc Specs:
Operating System System Model
Windows XP Professional Service Pack 2 (build 2600) Enclosure Type: Desktop
Processor a Main Circuit Board b
2.00 gigahertz AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core
256 kilobyte primary memory cache
1024 kilobyte secondary memory cache Board: C51MCP51
Bus Clock: 201 megahertz
BIOS: Phoenix Technologies, LTD 6.00 PG 01/19/2007
Drives Memory Modules c,d
374.42 Gigabytes Usable Hard Drive Capacity
285.15 Gigabytes Hard Drive Free Space

TDK DVDRW880N [CD-ROM drive]
3.5" format removeable media [Floppy drive]

Maxtor 6B300S0 [Hard drive] (300.08 GB) -- drive 1
WDC WD740GD-00FLA2 [Hard drive] (74.36 GB) -- drive 0, s/n WD-WMAKE1768890, rev 31.08F31, SMART Status: Healthy 2048 Megabytes Installed Memory

Slot 'A0' is Empty
Slot 'A1' has 1024 MB
Slot 'A2' is Empty
Slot 'A3' has 1024 MB
Local Drive Volumes


c: (NTFS on drive 0) 74.34 GB 38.44 GB free
d: (NTFS on drive 1) 300.08 GB 246.71 GB free

 

I'm not familiar with DiskSpeed32, so I can't offer any useful comments on the graphs you posted.

The increase in noise from your hard drives could indicate they're about to fail. But that increase in noise could also be an indication of a high level of fragmentation. But before you attempt to defrag them you should back up any data you don't want to lose. Defragging a badly fragmented hard drive puts a lot of stress on the drive and if either of these drives is about to fail, running a defrag routine could push it over the edge. This isn't to say defragging shouldn't be done, just that it's a risky thing to try if you think a drive is about to fail. It's a classic "catch-22" -- the drives may just need to be defragged (a heavily fragmented drive requires lots of drive head movements to read the pieces of files scattered all over the disk and that can make the drive sound increasingly noisy), but defragging may just push them over the edge and cause them to fail sooner if they're really not in tip-top shape.

So first back up any data from these drives that you'd hate to lose. Then, use the defragger software built into Windows to analyze each drive's fragmentation level, but don't actually defrag the drives yet. Just highlight one of the drives and click on the "Analyze" button and see what the results are. Do this for each drive. Since the analyze routine doesn't actually start rearranging data to put file fragments back together it's not nearly as stressful on the drives as actually defragging them can be. Once you run the analyze routine on each drive make a note of the recommendation (to defrag or not) and also look at the report generated -- what level of fragmentation, how many fragmented files and so on? Post that info back here if you're not sure what to do next. Or, after backing up your data, go ahead and defrag each drive if the analysis results indicate defragging is needed.

Also, do these hard drives have "SMART" features? The Raptor surely does and most other modern hard drives do too. A "SMART" drive can be examined with "SMART" software that can sometimes predict drive failure is about to occur. On the other hand if the "SMART" data all falls within normal parameters that should, in theory, indicate the drive is not likely to fail soon -- but you shouldn't take that as 100%. SMART has to be turned on for each drive individually in your BIOS. Do you know how to do that?

Check here at MajorGeeks in the download section for some hard drive diagnostic software you can download and run on your drives. Maybe someone else here can recommend a specific free hard drive diagnostic utility they think is good and post the download link. In addition to SMART diagnostic software there are other hard drive programs that will test your drives, often by stressing them. So again, before you do anything that will put lots of stress on the drives be sure to back up anything you'd hate to lose. Use a CD or DVD burner to back up data, for example.

And remember software designed to predict failure by reading and interpreting the SMART data from your hard drives won't be able to do anything unless you have turned on the SMART feature for each drive in your motherboard's BIOS.

 

Yeah, now that I think about it has been going on for a few months, not sure how long the average time of the noise beginning to the actual drive failing is but its been a while. Haven't had time to deal with it really until now.

As for defraging the drive, I did this last week or so, wasn't a huge amount of space freed if I remember correctly...

You mentioned something about SMART drive? I noticed in my BelArc Advisor report this:
Maxtor 6B300S0 [Hard drive] (300.08 GB) -- drive 1
WDC WD740GD-00FLA2 [Hard drive] (74.36 GB) -- drive 0, s/n WD-WMAKE1768890, rev 31.08F31, SMART Status: Healthy 2048 Megabytes Installed Memory

Maybe this is it? I'm not sure, but I will look for SMART program off Majorgeeks when I get home from work.
Was hoping this wasnt the case, I bought both of these new when they came out, if I remember right the Raptor was about $190-200? And the other was around $120.

 

Yes, that item in the Belarc Advisor is at least some of the SMART info I was referring to. It's possible some other software may give you more detail from the SMART readings, but the basic "Healthy" status is encouraging, as long as you realize it's not 100% accurate. Look in your BIOS and see if perhaps your Maxtor drive also supports SMART but it isn't turned on in the BIOS.

Check the warranties on your two drives. Some hard drive warranties now stretch to 3 years or more. And do look for some additional hard drive diagnostic software, beyond programs that just interpret SMART data from the drives. In addition you can run chkdsk which is included in Windows. Search the forums here or do an online search if you're not familiar with chkdsk -- "check disk" -- which, when run with the right "switches", is designed to detect and clean up problems with the file system on a hard drive. Those are the sorts of problems that can lead to increased boot times and make the drive grind/work harder so chkdsk might help straighten out some problems on your drives.

But above all, as I mentioned in my first post to you, given you have good reason to fear these drives may be failing, don't wait! Back up anything you'd hate to lose just in case one or both of these drives crash.

 

I think I have to call/email them about the warrentys, not sure...
I found a disk check program that Western Digital offers, will run that tonight as well.
Thanks for the suggestions, much appreciated.

 

So running the diagnostic test program that Western Digital offers for this specific hard drive I got this:

Test Option: EXTENDED TEST
Model Number: WDC WD740GD-00FLA2
Unit Serial Number: WD-WMAKE1768890
Firmware Number: 31.08F31
Capacity: 74.36 GB
SMART Status: PASS
Test Result: PASS
Test Time: 20:45:54, February 28, 2008

I win will run the check disk program Windows comes with as soon as I'm done backing up.

 

Is that WD software part of the Data Lifeguard Tools? I have that but haven't ever used the diagnostic utilities. The Raptor is looking better and better as you have two good results for it. Maxtor has some tools for the setup of its hard drives similar to the WD Data Lifeguard software. I'm not sure the Maxtor software includes any diagnostic utilities, but take a look. You can download it for free if you didn't get a CD with the Maxtor drive. I believe Maxtor's hard drive install utilities are called MaxBlast. The last version I saw was called MaxBlast 4 I think. Check the Maxtor website for it -- it should be a free download.

I looked at my own BIOS (I have a Gigabyte mobo) and saw that there's just single setting which turns on SMART in the BIOS. If I have that set to "Enable" any drive installed in the system with SMART features should be able to provide SMART data about its condition. Your BIOS may be the same, but take a look to insure there's not a separate setting for your Maxtor. If there isn't, then apparently your Maxtor drive isn't a SMART drive. Still, you should be able to check it with some non-SMART hard drive diagnostic software and run chkdsk on it also.

You should know, that sometimes, when a drive's file system is in bad shape, it can take some hours to run chkdsk on it. So you should run it when you don't expect to need your computer for awhile. Maybe just before bedtime, for example.

I've had pretty good luck over the years with hard drives (mostly Maxtor and WD). The first Windows machine I bought had a hard drive that failed within a year. I'd say 3 to 4 years use is about average for me. If these drives are approaching three years of use and you use your machine quite a bit, they may well be about to fail. The WD looks good so far, based on the tests you've run, but a hard drive getting noisier and noisier isn't usually a good sign.

 

I ran check disk, the program windows offers to check your drive, came up fine. I actually checked both drives, both did not seem to have any issues.

I dont know if the Western Digital diagnostics program has anything to do with the Lifegaurd one..., I also downloaded the specific program for Maxtor as well and ran that.

I've had failing hard drives before, but they were a lot easier to diagnosis then this, usually errors came up quicker. So my guess is its GOING to fail very soon.

Not sure if this explains the choppiness in games and such.
Maybe bad RAM? Questionable video card? No other symptoms other then louder then normal hard drive, and just not running as well performance wise then it should/was.
The windows install is relatively new - 2 months at most maybe.