Is there a way to tell if your hardware is about to die?

Are there any tell tale signs that your hard ware(hard drive) is about to fail? Any diagnostic tools that can determine how healthy your hardware is? Any special noise, extra heat etc. Anything at all would be nice to know.:confused

 

I am not on my own laptop at the present, so I can't check up on the program I use

You might like to check out:

1. http://www.majorgeeks.com/downloads7.html

2. Best Free Hard Drive Health Monitoring & Diagnostic Programs
http://www.techsupportalert.com/best-free-hd-health-monitoring-and-diagnostic-programs.htm

OR Google hard drive health monitor
for more links.

Barry

 

Greetings, brahman.

To follow up on bigbazza's recommendations, try to find the manufacturer of your drive - most OEMs have specific tools for their drives (IBM/Hitachi, Maxtor, Seagate, Western Digital), etc.

There are also physical signs: errors when opening programs, stray and spurious errors when trying to find files, the dreaded 'Click of Death' (in fact, any strange noise emanating fro the HD could indicate issues), inability to open Windows properly, etc.