I've recently (in the last 6 months) had two Win7 systems where the C: drive
has failed. Symptoms are, system slows down and the drive activity light
seems to be on for an inordinate amount of time. In neither case were there
any reports of problems from the operating system. Eventually they got to
the stage where things were painfully slow, yet the usual re-booting, clean
up and de-fragging had no effect. Replacing the drives in both cases
restored the systems to the crisp response that they previously had.

So, is there any way of monitoring drive degradation? I assume that the
controller was managing re-tries until it got to a state that xxx attempts
to read something failed, but I'd like to get a bit of warning in future

Andrew

Andrew Mawson wrote:

I've recently (in the last 6 months) had two Win7 systems where the C: drive
has failed. is there any way of monitoring drive degradation?

Run a SMART analysis program every now and then? One that seems to be
kicking about on my machine is HDDscan

http://hddscan.com

There are likely to be equivalents that run continuously in the tray.

On 10/12/2015 21:04, Andy Burns wrote:
Andrew Mawson wrote:

I've recently (in the last 6 months) had two Win7 systems where the C:
drive
has failed. is there any way of monitoring drive degradation?

Run a SMART analysis program every now and then? One that seems to be
kicking about on my machine is HDDscan

http://hddscan.com

There are likely to be equivalents that run continuously in the tray.

Recently used CrystalDiskInfo to produce sufficient information to
persuade PC World to replace a hard disc in a laptop.

The event logs contained sporadic specific "I've had a problem" records,
but the SMART reports were very convincing. So the people told me!

Ghastly website! http://crystalmark.info/?lang=en

--
Rod

On 10/12/2015 21:04, Andy Burns wrote:
Andrew Mawson wrote:

I've recently (in the last 6 months) had two Win7 systems where the C:
drive
has failed. is there any way of monitoring drive degradation?

Run a SMART analysis program every now and then? One that seems to be
kicking about on my machine is HDDscan

http://hddscan.com

There are likely to be equivalents that run continuously in the tray.

Speedfan is the one I use. It has some other diagnostics too.

Andy

Actually I think just doing a test a couple of times a day should show up
the issues. One thing I noticed in the smart data interpretation on one
machine was that many have a warning that the drive has been power cycled
more than a drive of that number of hours use would in normal use.
This they t say can be a precursor to an issue with power plugs getting a
bit loose so its always worth every so often going into machines and
cleaning out the muck from fans and reseating any plugs and sockets.
Brian

--
From the Sofa of Brian Gaff Reply address is active
Remember, if you don't like where I post
or what I say, you don't have to
read my posts! :-)
"Andy Burns" wrote in message
o.uk...
Andrew Mawson wrote:

I've recently (in the last 6 months) had two Win7 systems where the C:
drive
has failed. is there any way of monitoring drive degradation?

Run a SMART analysis program every now and then? One that seems to be
kicking about on my machine is HDDscan

http://hddscan.com

There are likely to be equivalents that run continuously in the tray.

"Andrew Mawson" wrote in message
...
I've recently (in the last 6 months) had two Win7 systems where the C:
drive has failed. Symptoms are, system slows down and the drive activity
light seems to be on for an inordinate amount of time. In neither case
were there any reports of problems from the operating system. Eventually
they got to the stage where things were painfully slow, yet the usual
re-booting, clean up and de-fragging had no effect. Replacing the drives
in both cases restored the systems to the crisp response that they
previously had.

So, is there any way of monitoring drive degradation?

Yes, that sort of thing should show up on the SMART report.

http://www.majorgeeks.com/files/deta...e_edition.html
gives you the SMART report but its not that easy to interpret.

HD Sentinel will monitor the drive continuously and will warn you
about what it decides is a hard drive with a problem, but isn't free.
http://www.hdsentinel.com/index.php

I assume that the
controller was managing re-tries until it got to a state that xxx attempts
to read something failed,

Yes.

but I'd like to get a bit of warning in future

Yeah, that's what SMART is for.

Does not some other software do this, I'm sure I recall a bit of natty
programming that sent the smart to a web site which then sent a report of
expected results and yours for that drive type with warnings against the
dodgy bits.
However and I don't want to be a kiljoy yere, I had similar issues to the
ones in this thread and eventually it was traced to the controller chip on
the motherboard actually corrupting the drives.
Brian

--
From the Sofa of Brian Gaff Reply address is active
Remember, if you don't like where I post
or what I say, you don't have to
read my posts! :-)
"Ranger" wrote in message
...


"Andrew Mawson" wrote in message
...
I've recently (in the last 6 months) had two Win7 systems where the C:
drive has failed. Symptoms are, system slows down and the drive activity
light seems to be on for an inordinate amount of time. In neither case
were there any reports of problems from the operating system. Eventually
they got to the stage where things were painfully slow, yet the usual
re-booting, clean up and de-fragging had no effect. Replacing the drives
in both cases restored the systems to the crisp response that they
previously had.

So, is there any way of monitoring drive degradation?

Yes, that sort of thing should show up on the SMART report.

http://www.majorgeeks.com/files/deta...e_edition.html
gives you the SMART report but its not that easy to interpret.

HD Sentinel will monitor the drive continuously and will warn you
about what it decides is a hard drive with a problem, but isn't free.
http://www.hdsentinel.com/index.php

I assume that the
controller was managing re-tries until it got to a state that xxx
attempts to read something failed,

Yes.

but I'd like to get a bit of warning in future

Yeah, that's what SMART is for.

"Brian-Gaff" wrote in message
...

Does not some other software do this,

Yes, HD Sentinel does, like I said.

I'm sure I recall a bit of natty programming that sent the smart to a web
site which then sent a report of expected results and yours for that drive
type with warnings against the dodgy bits.

The SMART report does that, without using a web site.

However and I don't want to be a kiljoy yere, I had similar issues to the
ones in this thread

Yeah, its about the most common failure mode
of hard drives apart from just stopping and not
ever working again due to component failure.

and eventually it was traced to the controller chip on the motherboard
actually corrupting the drives.

That is a very uncommon failure mode.

It isn't that uncommon for the read circuitry to have
a real problem reading the drive but which does
succeed eventually with multiple reads. It’s the
multiple reads that produces the noticeable slowdown.

Not surprising that that happens given how weak
the signal at the heads is with modern very high bit
density drives.

"Ranger" wrote in message
...


"Andrew Mawson" wrote in message
...
I've recently (in the last 6 months) had two Win7 systems where the C:
drive has failed. Symptoms are, system slows down and the drive activity
light seems to be on for an inordinate amount of time. In neither case
were there any reports of problems from the operating system. Eventually
they got to the stage where things were painfully slow, yet the usual
re-booting, clean up and de-fragging had no effect. Replacing the drives
in both cases restored the systems to the crisp response that they
previously had.

So, is there any way of monitoring drive degradation?

Yes, that sort of thing should show up on the SMART report.

http://www.majorgeeks.com/files/deta...e_edition.html
gives you the SMART report but its not that easy to interpret.

HD Sentinel will monitor the drive continuously and will warn you
about what it decides is a hard drive with a problem, but isn't free.
http://www.hdsentinel.com/index.php

I assume that the
controller was managing re-tries until it got to a state that xxx
attempts to read something failed,

Yes.

but I'd like to get a bit of warning in future

Yeah, that's what SMART is for.

On 10/12/15 20:45, Andrew Mawson wrote:
I've recently (in the last 6 months) had two Win7 systems where the C:
drive has failed. Symptoms are, system slows down and the drive activity
light seems to be on for an inordinate amount of time. In neither case
were there any reports of problems from the operating system. Eventually
they got to the stage where things were painfully slow, yet the usual
re-booting, clean up and de-fragging had no effect. Replacing the drives
in both cases restored the systems to the crisp response that they
previously had.

So, is there any way of monitoring drive degradation? I assume that the
controller was managing re-tries until it got to a state that xxx
attempts to read something failed, but I'd like to get a bit of warning
in future
#
GOOGLE 'SMART DISK SOFTWARE'


All recent disks come with monitoring and diagnostic capabilities and
there are many free clients to access this, some of which even work with
Windows.


Andrew




--
the biggest threat to humanity comes from socialism, which has utterly
diverted our attention away from what really matters to our existential
survival, to indulging in navel gazing and faux moral investigations
into what the world ought to be, whilst we fail utterly to deal with
what it actually is.