HDD SMART Failure

[Brainchild]

A friend went to format,and install win 98 on his laptop.When it asked for the win98 disk which was in the CD-ROM,he didn't know to type the path to the CD,and skipped the file(several times )SO when he brought it to me, I started it up,typed the path to the disk,and loaded all the drivers ect.When I rebooted SMART says that HDD failure.Knowing that SMART has acurate predicted failure a few times for me,I suggested a new HDD.

He wanted to play with the computer since it was gonna die anyways,and did a ME upgrade.Now the SMART says nothing,and the computer works better than it ever has before.

It this possible because of a borked 98 setup?Or should I find a HDD anyway?I thought once a HDD was dying nothing could be done.Only time will tell for sure I guess.Anyone have any experiance with this?

Also I have formatted and installed windows 5 times in 2 months on this machine because someone keeps deleting .dll files to get rid of viruses (I don't know either).Plus it gets viruses even with Norton and AVG running.I'm not sure what they're D/L or what.Could this all be related?

TIA

[Bill in SD, CA]

I've has a couple of drives go back and forth between running ok and looking like they were gonna die.

They died in the end.

Probably something mechanical starting to get edgy.

Bill

[Brainchild]

I guess now we decide if it's time to replace the ol 233 with nice desktop system

He's been threatening for a month,now might be the time.

[artsalas_2000]

The best way to check if the hard disk is going bad, is to run SCANDISK /ALL and check the surface of the disk. It may take a while to do, but you will know. If the begining of the drive is bad, use Partition Magic to resize the disk and have it start on sector other than o(ZERO)

[peterwilkes]

To View the full SMART data readings from the HDD within windows, dowload and run this file >

http://private.peterlink.ru/tochinov/

It will put the HDD temp in the system tray (if the HDD has a sensor) and if you right click the icon in the system tray, you can view all the SMART data.

Have a look and see what you find.

[John Prophet]

To answer the question, I dont think windows stuff has anything to do with s.m.a.r.t. Isnt smart all done in the bios?

[Chuckiechan]

If it's a budget thing, why don't you encourage your friend to invest in a new HDD. Then Ghost over the old one to it and keep it as a slave.

When it is time to upgrade, at least one of the more expensive componets has already been purchased.

IMO...

[sfw1960]

JP , I think you are correct (again)
on S.M.A.R.T.
I'd accidentally "drop" the old girl , then you'd be SURE!!!
hehehe :0

[Mr. NoOne]

something similar happened to me.....I had a western Digital drive that gave me s.m.a.r.t. error after a month....
while they sent me a new one, I remove the partition on the bad drive and formated it, then the next time I rebooted there were no more S.M.A.R.T errors.....

weird!

Since I had already ordered a replacement I just sent the "bad" one back to the store anyway.....I couldn't trust it.....

[sam]

i just had this happen with a drive that i have laying around .i wanted to test it . so i ran powermax on the drive(Maxtor) first the 90 sec. test. pased all but s.m.a.r.t. powermax said it would try to fix the error and prompted me to run the advance test on it(factory recertification test) i did then it said it was tryin to fix the error after it said it was finnished i retested it in the 90 sec test and all pased