Timely diagnosis of the hard disk allows you to save not only funds, but also nerve cells, which, as you know, are restored extremely reluctantly. It’s even difficult to say which is more important. Today we’ll talk about what is hard drive diagnostics, what does it serve and how can it be done without having to visit service centers.
A hard disk is one of the least reliable components of any computing system. The reason for this is very easy to understand, if you remember that it is the hard drive that contains rotating parts (disappearing drives and cooling system fans are not taken into account). Inside it is a three-phase electric motor that spins up a spindle with several “pancakes” -discs with high speed. Therefore, mechanical wear and susceptibility to external influences for such a device is quite natural.
Despite the introduction of various technologies designed to solve the most common problems, reliability is still insufficient. Moreover, modern diagnostics of the hard drive allows us to argue that with each new generation it is becoming lower. So, you can still find fully functional hard drives with a capacity of 40 GB, and their warranty period was estimated for years.
Modern models with an average load are unlikely to live 5-6 years. This is a fee for high recording density and humane pricing. Fortunately, everything is not so sad as it might seem at first glance, especially if you know what the diagnosis of a hard disk is and how to perform it.
Back in 1992, IBM introduced a special technology into its hard drives that makes it possible to predict a future failure with a certain degree of probability. A special firmware in the firmware of the hard drive constantly compiled a map of the average statistical changes of key (observed) parameters, when approaching the permissible limit value, it warned the user about the need to
back up data to a new disk. Subsequently, the idea received support from giants such as Quantum and Seagate, and began to be implemented in all new models. The observation logic was also refined: now much more parameters were controlled, and the accuracy became higher. The mechanism is called SMART (it is an abbreviation, but not “smart”, as you might think).
For example, for some reason, an unreadable area appears on the hard drive. It is automatically reassigned from the backup zone, while the corresponding SMART parameter changes by one. When the number of reassignments reaches a certain limit, the firmware will recommend replacing it.
To assess the status of SMART, you need a program for diagnosing HDD. We recommend using
Hard Disc Sentinel - Russian-language interface, visibility, continuous monitoring of the status of the disk. We install, select the hard drive (if there are several), click on the SMART tab. Here, the exclamation points in the yellow squares are an occasion to think about the time of the disk and its future replacement. You can not delve into such nuances, but simply read the recommendation on the "Overview" tab.
Sometimes on the Web you can find indications that using the operating system itself is possible to diagnose a hard disk. Windows 7 and all others, unfortunately, cannot directly work with SMART. In this case, there is an ambiguity in the interpretation of the term “diagnostics”. Sometimes it is understood as checking for errors using the ScanDisk utility, although with full right you can also mean viewing SMART.