Solved Is my hard drive near the end of its life?

Hello Eight Forums!
I need some advice regarding my laptop's internal hard drive (WD 500GB).

I recently started getting I/O Device Errors when reading, copying or writing certain files to my HD or any external mass storage device. It started with winRAR extraction errors, then went on to file copying, downloading and DVD burning. All of these applications either terminate file operations abruptly informing me that a file cannot be accessed because of an I/O error.

Curious enough, I installed CrystalDisk Info and saw that my HDD's health was on WARNING. The application pointed out errors on my HD's Reallocated and Pending Sectors count. However, Windows 8's CHKDSK reported no problems on the drive which confused me as the results were contradicting.

I then uninstalled CrystalDisk and replaced it with HDTune. HDTune also gave me a WARNING health status. Here is a screenshot:


Windows also started to experience great Disk Usage spikes even when its idle. This is a recurring scenario and greatly affects my PC's performance.


Is my hard drive failing?? Is there a way for me to save my HDD's life? I have all my files backed up to an external drive ever since this issue existed and I'm afraid that this may be the start of my HDD's end of life.

Is there any tool at all that can help me at least isolate the bad sectors and prevent Windows from writing data on them? I don't care if it shrinks my hard drive space as long as it solves the issue.

Thank you Eight Forums!

Yes, and it will get worse. I would suggest that you save all your personall data and replace the HD and it would be nice is you can replace with an SSD, the performance will be greatly improved.

Welcome to the forum.

Windows chkdsk was designed to detect file system errors. It was not primarily designed to detect physical problems with the drive and can only do so for specific kinds of errors under specific conditions. It is not at all unusual for it to miss the kinds of errors you are having.

The problems being reported are serious and will only get worse. These errors cannot be repaired. The drive needs to be replaced. All it takes is for a bad sector to effect an important system file and the system will not boot. That could happen at any time.

Well that's quite depressing .. It's only been a year and 10 months ever since I bought this machine. Are there any ways that can at least slow down the accumulation of bad sectors? Replacing my HDD is not feasible at this time due to more important priorities... And also, is it true that defragging a faulty drive only makes its condition worse?

Thank you for your help guys!!

Drives can develop bad sectors for a variety of reasons. In most cases the cause is unknown and unknowable. Defragging the drive could accelerate the process.

"Near" is an understatement, save your data while you can and use sparingly. Once it physically goes bad (as SMART indicates) there's no repair.

Took laptop to shop because frozen on error message, turns out the HDD had gone through a virtual block hole. Had to get new drive!! no warning, it just stopped - dead!!

elbmek said:

Took laptop to shop because frozen on error message, turns out the HDD had gone through a virtual block hole. Had to get new drive!! no warning, it just stopped - dead!!

Click to expand...

That usually happens when electronics on it go crapola, not rare either. Seen a lot of that, great source of powerful magnets inside. I also save all the bearings from them, use them for various projects and all screws too.

Well foreseeing the inevitable, I guess all I can do now is enjoy the last few breaths of my beloved HDD till I get a new one. Quite disappointed with my machine quality since I never ever dropped it nor jack hammer it with anything. Thanks for the help people!

A dying drive is like a broken ankle, you have to repair, replace, or limit your use of it..

It only gets worse, and eventually you will have no use of it..

If the data is important, stop using it until you can find a replacement or backup important data to USB FLASH or DVD

If you have another computer with extra harddrive space, you can copy files to it via network, or ide/sata to usb interface

But you must stop using it or all will be lost...

If it sounds doom and gloomish, its because it is....