Predicting Mechanical Failure in Hard Disks

There's many kinds of failure in Hard Disk Drives, but I want to simplify the discussion here. So let us define two basic types of failure.

Type 1: Software Failure: A relatively simple problem, will not be covered on this blog.

Type 2: Mechanical Failure: When the motor or bearings or the read/write head of the Hard Disk fail.

Image Ctsy. LapTopRecovery.Net

We will cover only Type 2 failure here.

Every drive has an inbuilt mechanism. Known as "S.M.A.R.T."

This mechanism is an 'early warning mechanism' that informs you of the mechanical health of your drive. And can inform you if your drive is about to fail, mechanically.

There's many S.M.A.R.T monitoring programs available. But not all function correctly for some reason.

I found that the free version of the following program informed about drive health successfully. I used it on healthy as well as failing drives at my office.

1. HDD Sentinel.

Interpreting S.M.A.R.T can be difficult at times. I found HDSENTINEL to be easiest to understand as far this is concerned. It explains each parameter in simple terms. It also has the ability to monitor S.M.A.R.T. on external drives, which other softwares don't.

This software will also show you your Hard Drive Temperature.

It is vital to keep the hard disk cool and free from dust and moisture.

Please refer to your Hard Disk Manual for the acceptable temperature/humidity range for your hard disks.
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If you want to monitor your Hard Disk health more effectively, then monitoring the voltages that are being fed to your PC internals is not a bad idea. A free software for doing this is:

1. SpeedFan.

This software can monitor many internal parameters. But it is NOT recommended to be used to monitor S.M.A.R.T. Though it has the ability. I found its S.M.A.R.T. monitoring to be vague and therefore useless.
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