Test for Hard Drive Failure?

07
2014-04
  • Lynda

    I am having issues booting my computer and I have attempted multiple things, including booting into Linux to try and save files from there. However, I had issue with copying the files and I have begun to suspect HD Failure. My question is how can I test if the HD failed?

    The HD is an internal Seagate 1TB.

    • Answers
  • Dave M

    If possible, move the drive to an external enclosure or add to a known good system. From there you can run diagnostics and/or try and recover files.

    The issue is possibly other hardware and by installing with working hardware, you will elimninate a variable or two. Seagate has a diagnostic that runs under Windows that can easily test the drive

  • FSMaxB

    If your harddrive supports SMART, you can use gsmartcontrol to perform some selftests which show you the state of the drive.

    A simple test for harddisk failures would be the following command:

    sudo dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/null

    Replace /dev/sda with the device name of your harddrive and be certain not to type something in wrong, as this command can, if used wrong, destroy all of your data. If this command triggers any device errors or failures, you can be very certain of hardware failure.


    • Related Question

    HP business desktops fail non-HP hard drives in BIOS disk test. True?
  • BezantSoft

    Since I have NOT needed to be out on the bleeding edge, of late I have been buying factory refurbished or trusted re-builder refurbeded business desktops. For the ones with Windows, they often don't have all the useless consumer grade eye-candy and hand-holding software. They may even have systems management clients! Anyway, the last 4 machines I've built out have all had 40 GiB hard drives. In my newest box, which is a barebones machine, the HD is the 40 GiB, but was unformatted. {It was barebones} When the format for Win7 Ultimate failed overnight, I ran my standard diagnostics tools. They all said the drive was good. Another nuke and boot to go with the OS again. Failed again. This time, I went into the Bios disk test routine. It said that my otherwise good HD was not. One of my tech resources said that it was common knowledge that a Non-HP disk tested with the Bios test would always fail. I am interested in this because I am going to be upgrading the boot drives on several of these machines....

    Has anyone had any experience with this?


    • Related Answers
  • Patkos Csaba

    I have a HP business desktop at home, and I changed all my harddrives with absolutely no problems. True, I never run a disk test from BIOS, but they are working perfectly. Anyway, the original HDD was also a Hitachi, not HP. Now I have a Western Digital and a Samsung.

    This is a HP DX2300 desktop, bought new about 3 years ago. I've put in it additional RAM and video card and TV tuner and wireless (over PCI) card ... I had absolutely no problem with any additional non-HP hardware.