SMART Failure

[Naphtali14]

Hey guys I could use some thoughts on this one,

I've got a laptop that every time it is turned on displays this message before starting windows

"SMART Failure Predicted on Hard Disk 6: ST9320325AS-(S3) WARNING: Immediately back-up your data and replace your hard disk drive. A failure may be imminent. F1 Ignore."

I've already backed up all the data.

The puzzling piece to me is that it says hard disk 6. There is only one hard disk in the laptop which is split into two partitions, a recovery and a main partition.

Also, the laptop works perfectly fine if you just ignore the message and continue on into windows.

Ideas? Thoughts?
THANKS~!

 

[farinha]

Have you run a scandisk? Enable the "Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors" option.

 

[Naphtali14]

Yeah, I removed the hard-drive and attached it too my main rig and started a check disk before I left for work. I'll see what the results are when I get home in a few hours.

I'm just puzzling theoretically over why it said disk 6.

 

[koinonas]

SMART is actually a little onboard chip which detects whether there is likely a hardware fault occuring or not. Note that SMART is a diagnostic at hardware level and is not actually software driven.

So if this is a legit SMART warning, then I'd strongly suggest you backup, and then replace the hard drive before it stops working completely. And as its a potential fault at hardware level, that might explain why the drive is mis-reporting itself as well.

Note that a hard drive which is on its way out, may not necessarily show many signs until its too late (continually crashing or won't boot). What I suspect is that you will probably find a lot of errors picked up by the scan if this is a legit SMART warning.

If your getting the warning from Windows rather than the boot manager or BIOS, I'd probably just double check it (one of the other forum members might be able to show you how you can access SMART status through BIOS), just to rule out that this isn't some weird fake virus or windows gone a bit haywire. If you're getting this warning in the boot manager or through the BIOS, then I'd be pretty confident that your hard drive is about to die and strongly recommend you look at replacing it.

 

[Naphtali14]

SMART is actually a little onboard chip which detects whether there is likely a hardware fault occuring or not. Note that SMART is a diagnostic at hardware level and is not actually software driven.

So if this is a legit SMART warning, then I'd strongly suggest you backup, and then replace the hard drive before it stops working completely. And as its a potential fault at hardware level, that might explain why the drive is mis-reporting itself as well.

Note that a hard drive which is on its way out, may not necessarily show many signs until its too late (continually crashing or won't boot). What I suspect is that you will probably find a lot of errors picked up by the scan if this is a legit SMART warning.

If your getting the warning from Windows rather than the boot manager or BIOS, I'd probably just double check it (one of the other forum members might be able to show you how you can access SMART status through BIOS), just to rule out that this isn't some weird fake virus or windows gone a bit haywire. If you're getting this warning in the boot manager or through the BIOS, then I'd be pretty confident that your hard drive is about to die and strongly recommend you look at replacing it.

Yeah I know all this stuff already to be honest. My main question was about why it says hard disk 6 when there is only one physical drive and 2 logical drives in the computer.

Also, I ran a check disk and there were no errors found. The read and write speeds are also quite fine. I have a feeling that the customer may have dropped it or something hence setting off the sensor. Since its still under warranty I told them to have HP replace it.