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	"title": "3 tools to check your hard drive's health and make sure it's not already dying on you",
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	"plain_text": "3 tools to check your hard drive's health and make sure it's not\r\nalready dying on you\r\nBy melanie_pinola\r\nPublished: 2014-12-01 · Archived: 2026-04-06 02:09:24 UTC\r\nHard drives fail, and they fail often, with 22% of hard drives failing in their first four years of usage. You can\r\ngenerally consider your computer’s drive reliable, but it’s really like playing the lottery and hoping your drive\r\nisn’t one of those that ends up with disk errors that make your data inaccessible before you had a chance to back\r\nthose files up.\r\nThe first thing to have in place, then, is an automated offsite (online) backup service like CrashPlan and\r\nBackblaze. For about $5 a month, you can rest assured that even if your hard drive drops dead or your home burns\r\ndown (your computer within it), your files, settings, photos, and other important data are saved.\r\nRecently, my family’s computer has been on the fritz–even if it manages to boot into Windows, it’s impossible to\r\nlaunch any program or even get to the command prompt. I’ve reset it through Windows 8’s startup\r\ntroubleshooting, but the nagging feeling that it’s a hardware problem–that is, the hard drive is going to die any\r\nsecond now–makes me want to invest as little time troubleshooting this further as possible.\r\nTo that end, I used Seagate’s awesome SeaTools. There’s a Windows version that quickly tests your drive for\r\nerrors (mine failed the short test) and a DOS tool that can be run at startup from a CD-ROM or USB drive. The\r\nDOS tool didn’t work on my machine for some reason, but it can possibly fix hard drive errors so you can salvage\r\nthe drive.\r\nPassMark DiskCheckup keeps tabs on your hard drive’s SMART (self-monitoring analysis and reporting\r\ntechnology), to gauge your drive’s reliability. This tracking and the drive’s self tests are meant to diagnose your\r\nhard drive’s life span.\r\nFinally, there’s Windows’ own built-in chkdsk. Run it from the command line (Win+X keyboard shortcut and\r\nchoose the administrator option for opening the command prompt, then enter this command to run checkdisk and\r\nfix any disk problems chkdsk /F).\r\nIf these utilities show your hard drive has errors and can’t be repaired, it’s time to make sure you have a recent\r\nback up of your files, and then weigh your options between replacing the drive and reinstalling Windows and your\r\nprograms or getting a new computer. With laptops dropping to record lows this year ($99 for a laptop in one Black\r\nFriday sale), it’s a tough call. (One I’m still debating.)\r\nThe moral of this story, though, is that drives fail all the time, unexpectedly. Keep tabs on your drive’s health and\r\nmaks sure you have a solid backup plan.\r\nhttps://www.computerworld.com/article/1484887/3-tools-to-check-your-hard-drives-health-and-make-sure-its-not-already-dying-on-you.html\r\nPage 1 of 2\n\nSource: https://www.computerworld.com/article/1484887/3-tools-to-check-your-hard-drives-health-and-make-sure-its-not-already-dying-on-yo\r\nu.html\r\nhttps://www.computerworld.com/article/1484887/3-tools-to-check-your-hard-drives-health-and-make-sure-its-not-already-dying-on-you.html\r\nPage 2 of 2",
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	"language": "EN",
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