[SOLVED] Hard Drive has Died

[LDavis213]

Hi.

Just recently my hard drive has died. It's an HDD i use for my steam games. I noticed Steam wasn't responding and I tried to exit by right clicking on the icon and clicking 'Exit Steam'.
As that didn't work I went to task manager and ended the processes.


Trying to boot up Steam I got:

"The drive or network connection that the shortcut 'Steam Client Bootstrapper' refers to is unavailable. Make sure that the disk is properly inserted or the network resource is available, and then try again."

Turned off PC and checked hard drive plugs and sockets, all are in and where they should be.

I looked in Disk Management and the drive is not missing. I believe it's dead.


Are there any other ways I could go about testing to see if it's really dead or just really good at hiding...

Thank you!

 

[Spec13]

Hi mate,

Can you hear the drive spin up? Are power and SATA cables connect properly?

If there’s no spin up, the drive has failed. If all cables are connected correctly and it’s not detectable in BIOS or by any other means, the drive has failed.

They’re pretty simple to trouble shoot since there’s not many complexities.

Cheers,

Trav

 

[LDavis213]

Hi mate,

Hello!

I tried to listen for that. I have 3 HDD's (including potential dead one) and 3 SSD's. I can hear a whole lot.
I'll have to try and figure out which one it is.

Thank you for commenting!

 

[LDavis213]

.

It appears as if the drive is dead.
I got a blue screen come up just a few minutes ago about memory management. Could that be related?
Also, how could I go about preventing my other drives from dying?

Thank you

 

[Spec13]

It appears as if the drive is dead.
I got a blue screen come up just a few minutes ago about memory management. Could that be related?
Also, how could I go about preventing my other drives from dying?

Thank you

Hi mate,

That BSOD could be relating to a few different things, but yes, possibly.

As for how to prevent other HDD dying, there’s a wealth of resources available online.

Cheers,

Trav

 

[ex_bubblehead]

.....Also, how could I go about preventing my other drives from dying?.....

You don't. All drives, regardless of type will fail at some point. This is what backups are for.

 

[LDavis213]

Trav

Yeah mate I had a look online as to help them last longer.
Been using the disk defragmenter on my remaining drives as an effort to keep them a little longer.

I thank you for your comments and i appreciate you taking your time to help out.

 

[USAFRet]

Also, how could I go about preventing my other drives from dying?

You don't.
If you use it, it will eventually die.
If you don't use it, it will eventually not work.

'Eventually' may be days, weeks, years. But it will surely die, and at the most inopportune moment.

The physical drive is trivially replaceable.
If still under warranty, free.
If not, a few $$.

The only really valuable thing involved is your data. This is what backups are for.

 

[LDavis213]

If you don't use it, it will eventually not work.

Well I never thought anything like that would happen.

In Computer Management, it show's the status of my drives, (Healthy).
Is that a way of knowing of what will inevitably happen, showing poor condition or such?

Thank you.

 

[fzabkar]

Examine the drives' SMART reports with a tool such as CrystalDiskInfo. Look for reallocated, pending or uncorrectable sectors.

 

[LDavis213]

Examine the drives' SMART reports with a tool such as CrystalDiskInfo. Look for reallocated, pending or uncorrectable sectors.

Ah that's very helpful thank you.
Shocking to see how many hours these drives have been running for.

3 drives health status are reading as good, two are as unknown. Both unknowns are SSD. (Not boot ssd)
the boot ssd reads as good, but shows 54% within the health status box.

Reallocated, pending and uncorrectable sectors show on the two HDD's. both are Good. Current & worse all 100.



I understand this is for HDD's. I do have an SSD manager by Kingston.

boot SSD is at 54%. (Wear Indicator.)
both other SSD's are healthy, but wear indicator are at 98 & 99%!!!



I'm sure this is a bigger reply than expected. Additional help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!

 

[USAFRet]

I'm sure this is a bigger reply than expected. Additional help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!

I always operate on the premise that any individual drive may physically die in the next 0.25 sec.
Because I've had it happen.

Software reporting 99% health left, or 2% left...that may an indicator, nothing more. Don't take that report as gospel.
I've had seemingly perfect drives die completely, go from perfect to dead in 36 hours, 3TB WD Green HDD, 5 weeks off the store shelf.
Or an SSD (SanDisk UltraII) die somewhere in between turning the system off and 5 minutes later turning it back on.

Why did they die? Dunno, and mostly don't care.
The WD was obviously still under warranty, free replacement.
The Sandisk SSD was 33 days past the 3 year warranty, but Sandisk gave me a new one anyway. I knew it, they knew it, they did me a solid.

In both cases, 0% data was lost, due to proactive backups.

The drives are physical and electronic devices. Sometimes they fail.
"Fixing" or discovering why would simply be an interest investigation.

At no point should your data be at risk simply because it lives on a single storage device. No matter what type or how old.

 

[LDavis213]

Why did they die? Dunno, and mostly don't care.

Thanks. That's very interesting and also very alarming.

How do you do backups? To another hard drive, external..?

 

[USAFRet]

Thanks. That's very interesting and also very alarming.

How do you do backups? To another hard drive, external..?

This opening post here:

What is your backup situation at home?

What is your backup situation at home? And if you don't do that, why not? Every single day, I read multiple threads here of "How do I get my stuff back?" or "That drive had 5 years of photos of my kids!!" Be it a dead drive, dropped phone, virus, accidental deletion, formatting the wrong...

forums.tomshardware.com

Slightly modified since then, but the same basic premise.