How do I test if my Hard Drive is nearly worn out??

Gingermeggs

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Jan 24, 2011
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I use a HP laptop and use it a great deal.(15hours 7 days a week) and it is 3 years old. I back up data but I don't want the hastle of re installing all the programs.
Is there a software program that can measure the wear ?
Is there a software program to bundle all the contents of HD to an external HD then replace my Lap-Top HD, and dump the bundle to the new HD, so I can carry on like now ?

Thanking you in anticipation. Don.
 
Solution
If the HDD is smart aware you can use a program like Everest (Home edition is free) - I use the ultimate edition but IIRC the free version will also work for this.

Here is a Screenshot of screen with SMART INFO from my system :
everest-1.jpg


As the HDD starts to fail you will get errors and warning instead of all passing values. Esp in the last 4-5 items which means it is finding bad sectors or CRC errors and rewriting them to other sectors at which time it is best to back up info and get a new HDD.
You can't measure the wear on a hard disk (or not that I am aware of). They tend to go fairly suddenly. But nowadays they have SMART monitoring built in which will warn you if a disk is likely to fail.

If you want to avoid having to reinstall programs when you change a hard disk you should look at backup software that takes an image of the disk rather than backing up file-by-file. (Best is to combine the two strategies - take images once in a while and back data up daily.) That way you can easily restore the image onto a new hard disk.
 
If the HDD is smart aware you can use a program like Everest (Home edition is free) - I use the ultimate edition but IIRC the free version will also work for this.

Here is a Screenshot of screen with SMART INFO from my system :
everest-1.jpg


As the HDD starts to fail you will get errors and warning instead of all passing values. Esp in the last 4-5 items which means it is finding bad sectors or CRC errors and rewriting them to other sectors at which time it is best to back up info and get a new HDD.
 
Solution