how to ascertain whether hard disk in laptop has crashed or not

[biswa bikash sen]

how to ascertain whether hard disk has crashed or not

 

[hang-the-9]

how to ascertain whether hard disk has crashed or not

Quite a few different ways, best is to just run a low level test utility on it, some computers have an option in the BIOS to do that. The hard drive vendor should also have a disk check utility. If yours does not, run the HDTune utility as in the above post. There is a free trial for it, but it's a paid program.

 

[David Candy]

S.M.A.R.T
Start - All Programs - Accessories - Right click Command Prompt and choose Run As Administrator. Type (or copy and paste by right clicking in the Command Prompt window and choosing Paste).

Disk drives in Windows monitor themselves for impending failure. The feature is called S.M.A.R.T. It will detect impending failure 30% of the time. In an elevated command prompt type (it's one line)

wmic /namespace:\\root\wmi PATH MSStorageDriver_FailurePredictStatus get active,predictfailure,reason /format:List

If it's on Active will be true, if not on turn it on in the computer's BIOS.

Predict Failure should be False if everything's ok.

In Vista and later if SMART predicts failure Windows prompts the user to run Backup.

Start - All Programs - Accessories - Right click Command Prompt and choose Run As Administrator. Type (or copy and paste by right clicking in the Command Prompt window and choosing Paste).

edit c:\bootex.log

Does this file exist with something in it?

The following commands query the event logs.

For boot time checking using source name for any Windows version (as it varies).

wmic /append:"%userprofile%\desktop\DiskEvents.html" PATH Win32_NTLogEvent where (sourcename='Autocheck' or sourcename='Winlogon' or sourcename='WinInit') get /format:HForm

For running chkdsk within Windows.

wmic /append:"%userprofile%\desktop\DiskEvents.html" PATH Win32_NTLogEvent where (sourcename='Chkdsk') get /format:HForm


For warnings about disk problems detected during normal operations and automatic repairs made by Windows at the time the problems were discovered.

wmic /append:"%userprofile%\desktop\DiskEvents.html" PATH Win32_NTLogEvent where (sourcename='NTFS' or Sourcename='Disk') get /format:HForm

Then to view the file created.

start "" "%userprofile%\desktop\DiskEvents.html"