A typical question that computer users may ask is how long a hard drive can last? And the typical answer that they get is between 5 to 10 years. However, that does not mean that the hard drive will not fail before 5 years and will definitely fail after 10 years. Many things can happen and a lot may be at stake. Considering all your valuable files and documents, a hard drive failure will certainly get you into trouble. Therefore getting a health check for your hard drive is advisable.
So how do you know when your hard drive is going to fail? One way to find out is to check if the drive clicks or sounds louder than normal when doing lots of reading/writing. Another way, which is also the better way, is to use the Acronis Drive Monitor, which is a software that can help you monitor your hard drivers and warns you of potential problems that might arise before you actually lose your data.
To get the software, you need to go to the website by clicking here and register. After the registration, you can download the file for free.
Once you have downloaded and installed the software, you will be greeted with a screen that shows you the overview of your hard drive’s health. Click on the Show disk under the Disk problem tab and you can see the hard drive that you have in your computer. In my case I have a Fujitsu MHW2120BH. The condition of my hard drive is rated at 30% of 100% in which ratings below 70% is considered as unfavorable and has a high possibility of hard drive failure. Other interesting thing that you can see here is that my hard drive have been turned on for 249 days.
You can get more detailed information by clicking the S.M.A.R.T parameters tab. Leaving aside the technical details, you can easily check your hard drive’s health on the status column. Can see from my status column, I have 1 warning status and 1 critical status.
Overall, this software is very useful software that gives you everything you need to know about your hard drives and can prevent you from any potential failure of your hard drives. In my case, I will have to consider buying a new hard drive… sadly.
Click here to go to Acronis Drive Monitor website.
