Harddrive dying? How can I make sure?

Gun

Member
Hello!

So I feel like my harddrive might be dying. Certain applications are freezing with use and just general slowness with some tasks. Also a couple of times everything would dissapear from my desktop, and I'd have to restart my PC for all my icons and files to come back.

Do these sound like things that would happen if my harddrive was dying? I'm happy to buy a new one, I just didn't want to get one then realise it wasn't actually the harddrive causing the issue. My harddrive is a Seagate Barracuda 1TB.

Thanks! :)
 

Darren

Moderator
Staff member
A Long Generic Test just tests every sector on the drive. Might not be a bad idea. Make sure it's the only thing running though and give it overnight or something. It will take a while.
 

voyagerfan99

Master of Turning Things Off and Back On Again
Staff member
If it failed the SMART test (Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology), that means the drive is failing. Back up your data and replace the drive ASAP.
 

johnb35

Administrator
Staff member
Chances are if it failed the smart test then it won't even finish the short or the long test. Replace the drive ASAP!!!
 

Gun

Member
Yep it did fail the SMART test, so I guess I'll get a new drive! Yes I think I may have heard some noise coming from it as well.

What's the best way to get everything from this drive onto my new one? Not even sure how I'd go about doing that.
 

Darren

Moderator
Staff member
External HDD might be easiest.

If not and your current hard drive is still okay for now you could hook it up to your system, make a partition for the OS and a partition for your stuff, and just put all your stuff on the stuff partition and then pull the old drive and install the OS on the OS partition.
 

Gun

Member
Okay so I have purchased and installed my new harddrive, but there are some issues. Firstly, I can't seem to put anything on the desktop, nothing happens when I copy and paste or drag and drop something there. I also can't pin anything to my taskbar and 'Desktop' doesn't show up in my Libraries.

How can I connect my Desktop to my new harddrive so I can put things on my Desktop as usual and I'll just fill up my new harddrive?

Thanks
 
Last edited:

Agent Smith

Well-Known Member
So you installed a new drive and installed a fresh copy of Windows or did you use a clone? Sounds like Explorer is corrupt.
 
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