Filed under: Windows Repair Software
How can I check a hard drive to see if it's failing? Is there a free disk utility for Windows Vista?
June 16, 2010
4 thoughts on “How can I check a hard drive to see if it's failing? Is there a free disk utility for Windows Vista?”
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Clean Registry and Optimize PC
Hardware can fail anytime. Whether from Electro Static Discharge or manufacture defects. It happens.
The only ‘free’ disk utility on windows is the Scan disk and Defrag. If the files for WoW are corrupted, the same issue might have corrupted the rest of the disk. So your problem might just be the data on the disk rather than the disk itself.
Why not just try to complete reformat of the harddrive – I find REPAIR does not work well. The reformat will start your HDD from scratch – and if the reinstall fails – then it could likely be a HDD failure.
You can also find sites online to ‘benchtest’ the HDD, they could provide more information
There’s really not much you can do to predict drive failure, but sounds like the drive is taking too long during it’s self-test for the bios to detect it. That’s a pretty good sign of failure.
It’s definitely going bad.
Oddly enough, the only drive test software I trust is the OEM software, and of course the tests are destructive to the in situ data.