   Is my hard drive dying?
  Recently on my laptop, I've been noticing some strange activity going on in the background. Approximately 6 months ago my hard drive died, and this is also what started happening then.The biggest thing I've noticed is that it takes almost 60 seconds for any of the software I have set to automatically load when I log into Windows to start running. I've run spyware removers, defragged the hard drive, and tried uninstalling any background software that would be eating up system resources, but nothing seems to have an effect. This started happening almost a week before my hard drive gave up the ghost last time, so I'm a little concerned.   
  I've seen failures like this most often stemming from a bad hard drive cable. However, on a laptop vibration damage is quite often common; at my last job, we'd see cheapo Dells get kicked back to IT about once a month. Their shock housing just isn't as good as it should be.The first thing I'd do is run memtest86; while it's probably not related to the memory, at least you can check this without taking the case off. Also run SpeedFan and check the SMART status of the drive to see if it's been emitting panic messages; if this is the case, back everything up and buy a new drive immediately.   ;  All hard disks are dying, the question is whether yours is almost dead :)Basically, slowless is not a sign that your disk is dying, but if your disk is dying then the slowness might be a sign... I know this seems contradictory, but read it carefully ;)Your best bet is to get firstly run some software to check the condition for your disk ... the vendor of your disk will have one up for download. They are all names rather vague names, so you might need to look quite hard. This utility will examine your disk and detect any detectable problems.If nothing is found, BACK UP YOUR DISK. Not every problem is detectable, and murphy's law states that your disk will fail once you have been convinced that it will not fail.After this I would run some cleanup software on your machine to help windows run a little faster. I use ccleaner (google it). Also run msconfig and de-select any apps that do not need to run at startup (in the startup tab).   ;Quote:Original post by nippysaurusAll hard disks are dying, the question is whether yours is almost dead :)Basically, slowless is not a sign that your disk is dying, but if your disk is dying then the slowness might be a sign... I know this seems contradictory, but read it carefully ;)Your best bet is to get firstly run some software to check the condition for your disk ... the vendor of your disk will have one up for download. They are all names rather vague names, so you might need to look quite hard. This utility will examine your disk and detect any detectable problems.If nothing is found, BACK UP YOUR DISK. Not every problem is detectable, and murphy's law states that your disk will fail once you have been convinced that it will not fail.After this I would run some cleanup software on your machine to help windows run a little faster. I use ccleaner (google it). Also run msconfig and de-select any apps that do not need to run at startup (in the startup tab).I agree the only thing you should be concerned is if you have a backup plan and anything you cannot afford to lose on said laptop.Google released a report on the harddrives they used and there seemed to be no sure way to tell if a drive was about to die since some that didn't even show any SMART errors died all of the sudden but if you run a diagnostic disk on drive or for sure get SMART errors at least you get a little bit of warning time to get a new drive;)And if you buy a certain brand of harddrive which unfortunately for us google wouldn't say it's more likely to fail on you!I hope it wasn't Seagate since I use them exclusively in all my systems except for the WD raptor drives I use for system boot. Oh well at least I get 5 year warranty with all my drives anyways.Google studied a hundred thousand SATA and PATA drives with between 80 and 400GB storage and 5400 to 7200rpm, and while unfortunately they didn't call out specific brands or models that had high failure rates, they did find a few interesting patterns in failing hard drives. One of those we thought was most intriguing was that drives often needed replacement for issues that SMART drive status polling didn't or couldn't determine, and 56% of failed drives did not raise any significant SMART flags (and that's interesting, of course, because SMART exists solely to survey hard drive health); other notable patterns showed that failure rates are indeed definitely correlated to drive manufacturer, model, and age; failure rates did not correspond to drive usage except in very young and old drives (i.e. heavy data "grinding" is not a significant factor in failure); and there is less correlation between drive temperature and failure rates than might have been expected, and drives that are cooled excessively actually fail more often than those running a little hot. Normally we'd recommend you go on ahead and read the document, but be ready for a seriously academic and scientific analysis