My system is fine all along with Win98SE and today i did a new installation of WinXP Pro so that it can DUAL BOOT. It was a horror install as once the XP reboot itself halfway into the installation, i got this message that my hard disk is failing and ask me to make backup of all my data from the SMART feature of my BIOS. I pressed F1 to continue with the XP install and everything went smoothly.

Now my computer can dual boot BUT everytime i start my computer, i get that message from that SMART feature from BIOS.

Can someone solve the problem?

Thank you in advance.

The exact message is :-

SMART Failure Predicted on Primary Master : IBM-DTTA-351680
WARNING : Immediately back-up your data and replace your hard disk drive. A failure may be imminent.

I have just formatted the whole harddisk and the message still appears. It seems that i have to buy a new harddisk :(

Any solution will be greatly appreciated.

Hold up, don't panic yet - does anyone know if XP tries to re-capture the boot sector or stuff like that? I have several people dual-booting linux / win2k without problems, but haven't tried XP yet. Perhaps what XP announces as a cricital disk problem is just that it saw BIOS, partition, or boot sector info it wasn't expecting.

Hell I *would* panick at the SMART warning!!!!

I have lost 4 HDDs in the past 2 years to be wise

My advice:

1. Turn off your PC.
2. Go buy a HDD ASAP
3. Turn it on and be ready to copy instantly using something like Norton Ghost diskette (do not boot into Windows if you can avoid it)

After you have a copy verify your copy and use it, then you can relax and run some tests on your HDD.

You can download some test utilities from IBM's web site.

Good luck

Oh correction if you just "formatted" your hdd that means you don't actually need any data in the HDD... in this case you can skip the norton ghost thing and just run the HDD diagnostic.... if it's faulty you can even return the HDD and get a replacement - should be under warranty !

I had already backup all my data on my laptop :) I just dont want to spend money buying another HDD if possible.

I will reinstall windows and install those utilities you told me. See how it goes.

I dont think the HDD is still under warranty coz it is already 3yrs old. It is a 16GB HDD.

Keep you posted in this thread.

Uhmm probably a bit too late to say this.. but you don't need to install windows or anything to run this utility from IBM....

you just download it and it will write a bootable disk....

then you stick this diskette into your floppy and boot from it.. then it will let ya test your HDD

Latest update:

I didnt reinstall windows after reading from IBM website. I run the IBM Drive Fitness Test and it says SMART failure.

I downloaded another software recommended by IBM called ONTRACK and it says the same thing.

Both of them says the SMART status is BAD. Every other test PASSED.

I can turned off the SMART features from IBM software and the warning will not be displayed and continue to use it. But i do know that i'm risking all my data :(

Last resort will be to buy a new HDD. Do i really have to :confused: :confused: :confused:

YES get a new HDD! You don't want it to start failing after you got everything set up.

Another hard drive thread..LOL. In the other one I recommended Maxtor. It would be perfect for you because each hard drive comes with special software that will copy everything from old drive and mirror it to your new one. It works great too.

I haven't used Maxtor since.... 1996 :)
Been using Seagate since then, had 2 failures 1 still going
Used WD for a couple of months, 2 failures - replaced with fujitsu
used Fujitsu for about 2 years.. so far one failure (dropped it :D)
new drive is IBM hasn't failed (yet) :D

Oh last Maxtor I had was 500MB failed... all data can be read but can't be written :D

Friends have used Quantum for years sounds like he's doing fine with it

Originally posted by Webdude
Another hard drive thread..LOL. In the other one I recommended Maxtor. It would be perfect for you because each hard drive comes with special software that will copy everything from old drive and mirror it to your new one. It works great too.

This is not just another hard drive thread asking for which HDD is the best & etc. This is specific problem which i'm experiencing now and i'm grateful to muppie for all the info and help he rendered me.

Now it is time to look for a new HDD and i already saw a thread on that. A good site will be storagereview.com :)

Once again, thanks muppie ;)

Muppie,

Just to keep you updated. The HDD is still under warranty after i checked for it in IBM website. Now going thru the process of getting a Return Material Authorization.

Must packed the HDD in certain way if not warranty void :(

http://www.storage.ibm.com/warranty/arma25.htm

I use to work in a RMA department. Follow the directions closely and don't improvise. It will be sent back at your cost. RMA workers are very tedious and most don't like there job, so rejecting a package is the highlight of there day! :-D

Originally posted by LinuxGroup
I use to work in a RMA department. Follow the directions closely and don't improvise. It will be sent back at your cost. RMA workers are very tedious and most don't like there job, so rejecting a package is the highlight of there day! :-D

LOL LOL LOL :)

Originally posted by Webdude
I recommended Maxtor.

Stay away from Maxtor. Their drives have always been less expensive that the competition for a reason -- you get what you pay for. My first experience with Maxtor was an 800MB drive many years ago. The drive failed after 8 months. I decided to try them again about a year ago when their 60GB drive was released to see if they had improved, but alas, the 60GB drive was shipped to me with bad sectors on the drive. I've had friends go through 10 replacement drives from Maxtor, all of them going bad, before giving up. Based on experiences of myself and those I've talked to, Maxtor drives seem to fail for about 4 out of every 5 people.

My servers run Quantum SCSI drives. They seem to work quite well. I've also tried IBM's larger IDE drives for storage. They are hit and miss... I think they have bad batches of those or something, but if you get a good batch, they work well. I've actually got a Seagate 80 gig on the way that should be arriving today so I guess I'll see how reliable those drives are as well.

No matter what you decide, pay a few extra bucks to avoid Maxtor.

I have a computer with a Maxtor 30-ish GB and it has been fine. Very reliable and no problems yet. Recently I purchased a spare 20 GB 5400 Maxtor drive (it was $39, what the hey), and it had bad sectors, so a replacement just came and we'll see. If it wasn't $39 I wouldn't have gotten it...