Why does the SMART Short Self Text fail (for over a year)?

[paminsantafe]

HP Pavilion Tower; Windows 7 Professional. HD521-2W.  Error Message indicates a sector failure, but the harddrive continues

to function. It has the lastest BIOS ver.  Unit is out of warranty and can't really afford IT person.  Is this something to

worry about or will the harddrive continue to function and just not write to the affected sectors?

[Paul_Tikkanen]

Hi:

If you plan on continuing to use the drive, make sure you backup your data as much as you deem necessary.

One: as sectors go bad, the data on those sectors is gone. So files written to a sector that goes bad will probably be lost.

Two: You can pretty much bet on the fact that the drive will fail eventually, and it may go all at once, or a little bit at a time.

If it goes a little bit at a time, your operating system will probably no longer work one day.

The remedy is to purchase a new hard drive and reinstall Windows 7. This is probably something you can do yourself.

Just read the upgrading and servicing guide for your model which can be found on your model's support and driver page.

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/siteHome?lc=en&dlc=en&cc=us&os=228&sw_lang=&product=top

Paul

[paminsantafe]

Thanks very much for your answer.  This has been going on for a year, so I assumed it was

a false reading or confined to a sectors that wouldn't affect others. I've only experienced harddrives just failing all at once, but then maybe the ones I used to support didn't have the monthly test set up, and with extended

warranties, coporates images, and servers, it wasn't a big issue when they failed.