HD backup question
this isn't exactly a hardware question, but this seemed the most appropriate place to put it. about a week ago i couldn't start my computer. it would hang during startup every time. after some complications and fix-it attempts i eventually formatted and everything was okay. today the same thing happened again. i suspect there is something wrong with my hard drive, which wouldn't surprise me since it's about 4 years old and sounds like a coffee maker. does this sound like a hardware issue to anyone else? also, assuming it was a hardware issue, if i were to back up my system and registry and then restore it to a new hard drive, would it work? thanks!
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Can you give us more info? Like what kind of drive and what OS are you running etc.. What tool or utility you plan to use to backup even.
(grin) I have had folks say their drive sounds like a lot if things but "coffeemaker" was a first.. Grinder... Washing machine and many misc powertools have been given but..... "coffeemaker" (grin)?
There are utilities from many drive manufactures that can diagnose and test their own drives.
Tex
Western Digital Newer Drives... http://support.wdc.com/download/dlg/DlgDiagv504.exe
Western Digital Older drives... http://support.wdc.com/download/dlg/dlgdiag28.zip
Maxtor Diagnostics... http://downloads.maxtor.com/_files/maxtor/en_us/downloads/powermax.exe
Hitachi/Ibm... http://www.hitachigst.com/downloads/dft32_v373_b25.exe
Seagate... http://www.seagate.com/support/disc/download/seatoold_en.exe
Gobbles
thanks for all the links!
To even decide whether to try a full backup, best thing to do is run a mfr diag quicktest, and the quick test should not write to or change any data on HD-- it is a read-only and SMART query integrity test for modern drives, and form old ones repeated reads are done to check one read against another. These run from bootable floppies. So, if quicktest passes, then TRY a full backup with more confidence, but if not figure on getting what you can backed up file by file or folder by folder or some mix of that.
I hate to say this is something I can't answer, so I will say cannot answer right at all until drive has been quicktested.