Win 7 HDD Failure Alert?

I have an Acer laptop about 1.5 years old. This morning I began receiving alerts that the HDD is reporting an impending failure and prompting me to start a backup process. The drive is Western Digital. Over the years I have learned to ignore many Windows suggestions and "help" as they are generally worthless. Is this something I should believe and be concerned about? I am real-time backed up with Carbonite, but of course would want to avoid the hassle of installing a new drive etc.

NOW!!
Copy all your documents on a thumb drive or CD
Copy all your pictures too!
Copy all your Browser bookmarks
Copy anything else that you can think of

Forget about JUST getting a new hard drive
Get a new [my opinion of course, a business class Dell]

The cost to rescue date from a screwed up hard drive will cost thousands

A virus could also be a possibility. But making new backups is the answer to that as well. However, before you do anything with backups, use a decent virus program to scan that. Popping a new drive into a machine is half an hour. Reloading/installing all the software is the time consuming thing. Depending on that issue will be the decision point about just tossing it and getting something new.

Sounds like a S.M.A.R.T. drive warning to me.

Strongly suggest that you follow instfixer advice. I currently have a portable HD that has lotsa pix, videos, etc on it and it started to flake a few weeks ago.... now it is unusable. I was only able to get about 1% off of it. I should have started MUCH sooner and copy the irreplaceable files first. Now I am faced with putting it in a new enclosure, trying to figure out how to coax it a bit to be recognized, scan it, etc.... any experts out there? Please PM me.

1Tb USB 2.0/3.0 drives are <$100 -- very cheap insurance as compared to the alternative (if your files are important to you).

1Tb USB 2.0/3.0 drives are <$100 -- very cheap insurance as compared to the alternative (if your files are important to you). Originally Posted by Skittlez

Just remember that when it goes down... and it will... it is a TERAbyte of information that is lost with it.

From Skittlez
""Now I am faced with putting it in a new enclosure, trying to figure out how to coax it a bit to be recognized, scan it, etc...""

Sorry dude, my hard drive was squealing and it didn't occur to me it was dying
Cost me ~$2500

IMHO, I'd first be suspect you've got malware on your laptop. Send me a PM or screen shot with the warning message. But I sure the heck wouldn't click the "backup" button until I verified the alert was genuine windows. A quick Google search of the exact message is usually all it takes.

Next, if the error is real, your best bet is to clone the drive. You want to go get a new laptop hard drive (buy the bare drive so you know the speed/capacity/warranty and make sure it'll work in your laptop) and a USB enclosure. Go home, put the drive in the enclosure and connect to your laptop. Then you want to clone the whole hard drive over to the new one. I'm pretty sure WD drives still include the utility you need so it's just point and click. Otherwise download.com should be able to provide you a source for a freeware disk clone utility (read the reviews to make sure you don't pick someone's junk.)

Next, swap out the drive in the USB enclosure for the drive in your laptop. Youtube 99% of the time has a video on how to do this for any laptop out there. If you need help, tell me the model# of your laptop. It's usually VERY easy.

But I'll bet the error is fake / malware.

IMHO, I'd first be suspect you've got malware on your laptop. Send me a PM or screen shot with the warning message. But I sure the heck wouldn't click the "backup" button until I verified the alert was genuine windows. A quick Google search of the exact message is usually all it takes.

Next, if the error is real, your best bet is to clone the drive. You want to go get a new laptop hard drive (buy the bare drive so you know the speed/capacity/warranty and make sure it'll work in your laptop) and a USB enclosure. Go home, put the drive in the enclosure and connect to your laptop. Then you want to clone the whole hard drive over to the new one. I'm pretty sure WD drives still include the utility you need so it's just point and click. Otherwise download.com should be able to provide you a source for a freeware disk clone utility (read the reviews to make sure you don't pick someone's junk.)

Next, swap out the drive in the USB enclosure for the drive in your laptop. Youtube 99% of the time has a video on how to do this for any laptop out there. If you need help, tell me the model# of your laptop. It's usually VERY easy.

But I'll bet the error is fake / malware. Originally Posted by Luv4Fun

Thanks for EVERYONE's suggestions. Bought a new drive and am waiting on delivery of drive enclosure. I am backed up with Carbonite for all critical data so if I have a failure prior to the swap it's not the best of things, but not a huge pain in the ass.

Agree that a huge number of these errors are fake.

A suggestion when these errors come up is to do some web searching based on whatever the error says. There are lots of fake "Windows Error" messages that are tied to a virus.

Good luck.

I like redundancy when backing up. Once you have your data saved to a separate drive (thumb, external usb, cloud, etc.) make an image file that can be used to restore what you had OS and all.

I like http://www.backup-utility.com/ It is simple and it is free. I liked it so well, I tried to pay them but they had no process to accept money.