I’ve been there. Both with HDDs and SSDs! The wait times and programs not responding on the hard drives were SO BAD and annoying, and with the SSDs stuff wouldn’t load at all. My failing SSD would try to update windows, then fail, and boot up saying “update failed to install”, then after a while it would blue screen, and then right after I backed up everything I could from it, it died! 😅
I was running a Debian install on a hard drive I didn't know was dying. The whole thing was e weirdly insidious. Writes would appear to be successful, but on a second check the files would fail reading halfway through. Oh, and the bad sectors kinda just... Spread at random. No rhyme or reason! Eventually it corrupted firefox, at which point I already knew the drive was EOL. Ended up installing a sacrificial install of Windows XP TI's stupid calculator emulator.
> defrags a dying disk If you have this HDD error, *dont ever do that.* Save your files first. You might move important files (both important for you or for the OS) into a bad sector and destroy your files and even cause the OS to be unbootable. Here's what to do: 1- backup your files first 2- if you really, really want to still use that windows install, install minitool partition wizard version 10.0 (must be 10.0, some settings are unavaliable for free users past that version) 3- do a surface test for the disk. 4- move/resize everything important off from the damaged area. 5- buy an ssd and move your OS install off from your dying HDD to you brand new SSD. You can do all that via minitool partition wizard 10, free version.
More than that - Those Toshiba 2.5" HDDs have a really nasty way to die. It starts from rather innocent error reading one file. You'll be like okay, one or a few bad blocks, maybe i did hit the drive while it was running. And it will be like that for a few hours. And then suddenly your system crashes and no longer boots, you boot from USB drive and run any software that can do a surface scan and end with a checkerboard pattern of bad blocks. It happens because the heads suddenly failed. And you end with recovering maybe 20Gb out of 1-2Tb. So turn your PC off, boot from external drive, make a backup before doing anything else if there's something important on that laptop. And TBH any disks with bad blocks can be used only as "floppies" to copy something like music or pictures to another PC or again for music or video in a media player. Not in computer you can use for doing important job.
Today I would replace HDD with SSD even if HDD is in good condition in laptop before even turning it on. I'm not a fan of having HDD in laptop, they are too fragile for that there.
If there are slots for 2 Hdd or an m.2 + HDD, I’ll instead just put an ssd as boot drive and a hard drive for mass storage for stuff like games or media. Obviously backup the important stuff but this does allow having more storage for cheap while not being awfully slow. SSDs are great if you can afford them.
SSD if they fail give you less warning before failure from what I understand, but I back mine up to a ZFS enterprise hdd mirrored array in the NAS anyhow.
That sticker at 0:37 was on pretty much every business Toshiba laptop from that time period. I'm pretty sure it's a Chinese regulation approval sticker although I could be wrong
Reminds me of a story my dad told me, they had a company Thinkpad with a dying hard drive, and the repair person that showed up (I don’t know if they were from Lenovo or still IBM) said, “well technically the drive still works, so I’m not sure if would be covered under warranty and repair”, then proceeded to smack the hard drive on it he table a few times and said “okay, now it should be covered”
over the years especially in the early 2010s I used the freezing trick to get a hard drive back to life enough for one last read to recover data it was quite a good way to get one last ready out of a drive but obviously not one that had been opened.
I had a few of those messages back in the day... absolutely scared the crap out of me, because I was never sure if I could back up the data in time before it went kaput!! 🤣 I think I might have a nightmare or 2 tonight... thanks Mate! 😂
I wish you actually checked the SMART of the drive to see why it reported imminent failure before killing it off entirely. The most likely reason is that it had many pending or reallocated sectors possibly caused by another physical impact while it was running in the past.
I've heard over the years that defragging a drive on its last legs can also push the hard drive to its demise. Defragging, if there's a lot of gaps really gives a mechanical drive a workout. I've got a maybe 2012? Toshiba that I changed out the drive for a SSD. It sped it up. Biggest issue is the on/off button. It's a lottery. Looked for RUclips vids on that. Saw a couple of vids that pulled the button off and to use wadded up aluminum foil to short the contacts. I really need to dump it or play with it, with a Linux Distro. I turn it on 4-5 times a year at best.
Good Stuff! I had an 8TB WD external drive that was half full conk out on me. Naturally, I went bananas. Weeks later, after pricing data recovery centers I was quoted an $1100 price to recover everything. Naturally, I went even MORE bananas. One day, out of despair, I plugged in the drive and turned it UPSIDE DOWN................AND IT WORKED! I touched NOTHING, and spent 4 nervous hours copying everything off of the drive. Then, about Two months ago, I was in goodwill and came across a Sabrent SATA HDD flat docking station with everything in the box for $6. Fate?............Who cares! I would have spent $150 for it. Anyway, I now use TWO WD 12TB drives that are BOTH half-Full. I'm Praying, but i'm READY.
I once had a failing SSD. Yes! SSD. Those can fail too (sadly). It did not warned me about an ssd failure. When i got my laptop, it booted into the unlock screen, but could not get throught. (It would not show the "enter pin code") And after, it went into recovery mode, and could not get out. I thought "someone must have deleted system32 before tossing the laptop out", so i reinstalled Windows 10 on it, and worked for a while. After it made some questionable things, like desktop items moving away, volume button not dissapearing, camera not turning on and many more. Aftet that, i got the "we could not log into windows" error. Had to watch a lot of tutorial to fix it. That error made all of my data go dissapear, but it did not delete the data from the "recycle bin"💀 i was a bit nuts, so i bought an used HDD, and i was using it until i had enough money to buy an SSD.
I had so many uncountable harddisk failures in the 2010s. I switched from WD Failing within half a year to Toshiba drives, which kept 3 years. Now I have SSDs. No more problems.
What a great video! Isn’t it amazing these drives ever worked at all what with how intricate they are and how susceptible they are to vibration yet they can sit spinning undisturbed for years in a dusty old Dell often without issues! I am glad we now have SSDs though! 😅
I'm old and retired. Software engineer (Prefer the tag Programmer). First 20+ years was with NCR Mainframes. They had 658 drives. I believe 80 MB. Removable and the size of a large birthday cake. The heads would come out of the player like a vinyl record player. When those heads touched the drive platters you could hear the destruction a mile away. The player *can't think of a better name* would be out of commission for awhile. With the mainframes (we had 3), included in the purchase price was 2 NCR employees with their own work room. It could take them all day getting the unit back in service.
Sometimes an HDD gives bad SMART data, doing a full Slow Format, writing 0s on the platters fix the error. I have a 16GB IDE HDD from 2001 with more then 20k hours on it, over 7000 spin ups, still works perfectly.
That new SSD which is M.2 doesn't have any mechanical moving parts that a hard disk has which is why it is less likely to fail. They read/write in memory. That Smart feature can warn you that your hard drive will be failing soon. It can be turned on/off in the BIOS
Windows kinda reads SMART data from the hdd. Hdtune 2.55 free will show blocks in red during error scan and/or items in red in the Health tab. You probably murdered that drive with no reason. If the reallocated sector count has red line, you could probably low level format the drive and it would be back to normal... or at least Windows wouldn't bug again because Windows is now gone.
I had issues back in 2019 when my dad has 2 ASUS laptops with Failing HDDs, thankfully it can be replaced with SSD for better performance and never fail again. (Although trimming is possible every week)
I have actually had success reviving a hard drive by opening it myself, and it worked long enough to get the data off of it. Also I use an optane SSD for ZFS slog and it works fine. The insane write endurance makes it a good fit
little tip.... if this occurs on a desktop(I guess similar can apply with laptops but less common), consider replacing your power supply too(can also be sata cables but I've seen it less)...... the error typically is based on the SMART data, and the smart data is a guestimate that can be thrown off by any electronic issues(bad caps, bad psu, bad cables) with the computer.... if you suspect the drive isn't the direct issue it's possible to run MHDD erase wait and scan, this would give a better reference point to the health of the drive and even sometime clear it out..... noting typically I would still not fully trust drive the drive, but when on a tight budget
most modern drives have accelerometers in them that immediately park the heads as soon as it detects any movement. they also park when unplugged automatically. I've also have had at least 4 toshiba drives fail on me. they seem to be particularly garbage.
I used those Optane drives as a Windows installation flash drive. So much faster than a normal USB flash disk. I have 3 units of 16GB for W10, W11 and MacOS. Enclosure is a cheap brand less M.2 SATA to USB 3.0 type bought from AliExpress.
I've had a similar issue like that with a ThinkPad T420s that I bought in excellent condition. The SSD was new, so I'm guessing it was an issue during shipping..
Psivevri i think it came from electronic recycling australia? My pc is very crappy Specs i3 10100F GT 730 Ddr3 16GB DDR4 120GB SSD 1TB HDD SHOULD I buy RX 7700 XT or sell my gt 730? And buy RTX 5090 And keep my cpu
i use the more common m.2 boot drive and then a massive mechanical hdd or two for storage.. i need to either quit buying steam games or get a bigger drive soon.. 8tb drive about half full of just my game library. would be neat to see a follow up video of what this laptop could do with an ssd installed/how new of a windows os it can handle
Interesting, i did have a hard disk failure and it was on a machine running windows 7, yet i dont remember ever seeing this error- although it was a gaming laptop in RAID0 and some other error appeared in the system tray from some intel software i think? Being a teenager, i just ignored it as the computer still worked- right up until it didnt anymore. I lost a lot of stuff...
Fun fact windows saying HDD failure is just based off smart saying "BAD" due to reallocated sectors or such. If windows 7 was with my 3TB WD30PURX it would report a million times a second. Also 1.2m seems to be the death height as I dropped a HTS545050B7E660 from higher than that and it died, but my other HTS545050A7E380 dropped by a baby below that and it lives. I also have a dead Toshiba drive
Hi Psivevri! I'm a junior high school student from Taiwan. I'm watching your video about 3 years. And 0:37 is a China network access permit sticker. Our 2010's electronic products all have those stickers.Because it was imported from China. Wish this message will help you. Have a good day! :D
i was JUST about to say the exact same thing... i am a Spanish man that studies in China, and a lot of their older electronics have that stamp. my Galaxy Note3 (model no. SM-N9008V running LineageOS 18.1) has a very similar stamp from a carrier called CMCC (China Mobile CC)
0:36 my old satelite has this sticker and it is the same looking needs to be wi-fi thing also my toshiba hd fell frrrom about a meter flat on the sticker and still works windows repai just fixed it
my moms laptop had important files but even before knowing that the ssd is falling i mange to transfer the files to her drive but my mom got mad at me still the laptop is still broken
I’ve been there. Both with HDDs and SSDs! The wait times and programs not responding on the hard drives were SO BAD and annoying, and with the SSDs stuff wouldn’t load at all. My failing SSD would try to update windows, then fail, and boot up saying “update failed to install”, then after a while it would blue screen, and then right after I backed up everything I could from it, it died! 😅
You were very lucky to be able to back it up
I was running a Debian install on a hard drive I didn't know was dying.
The whole thing was e
weirdly insidious. Writes would appear to be successful, but on a second check the files would fail reading halfway through.
Oh, and the bad sectors kinda just... Spread at random. No rhyme or reason!
Eventually it corrupted firefox, at which point I already knew the drive was EOL.
Ended up installing a sacrificial install of Windows XP TI's stupid calculator emulator.
> defrags a dying disk
If you have this HDD error, *dont ever do that.* Save your files first. You might move important files (both important for you or for the OS) into a bad sector and destroy your files and even cause the OS to be unbootable.
Here's what to do:
1- backup your files first
2- if you really, really want to still use that windows install, install minitool partition wizard version 10.0 (must be 10.0, some settings are unavaliable for free users past that version)
3- do a surface test for the disk.
4- move/resize everything important off from the damaged area.
5- buy an ssd and move your OS install off from your dying HDD to you brand new SSD.
You can do all that via minitool partition wizard 10, free version.
lol yea but this is a test to see what can kill it tbf
More than that - Those Toshiba 2.5" HDDs have a really nasty way to die. It starts from rather innocent error reading one file. You'll be like okay, one or a few bad blocks, maybe i did hit the drive while it was running. And it will be like that for a few hours. And then suddenly your system crashes and no longer boots, you boot from USB drive and run any software that can do a surface scan and end with a checkerboard pattern of bad blocks. It happens because the heads suddenly failed. And you end with recovering maybe 20Gb out of 1-2Tb. So turn your PC off, boot from external drive, make a backup before doing anything else if there's something important on that laptop. And TBH any disks with bad blocks can be used only as "floppies" to copy something like music or pictures to another PC or again for music or video in a media player. Not in computer you can use for doing important job.
Today I would replace HDD with SSD even if HDD is in good condition in laptop before even turning it on. I'm not a fan of having HDD in laptop, they are too fragile for that there.
True!!!
If there are slots for 2 Hdd or an m.2 + HDD, I’ll instead just put an ssd as boot drive and a hard drive for mass storage for stuff like games or media.
Obviously backup the important stuff but this does allow having more storage for cheap while not being awfully slow. SSDs are great if you can afford them.
SSD if they fail give you less warning before failure from what I understand, but I back mine up to a ZFS enterprise hdd mirrored array in the NAS anyhow.
That sticker at 0:37 was on pretty much every business Toshiba laptop from that time period. I'm pretty sure it's a Chinese regulation approval sticker although I could be wrong
using google translate on the chinese words shows the result as network acess permission, so its like some wireless approval sticker
From The Chinese， this will come with almost every mobile phone.
never faced that windows error, Seagate always ensured the disk outright dying was always a surprise :)
Reminds me of a story my dad told me, they had a company Thinkpad with a dying hard drive, and the repair person that showed up (I don’t know if they were from Lenovo or still IBM) said, “well technically the drive still works, so I’m not sure if would be covered under warranty and repair”, then proceeded to smack the hard drive on it he table a few times and said “okay, now it should be covered”
over the years especially in the early 2010s I used the freezing trick to get a hard drive back to life enough for one last read to recover data it was quite a good way to get one last ready out of a drive but obviously not one that had been opened.
You are incredible, keep making videos!
why is there a bot in a tech channel?
@@USER9646_YT because they know some of us are desperate
If you are using HDD right now, transfer the data to an SSD. SSDs are gonna work perfectly if its even dropped, it is also faster.
I thought it's called *hard drive*
it was called a soft drive before it met me
same thing, they're synonyms
Both are correct terms, but I will change the title to include the word “hard drive” instead :)
I had a few of those messages back in the day... absolutely scared the crap out of me, because I was never sure if I could back up the data in time before it went kaput!! 🤣 I think I might have a nightmare or 2 tonight... thanks Mate! 😂
Keep your Spinrite and a backup handy !
Why you don't use Hard Disk Sentinel that software can detect hard disk health
I wish you actually checked the SMART of the drive to see why it reported imminent failure before killing it off entirely. The most likely reason is that it had many pending or reallocated sectors possibly caused by another physical impact while it was running in the past.
6:31 That looks so satisfactory! :3
I've heard over the years that defragging a drive on its last legs can also push the hard drive to its demise. Defragging, if there's a lot of gaps really gives a mechanical drive a workout. I've got a maybe 2012? Toshiba that I changed out the drive for a SSD. It sped it up. Biggest issue is the on/off button. It's a lottery. Looked for RUclips vids on that. Saw a couple of vids that pulled the button off and to use wadded up aluminum foil to short the contacts. I really need to dump it or play with it, with a Linux Distro. I turn it on 4-5 times a year at best.
Good Stuff!
I had an 8TB WD external drive that was half full conk out on me.
Naturally, I went bananas.
Weeks later, after pricing data recovery centers I was quoted an $1100 price to recover everything.
Naturally, I went even MORE bananas.
One day, out of despair, I plugged in the drive and turned it UPSIDE DOWN................AND IT WORKED!
I touched NOTHING, and spent 4 nervous hours copying everything off of the drive.
Then, about Two months ago, I was in goodwill and came across a Sabrent SATA HDD flat docking station with everything in the box for $6.
Fate?............Who cares! I would have spent $150 for it.
Anyway, I now use TWO WD 12TB drives that are BOTH half-Full.
I'm Praying, but i'm READY.
You could do a RAID 1 mirror with 2 hdd although good to have separate boxes for an actual backup also.
I once had a failing SSD. Yes! SSD. Those can fail too (sadly). It did not warned me about an ssd failure.
When i got my laptop, it booted into the unlock screen, but could not get throught. (It would not show the "enter pin code")
And after, it went into recovery mode, and could not get out. I thought "someone must have deleted system32 before tossing the laptop out", so i reinstalled Windows 10 on it, and worked for a while.
After it made some questionable things, like desktop items moving away, volume button not dissapearing, camera not turning on and many more.
Aftet that, i got the "we could not log into windows" error. Had to watch a lot of tutorial to fix it. That error made all of my data go dissapear, but it did not delete the data from the "recycle bin"💀
i was a bit nuts, so i bought an used HDD, and i was using it until i had enough money to buy an SSD.
I had so many uncountable harddisk failures in the 2010s. I switched from WD Failing within half a year to Toshiba drives, which kept 3 years. Now I have SSDs. No more problems.
What a great video! Isn’t it amazing these drives ever worked at all what with how intricate they are and how susceptible they are to vibration yet they can sit spinning undisturbed for years in a dusty old Dell often without issues! I am glad we now have SSDs though! 😅
I'm old and retired. Software engineer (Prefer the tag Programmer). First 20+ years was with NCR Mainframes. They had 658 drives. I believe 80 MB. Removable and the size of a large birthday cake. The heads would come out of the player like a vinyl record player. When those heads touched the drive platters you could hear the destruction a mile away. The player *can't think of a better name* would be out of commission for awhile. With the mainframes (we had 3), included in the purchase price was 2 NCR employees with their own work room. It could take them all day getting the unit back in service.
Sometimes an HDD gives bad SMART data, doing a full Slow Format, writing 0s on the platters fix the error. I have a 16GB IDE HDD from 2001 with more then 20k hours on it, over 7000 spin ups, still works perfectly.
bro wheres the ssd install and timing the bootup? heh
That new SSD which is M.2 doesn't have any mechanical moving parts that a hard disk has which is why it is less likely to fail. They read/write in memory. That Smart feature can warn you that your hard drive will be failing soon. It can be turned on/off in the BIOS
Great laptop great man well done❤
Windows kinda reads SMART data from the hdd. Hdtune 2.55 free will show blocks in red during error scan and/or items in red in the Health tab.
You probably murdered that drive with no reason. If the reallocated sector count has red line, you could probably low level format the drive and it would be back to normal... or at least Windows wouldn't bug again because Windows is now gone.
I had issues back in 2019 when my dad has 2 ASUS laptops with Failing HDDs, thankfully it can be replaced with SSD for better performance and never fail again. (Although trimming is possible every week)
I'm early! I found your channel a few weeks ago and have just been absolutely smashing through your video catalogue. Keep up the great work :)
Bro became jerry rig everything😂
as somebody who has lost many hard drives, this hurts
I have actually had success reviving a hard drive by opening it myself, and it worked long enough to get the data off of it. Also I use an optane SSD for ZFS slog and it works fine. The insane write endurance makes it a good fit
I had one of these for many years, updated to and SSD and my grandfarther used it for a number more really good machine and great memories
little tip.... if this occurs on a desktop(I guess similar can apply with laptops but less common), consider replacing your power supply too(can also be sata cables but I've seen it less)...... the error typically is based on the SMART data, and the smart data is a guestimate that can be thrown off by any electronic issues(bad caps, bad psu, bad cables) with the computer.... if you suspect the drive isn't the direct issue it's possible to run MHDD erase wait and scan, this would give a better reference point to the health of the drive and even sometime clear it out..... noting typically I would still not fully trust drive the drive, but when on a tight budget
Optane cache video would be sick would love to see if it works on your classic machines
most modern drives have accelerometers in them that immediately park the heads as soon as it detects any movement. they also park when unplugged automatically.
I've also have had at least 4 toshiba drives fail on me. they seem to be particularly garbage.
love your vids
again, you never dissapoint with the eucaliptus oil
failing hdd can go on for quite some time, just make certain you back up everything before it completely dies
I was a computer tech at Staples, and I have seen HDDs die many times.
I think I actually saw this warning in-person when I was using Windows 8.1 on my first laptop, the Dell Latitude D630.
After years of I.T, the drops to the HDD caused various flinches and strange noises be manifested by me.
Keep it up! :)
I remember this laptop from an older video!
im glad we have ssd's, more expensive, but faster and a lot more reliable.
I used those Optane drives as a Windows installation flash drive. So much faster than a normal USB flash disk. I have 3 units of 16GB for W10, W11 and MacOS. Enclosure is a cheap brand less M.2 SATA to USB 3.0 type bought from AliExpress.
SMART detected a potential failure. Pretty common with HDDs.
1:49 hmm not great not terrible 😂
The sticker at 00:37 is actually a network access license from the Chinese government. It may mean that the laptop is actually Chinese market model
I think this is the first video when he didn't say his favourite word!!!!
Now i'm really curious about the intriguing Kartoffelpuffer recipe. What secret ingredients did the original owner use?
early guy, keep up this good work man!!
I've had a similar issue like that with a ThinkPad T420s that I bought in excellent condition. The SSD was new, so I'm guessing it was an issue during shipping..
the sign/sticker says "internet permit", it was sold in China at a point.
what's the background/intro/outro music called? nice vid btw :D
I wish you'd have tried loaded and played games before the physical tests
Psivevri i think it came from electronic recycling australia? My pc is very crappy Specs i3 10100F GT 730 Ddr3 16GB DDR4 120GB SSD 1TB HDD SHOULD I buy RX 7700 XT or sell my gt 730? And buy RTX 5090 And keep my cpu
Intel i3 10100f with a rtx 5090 is a very very massive bottleneck
Buy 6700xt
He’s back.😊
i have a failing hdd for the last 7 years , still works fine
Better back it up, don't rely on it for your tasks.
i use the more common m.2 boot drive and then a massive mechanical hdd or two for storage.. i need to either quit buying steam games or get a bigger drive soon.. 8tb drive about half full of just my game library.
would be neat to see a follow up video of what this laptop could do with an ssd installed/how new of a windows os it can handle
Interesting, i did have a hard disk failure and it was on a machine running windows 7, yet i dont remember ever seeing this error- although it was a gaming laptop in RAID0 and some other error appeared in the system tray from some intel software i think? Being a teenager, i just ignored it as the computer still worked- right up until it didnt anymore. I lost a lot of stuff...
Hey Nathan, will you do a video on that laptop again ?
Fun fact windows saying HDD failure is just based off smart saying "BAD" due to reallocated sectors or such.
If windows 7 was with my 3TB WD30PURX it would report a million times a second. Also 1.2m seems to be the death height as I dropped a HTS545050B7E660 from higher than that and it died, but my other HTS545050A7E380 dropped by a baby below that and it lives.
I also have a dead Toshiba drive
Would have been interesting to know what the acutal SMART issue was that it was warning you about.
Hi Psivevri! I'm a junior high school student from Taiwan. I'm watching your video about 3 years. And 0:37 is a China network access permit sticker. Our 2010's electronic products all have those stickers.Because it was imported from China. Wish this message will help you. Have a good day! :D
i was JUST about to say the exact same thing... i am a Spanish man that studies in China, and a lot of their older electronics have that stamp. my Galaxy Note3 (model no. SM-N9008V running LineageOS 18.1) has a very similar stamp from a carrier called CMCC (China Mobile CC)
@ThosePixelsTho-sx9mg Yes. China products all have those stickers.
Toshiba. Still sad they shutdown
OMG I got the same Toshiba Tecra laptop
Been there done that, both with HDDs and SSDs
0:36 my old satelite has this sticker and it is the same looking needs to be wi-fi thing also my toshiba hd fell frrrom about a meter flat on the sticker and still works windows repai just fixed it
Drives have a lifespan of ahout 7 years
my moms laptop had important files but even before knowing that the ssd is falling i mange to transfer the files to her drive but my mom got mad at me still the laptop is still broken
I seen intel optane in HP prodesk! but they are not great for windows 11
bruh u killed the drive
Where's the eucalyptus oil?
In my experience SSD die so fragile than my HDD since 2019 still working 😢
When You Fix Them, What Do You Do With Them After-?
Great effort their mate keep up the good work.
Catch up with you again on the next video.
Cheers mate from William.
fallout reference spotted 👀
Yay, got like No. 1000 :)
Where are all the Psivewri fans
👇
Bot
@ nahh bruh
Im real dude
Neato!
Yoo
Bot
early