[SagaGSR]

Hi guys. I recently had a malware problem on which Rorschach112 was very helpful. However, the same time i discovered the malware problem was the same time I got this Smart failure warning when trying to boot up.

I was told by Rorschach to come to this forum. It reads:

SMART Failure predicted on hard disk2: st8120821as(s1)
Warning: Immediately back up your data and replace your hard disk drive. A failure may be imminent
Press F1 to continue.

I am on an HP laptop and don't have a 2nd hard disk. However, my hd is partitioned into 2 drives and the 2nd drive (D:) is the recovery drive which was set up from the factory at HP.

So the warning it seems is that SMART is detecting an imminent failure on my recovery (D:) drive. Does this my my C: drive is in danger too? Is this in relation to the malware problem i encountered or was it all a coincidence?

Thanks for your help!

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Before anything else backup your data to avoid losing it. From what I read, false SMART alarms are quite rare, therefore yours should be taken seriously.

I would try to disable SMART in the BIOS, reboot to windows and then re-enable SMART in the BIOS and reboot. If the alarm shows again, then I would replace the hard disk.

[The Skeptic]

Before anything else backup your data to avoid losing it. From what I read, false SMART alarms are quite rare, therefore yours should be taken seriously.

I would try to disable SMART in the BIOS, reboot to windows and then re-enable SMART in the BIOS and reboot. If the alarm shows again, then I would replace the hard disk.

[Neil Jones]

SMART warnings are only guidelines. You may find the drive will last ten minutes or another two years or longer. Realistically you should either replace it now or take frequent backups of that drive so you have everything on it when the inevitable comes.

[Ztruker]

Something else to think about. If you lose the hard drive, you also lose your ability to reload your computer when you put in a new hard drive.

Were I you, I would buy a new drive then clone the existing drive so you have not only your XP partition but also your recovery partition. Most OEMs also provide the ability for you to make recovery CDs to handle cases like this. Does yours and if so, have you done it? If not, now would be a very good time to do so.

Mount the new drive as a slave, then use the CD that comes with it to clone the old to the new.

Swap the drives then format the old one and use it for storing temporary data, also move your swap file (page file) to it for improved performance.