Windows 10: Possible HDD imminent failure & whether or not to clone

Computer:
HP Pavilion a1600n Win10 desktop (Originally XP Media Center, upgraded to Win7, upgraded to Win10)
SAMSUNG SP2004C [Hard drive] (200.05 GB) Free space: 154.91 GB
8/30/16 during boot: Hard drive disk failure is imminent. Insert system disk & press Enter.
There isn’t a system disk.
Not that I expected it to work but I connected a Win10 USB recovery drive. Pressed enter: nothing.
Removed the Win10 USB recovery drive.
Another not expected to work item, I pressed CTRL-ALT-DEL, pressed Enter.
The computer restarted and booted into Windows without any problems and the system ran fine.
I ran Belarc and the hard drive SMART status report is Healthy.
I checked out whether or not to run error checking.
It reported you don’t need to scan this drive. We haven’t found any errors on this drive. You can still scan the drive for errors if you want.
So I left well enough alone. The computer belongs to a friend and I told him to use the computer and if the computer reports the Hard drive disk failure is imminent again even only once to call me.

I have an ST3160318AS [Hard drive] (160.04 GB) he can have.
It’s from my desktop computer with upgraded Win10 Pro on it which originally had Win7 Pro.
It ran fine - I replaced it with an SSD.

Since my friends computer is running fine again, I’d like to clone his 200 GB HDD to my 160 GB HDD if it isn’t illegal to do so. I have Belarc’s reported Win 10 key for each system.
--- If that’s possible to do, what external adapters do I need to clone to the 160 GB HDD and just keep it ready in case his hard drive does crash?
--- I plan on using MRF to do the clone.

:)

 

Is Windows 10 causing early HD failures

If you read thru the MS forums there is little, if any indication that W10 is a possible cause of HDD failure (I am not defending W10, by the way.) There are some posts claiming that their HDD,s appear to be running more frequently and causing overheating,
none of those indicated that their HHD, eventually died due to this!!!!!

There is a website called Backblaze, that do regular tests on HDD, (refer link below), they have quite a lot of info on HDD failures, but not whether it is due OS,s or what the actual causes were!

Hard Drive Failure: Analysis of 49,056 Hard Drives

A website search for HDD failures due to W10, does not support any evidence of HDD failure due to OS,s.

The only way I can think that an OS may cause a HDD failure, is if there was a setting, which would cause the HDD failure by thrashing (constant use).

Did you have any indication that the HDD,s were being over-extended, before they died?

When I was active working, I found that virtually all HDD,s I replaced was because of mechanical failure of some part of the HDD, (I will admit that was several years ago and HDD technology & reliability are much better now.)

Have you check the PC manufacturer warranty, as to what terms if any, covers HDD failure?

 

CHKDSK - an unspecified error occurred (75736e6a726e6c2e 4f6)

I've got the same thing. My hard drive got an imminent failure message about a week ago and I've been trying to clone it to the new drive for the last 3 days. It keeps failing at 98% of just the C: (OS) partition. All the other ones clone fine. I've used
CHKDSK /F and it always says my drive is fine. Today I tried using CHKDSK /R as a last resort and it started working, replacing bad clusters. Suddenly I get this same unspecified error occurred code and CHKDSK stopped.

 

"...I’d like to clone his 200 GB HDD to my 160 GB HDD..." Technically, not going to happen. Now, if you elect to make a full image of said OS partition, and said partition's used byte-space is less than 150GB, that can happen. I lopped of 10GB off the count to allow for some minor future growth.

 

"...Hard drive disk failure is imminent.." I'm probably chasing a rabbit down the wrong hole, however, I wonder if the failure is "logical", software caused, rather than hardware caused. I had a similar un-exciting "logical" failure that was remedied by copying off everything [full imaging], Un-allocating the entire HD, re-partitioning it, restoring the saved full images [of "c drive" and "d drive"].

 

I would check for bad sectors anyway, there could be some file or logical errors. Defraging the drive may also help.

 

Instead of considering cloning, I think I'll Create a Bootable USB Flash Drive to Install Windows 10 per
Create Bootable USB Flash Drive to Install Windows 10 and use it if my 160GB HDD is ever needed.
I just need to make sure though of the following
The 160GB HDD has my Win10 version on it with it's activated product key
If I do use the bootable flash drive to do a fresh install of Win10, I believe I'll be able to activate it with the activated product key that he has on his computer now.
Is that possible?

Would it be wiser to consider a fresh Win10 install onto an SSD?

 

If you don't have too much vested in installed windows, ie. irreplaceable programs etc. it would be best idea to do clean install. Fact that you already have activated windows on that HDD doesn't mean it will stay activated on another computer because activation is connected to motherboard, not HDD.
A clean install on SSD also means that you can set SATA port to AHCI mode which is very much recommended for SSDs and you would not have to worry about it later.

 

"A clean install on SSD also means that you can set SATA port to AHCI mode"
I have an SSD on my computer and went into setup looking for AHCI mode and didn't see any.
Is it because I did the regular upgrade to Win10 Pro from Win7 Pro instead of a clean install or have legacy BIOS?

 

Great idea! Best to check for both physical and software-wise possible causes. Thanks for the reminder! *Smile

 

SATA settings can be found in BIOS. May include IDE (legacy), AHCI and RAID modes.

 

I found this and will be checking it out
https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/2...tallation.html

 

It doesn't work all the time, it's best to do it before clean installation.

 

You were right Mike. I went through AHCI - Enable in Windows 8 and Windows 10 after Installation
And this is one of the times it didn’t work.

Anyway how can I do fresh install on my SDD and in the process set the SATA port to AHCI mode?
My data is saved.

I’d like to comment that even though I’m doing this on my computer I’m using it as training for when I get back to my friends computer.

 

Easy, set SATA to AHCI in BIOS before you start clean installation. During installation delete all partitions on the SSD and let windows do it's stuff. Disconnect any other drives during that time.