TP

So I'm booting up my laptop this morning and I hear a beep and I see the following message displayed on the screen:

"Pri Master Hard Disk: S.M.A.R.T. Status BAD, Backup and Replace"

Can you explain this in plain English for me? Also, what might be the cause of this?

So, what is the life expectancy of my computer? Can I replace just the hard drive or is this my excuse to get a new laptop?

TIA

Gnowknayme

Relatively new hard drives have some new system called S.M.A.R.T. which, from what I understand, is able to detect problems with the hard drive before they become a real problem. Your drive is probably starting to take too long to spin up or something like that. You should be able to back up the drive, buy a new one to replace it, and restore everything. Now, if you want a new laptop, maybe an "accident" could be arranged.

Ag TT

Sorry to hear that. It's definitely your hard drive. You might want to reformat the hard drive first to see if the message goes away afterwards. If not, I think it's time to get a new hard drive.

FriscoTT

The error message could be a lot of things:

1) It almost sounds like a virus. - Scan your entire hard-drive using a current antivirus boot floppy.
2) The Real-Time-Clock battery could be bad such that BIOS setting are not able to be saved. - Have tech support replace RTC battery.
3) If your running windows 98 or windows 2000, run DiskCleanUP or Defrag. If your running windows NT, use CHKDSK.
4) There could be a genuine problem with the hard-disk itself. If so the problem will mostly likely get worse. Be sure that all data on the hard-drive is backed-up.

Once again, just some things to consider. For all the computer whizzes out there....no flaming!

Hope this helps!

JustJeff

Volume Header Block going bad.

Back it up, and do Norton Disk doctor on it.
OR
Get a new drive

Lone Starr (Ivan)

data, but the hard drive industry agreed that a SMART prefailure warning is justifiable warranty replacement as long as you are in your warranty period. It is usually 3-5 years.