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Originally Posted by Lester
Around a month ago whenever I was to turn off my PC I heard a clicking. I figured it was my HD making this noise but I haven't heard the same noise in some time now. I downloaded seatools from seagates websites and I'm running the tests they include there.. is there another way to stress test my HD to ensure it won't fail in the near future?
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Stressing your drive only diminishes it's potential lifespan.
The only way to know if a drive will likely fail or not is to find statistics on that particular model and to see if people have issues with reliability. There was a line of Seagate drives that used a new coating on the platters that caused many of them to seize up. I am a victim of one of those drives.
A drive will fail for any variety of reasons. There are no tests or diagnostics that will tell you when and if a drive will die, just like there is no medical test to tell you if you are likely to die. You simply will die at some point.
S.M.A.R.T. is built into every drive sold these days and you might get a warning at bootup if S.M.A.R.T. anticipates a failure but studies have shown little predictive success.
Basically, the answer is no just like almost every computer technology. Harddrive testing software tests for bad sectors on the magnetic platter - those are just data errors. Harddrive failures are usually mechanical. If your instincts tell you a drive is failing, just backup to another drive. It never hurts and it almost always pays off giving the low price of storage these days.
Testing an HD for future failure?
