Janitor Bob Posted January 12, 2009 Report Share Posted January 12, 2009 When I turned my PC on this morning, I received a message that the hard drive was operating outside normal parameters and then it shut off....I re-started it and everything is fine.....Does this mean it is going to fail soon? ....It is 7 years old...just hoping to keep it running for another few months. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Virtual Managed Solutions Posted January 12, 2009 Report Share Posted January 12, 2009 It's sad to say, but an average life expectancy of a computer is only 3/4 years this day and age. With all the programs you can download from the web, virus' and spyware clogging systems up, new technology that comes out daily, it's hard to stay ahead of the game. Granted, there are times when it will last full beyond that, but the game you are in, you always need the best. Tax season is your life blood and you don't have the time to be down, waiting on updates, slow computers, hard drive crashes / failures. Sometimes the error message you received are just flukes, nothing is wrong. Sometimes computers have generic messages that they spit out like that when it's getting close to something bigger happening. Sometimes it really does mean the inevitable and a hard drive failure is near. It's hard to say. Action can be taken before hand to ensure recovery, but there's really nothing anyone can do to prevent it. @Janitor Bob - Check personal message for further correspondence. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Medlin Software, Dennis Posted January 12, 2009 Report Share Posted January 12, 2009 I would certainly make a backup ASAP. I too saw something about the LE of a drive being about 3 years. I typically now have two, the old one to keep copies, and the new/current one. For the old one, I turn it off through the device manager, or even physically unplug it - until needed. Drives are relatively cheap, maybe you could consider getting s spare/replacement now, and using it in your new computer as well. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wendybooth Posted January 13, 2009 Report Share Posted January 13, 2009 I had something like this happen about three years ago and the next thing I knew was that all my data disappeared. Then the hard drive died. I recommend making a backup ASAP as well. Then go to newegg.com and purchase a new backup harddrive and install on your pc as a slave and save data to the slave as well then all can be retrived very easily. That was also the year that I learned to do a backup of all ATX files at shut down of the software. I had only been doing backups about once a week. Now I do a backup each time I shut down the program. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lion EA Posted January 13, 2009 Report Share Posted January 13, 2009 Back up now. And, if you don't have an external hard drive that you back up to, get one now. Two is even better, swapping them out every other day. Or, back up to the VMS server. When your computer crashes, you will be able to grab your external back up or download from VMS and be back up and running on a new or borrowed or rented or purchased computer fast. Good luck. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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