Fix SMART Failure Predicted on Hard Disk 0, 2 or 4 Error

Tips: When you receive this warning message, the bad news is your hard disk will fail sooner or later, the good news is you can use Free Backup Software to backup it in case of data loss. If your computer will not allow you to boot into windows to create a backup, you can create a bootable media on other computers, and then use the bootable free backup software to backup your hard drive.

The Scenarios

The error message may be various based on different brands of computer and motherboards. The message you get may be "hard disk failure is imminent". Besides, although your Windows boots normally after pressing F1, you may also receive "Windows detected a hard disk problem" pop-up warning several minutes later after the start-up was finished loading.

What is SMART?

Before fix the error message, you may ask what SMART is. All modern hard drives (HDD) and solid-state drives (SSD) use SMART (Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology) which is a self-diagnostic utility that is built into the hard disk to continuously monitors drive condition such as performance and error rates, and reports the results to system.

The SMART uses a technology known as predictive failure analysis to tell you a failure on hard disk is imminent, not an actual failure. The hard disk in your computer right now is not yet dead, but will be soon. It’s mostly unpredictable, could be in one week, or could be in one year. Who knows? Therefore, it is best to repair the house before it rains, just in case the hard disk failure does occur.

How to Fix SMART Hard Disk Failure?

A SMART failure predicted warning may appear for a number of reasons. For example, excessive bad sectors, shock which most likely happens on a laptop if you change its position frequently, overheating, not defragmenting if your disk is almost full, wrong shutdown, etc. You can try the following fixes and check if the SMART hard disk error will appear or not.

Fix #1: Check and Fix Bad Sectors

Run CHKDSK on all partitions of the hard disk and try to fix found issues.

Click "Start" -> "Computer" in Windows 7 or "File Explore" in Windows 10. Right click on any one partition on the hard disk with SMART error. Select "Properties" -> "Tools" and hit "Check now" under the "Error-checking". Enable the "Automatically fix file system errors" and "Scan for and attempt recovery or bad sectors" options by checking the boxes before them and click on "Start" to begin the process.

If you check the partition that contains your Windows installation, you will be prompted to schedule disk check after restart. If you don’t want to schedule or check all partitions one by one, you can use free partition manager - Qiling Disk Master Standard to check partition and disk surface test.

Fix #2: Decrease Disk's Temperature

It is common that a SMART warning is according to excessive heat, and can sometimes be repaired by improving ventilation. First, check to see if your computer has adequate ventilation and that all fans are in good working state. If you find and fix a ventilation problem and the average temperature falls to a normal range, then the SMART error may never appear.

Fix #3: Defragment Disk

Click "Start" button. In the search box, type "Disk Defragmenter" and then select "Disk Defragmenter" in the list of results. Select the drive you want to defragment and click "Defragment Disk".

If you have tried all the workarounds above but the error message has not yet been fixed. Maybe the SMART hard disk error is caused by physical factors. If it's physical, you can't do anything physically to repair it but follow the warning: immediately backup your data and replace your hard disk drive.

The Alternative Fix - Backup Your Data Immediately

Actually, no matter whether you have received "SMART Failure Predicted on Hard Disk" error or not, backing up your hard disk regularly is the best way to prevent hard disk failure.

To backup hard disk, free backup software like Qiling Disk Master Standard is highly recommended. It is very easy-to-use yet feature-rich and supports a large range of disk types such as MBR disk, GPT/UEFI disk, dynamic disk, hardware RAID, SSD, etc. The key features include system backup, disk backup, file backup, incremental/differential backup, automatic backup, dissimilar hardware restore, disk clone and so on.

Before backing up a hard disk:

• Download and install Qiling Disk Master on your computer. It fully supports all Windows PC operating systems including Windows 11, Windows 10, Windows 8.1/8, Windows 7, Vista and XP (all editions, 32/64bit).

• Free Download
• Windows 11/10/8.1/8/7, 100% Secure

• Prepare an external hard drive which will be used to store disk backup image file, and make sure it can be recognized. Qiling Disk Master supports backup to external hard drives, USB flash drives, NAS devices and Network shared folders.

Step 1: Launch Qiling Disk Master. Click on "Disk Backup" under "Backup" table.

Step 2: "Task Name" can be modified as you want, and then click "Disk" to select the hard disk with SMART error.

Step 3. Also, select a location to save disk backup image file.

Tips:

• You also can click "Backup Options" to configure the task such as compression, splitting, VSS, etc.
• To backup a hard disk regularly, you can enable "Schedule" option by checking the box before it to create an automatic backup such as daily, weekly, and monthly.

Step 4: After the hard disk needs to be backed up and the location where to store image file have been selected, click "Proceed".

Tips: If you want to protect unlimited computers within your company, you can pick Qiling Disk Master Technician. With the inbuilt Qiling Image Deploy tool, you are also allowed to deploy/restore system image file on server-side computer to multiple client-side computers over network.

Now you have your hard disk protected. If someday SMART failure predicted becomes true, you can buy a new hard disk and replace the failed one by reomving it from your computer. And then, use Qiling Disk Master to create a bootable media and restore backup image to new hard disk.

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