Hello, I am using: Windows 7 Ultimate, Firefox, DAZ Loader I was reading the same internet sites, that I read every morning, when a pop up appeared (looking like a regular Windows 7 pop-up) telling me, that my hard disc is about to fail. I did a re-start and instead of windows 7 this appeared: American Megatrends Cache L1 Size: 64 kb, Cache L2 Size : 3072 kb DDR2 Memory Clock: 667 MHZ, Single Channel Mode NVMM ROM Version: 4.091.46 Initializing USB Controllers .. Done 2048MB OK (256MB Shared memory Size used) USB Devices: 2 Keyboards, 1 Mouse, 5 Storage Devices Auto-Dtecting AHCI Port 0 .. IDE Hard Disc Autodetecting AHCI Port 1 .. ATAPI CD_ROM AHCI Port 1 ST3320418AS CC44 S.M.A.R.T. Capable and Status BAD AHCI Port 2 HL-DT-ST DVDRAM GH41N MN01 Auto-Detecting USB Mass Storage Devices Device 1 Generic Compac HiSpeed Device 2 Generic SM/xD Picture HiSpeed Device 3 Generic SD/MMC HiSpeed Device 4 Generic MS/MS-Pro/HG HiSpeed Device 5 Generic SD/MMC/MS/MSP HiSpeed 5 USB mass storage Devices found and configured AHCI PORT 1 Device Error Press F1 to Resume I have disconnected the internet, and not done anything further, the above is still on the screen I am using another computer to write this, How should I proceed? One more information: About a week ago I un-installed Ubuntu from a separate partition, using first easyBCD to get rid off GRUB and re-install the Windows 7 Boot Manager. Then I used the Partition Wizzard Boot Disc 7.1 to fuse the old partitions. And it has worked until this morning without any hitch at all.... Thank you.
Sadly if the smart fails it means end of life for the drive. You could use it with that check disabled but at some point it will just stop working completely. I personally would not recommend trying to format/use the drive as you found out it will have a performance hit and faults/freezes, plus there could be bad sectors appearing. It may do for a short while but a new drive will be required soon. Regarding a new drive, any Sata type should work, it depends really on cost (as they are expensive at moment), capacity and speed. Solid State Drives are still a bit expensive but they will really work best on a motherboard with a sata 6gb port, they run a bit slower on older ports. Brands of hard drives is a personal choice, WDigital are ok, Maxtor/Hitachi (which i think is part of Seagate), and of course Seagate. The latter does have a decent life span (usually!). At least you can get into the drive to get most of your data off, sometimes they will just give up the ghost and give you an electronic equivalent of a middle finger! If you have a replacement drive, you could try the firmware update on the shafted one and see if it fixes it, but i am sure these newer drives it won't, no harm in trying. Remember to change the smart setting in bios to enabled for the new drive! Regards, Max