Hard drive dying?

Underdog

The past six or seven times I've turned on my PC, I have been told that checkdisk needs to check my hard drive for consistency. I let it run the first few times and it found no errors but it continues to happen each time I turn on the computer. Is this a sign that my hard drive is on the downturn? It's coming up on about 8 years of age as is the whole PC. I can't remember the brand exactly but it was middle of the road at the time. I'll pop the cover off and get more details over the weekend. For now, does anyone know if I should be concerned about this pattern? Thanks.

Malgaras

If you have a different hard drive to try, see if you still get the errors. Past that, it's hard to say for sure, but it's definitely a possibility. Problem is, once you know for sure, it's too late. I would at least go ahead and make a backup of everything if you haven't. Honestly, hard drives ares pretty cheap anymore so I'd go ahead and buy a new one just to be sure, but that's me.

Scooter

Could be your computer's not shutting down right, but definitely have a backup. I've got an external drive that's made sure my important stuff (mostly music and game saves...) has survived over two PC deaths now, and it's something you need to do ahead of time.

Bendery It Like Beckham

http://www.seagate.com/support/downloads/seatools/

Underdog

Ok so before I do any of those tests from seatools, it tells me I ought to back up my files which I feel is a pretty good idea. Any particular brands I should look out for when I go to pick up an external HD? I figure I'd just pick up something from Western Digital as they seem like a brand that's been around for a while.

Psychotic One

I'd check online reviews but Best Buy has a variety of External HDDs. A 1 TB drive will run you in the range of 100 bucks but you could back up pretty much everything on your computer and then some to that.

Headhunter

Back up immediately, there's no point taking the risk when external hard drives are so affordable. I recommend you back up your data in Safe Mode to be extra sure, and do not use your computer for any purpose whatsoever other than backing up your data until that is complete.

Underdog

So I've backed up my data and I have SeaTools installed. Which scan should I do?

Underdog

I think I've done all the scans possible from SeaTools and my drive passes all. It's still prompting me to run chkdsk every time I boot though. It's weird, it only asks to check one of the partitions on my HD and it's not the one I have windows installed on.

Should I just bite the bullet and reformat the whole thing and clean install?

Tofystedeth

Sometimes a virus can cause something like this. Sometimes for whatever reason the disc was flagged as dirty legitimately but the system is failing to unflag it despite it passing. You can try running a manual checkdsk with chkdsk c: /R
It'll need you to reboot, but it may actually clear that flag once it finishes.
Do you have the scanner mentioned in this MS kb article? It could also be a registry issue as mentioned in there.
This SuperUser question has an answer near the bottom where he mentions the registry key that controls that. You can try backing up your registry, then changing that key to its normal value and see if it still wants to check the drive.