My hard drive is contradicting itself. Please help me.

[aquart]

Earlier in the week, I had a million start up problems, something was trying to download with automatic download and screwing everything up so I was clicking back to a previous configuration and refusing the download...

Suddenly I get S.M.A.R.T BAD. Back up and replace. Referring to my Western Digital hard drive. Panic. Start pricing hard drives. And the hourly cost of Issa, the man my family trusts with computers.

Just so I know what to tell Issa, I run Belarc Advisor which, I now notice, says the SMART status on my hard drive is HEALTHY.

Meanwhile, though, my pc, though draggy, is starting up just fine.

So. Is my hard drive dying or just messing with me?

[Why Syzygy]

1. From what I'm reading about Belarc ..

The Belarc Advisor builds a detailed profile of your installed software and hardware, missing Microsoft hotfixes, anti-virus status, CIS (Center for Internet Security) benchmarks, and displays the results in your Web browser. All of your PC profile information is kept private on your PC and is not sent to any web server.
http://www.belarc.com/free_download.html

it doesn't appear to be a REAL security software? If I were you, I would run Malwarebytes and your anti-virus program. Also, would determine what is set to automatically download/update and disable it.

[canetoad]

2. While Belarc is a handy tool

It doesn't diagnose computer problems. May be worth printing out the results page and giving it to your tech guy to provide him with some background. My guess is Belarc is telling you that SMART is present.

Here's where I'd start Aquart:

Go to Start, Run, and type msconfig into the box, hit return.

In the last tab, marked Startup, take note of all the programs that load when you boot your computer. I'm betting that the auto downloads are among them. There probably is a lot of other shit too, that you don't require to be running in the background at all times. These can be the things slowing your computer down.

Untick them all except your antivirus and any programs that you have particularly CHOSEN to run at startup. For example 'jushed' (Java update) puts itself there without asking you, so does Adobe update, Quicktime and many others. Reboot and see how you go.

There is a bit of consensus in this group about automatic updates - most of us hate them! Personally, I like to chose what I invite into my computer and when to do it. Still, it's a good move to back your stuff up if you have any doubts about your HDD.

[aquart]

3. Thank you both.

I didn't run the Belarc to diagnose. I ran it just to have a list of what was on the pc for when I had to re-install on the new drive. I thought I had the diagnosis. That's why I was startled that its hard drive info said that SMART was listing my HD as healthy.

[struggle4progress]

4. SMART apparently can find some problems and provide some advance warning -- but

a clean bill of health via SMART doesn't mean all is swell. If you get intermittent SMART warnings, the right assumption may be that your drive is dying but SMART isn't always seeing the problem

I had a download problem when using an old drive, pulled it into an external enclosure, and started a surface scan, which found hundreds of bad sectors in the first 10% of the drive, so I replaced it. The download worked fine with a refurbished drive