All modern hard drives have a little built in app that many people do not know even exist. There is no direct way to see it and it often goes unnoticed for the life of your 
computer. The app is called SMART and it helps you to see if your hard drive is getting ready to fail.
Over time, all hard drive manufacturers watch to see what settings change just before the drive fails. Whenever you get a reading on a drive that says it is headed for disaster, you better back up and fast! These SMART readings can be monitored by using third party software or in some cases, it can be monitored in the computers BIOS.
In a previous article I write, I talked about how long drives could last in a busy work environment. In many cases, the life expectancy was the same as the entire computer. In other words, you could use the same drive until your main computer takes its last breath. There are various factors that can ruin a hard drive. The first, and the most unpredictable, is the sudden failure of a bearing or the platter or maybe the arm just decided it did not want to move back and forth anymore to read you data.
This type of failure cannot be predicted and why you need to back up often. The second involves a much slower process that happens over time as parts on the drive begin to wear out or sectors become corrupted on the platter. These are the changes that can be monitored using your drives SMART system.
There are various factors that the SMART system monitors. These factors can vary by manufacturer. For example, spin up time is an important factor that can point to a potential failure if the start up time goes below the threshold set by the manufacturer. This could indicate a problem with a bearing or maybe with the motor itself. In any case, any bad readings in this category should be taken seriously.
Another factor that should be looked at closely is the Reallocated Sectors Count. This shows if you have an excess amount of bad sectors on the drive. If the number is greater then 0 you might be starting to get bad sectors on your drive. A few bad sectors does not always mean imminent failure, you just need to monitor the value to see if it begins to rapidly increase.
There are several tools you can use to check the SMART status of your drive. My personal favorite is Speed Fan. Speed Fan not only is a great tool for monitoring your drives SMART status but is also great fir checking your fan speeds and the temperature of the main core of your computer. Any of these factors have the potential to lead to drive failure.
There are other tools that are built right into Windows that can sometimes give you clues on if your drive is getting ready to kick the bucket. For example, the onboard CHKDSK utility can scan your drive and seek out and repair bad sectors that are located on your drive. Like I said before, a few bad sectors are not a huge deal but if they start to multiply, you will need to change your hard drive.
Article by, Ross A Deprey from Computer Geeks Online 02/07/2014
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