[quote name='BigPopov']In Windows 7, "Backup and Restore" is under the control panel and it will give you the date and result of the last backup. If the last backup fails I'm pretty sure there's a red or yellow flag under "Solve PC Issues" in the taskbar.
The easiest way to look for failing hard drives is;
Control Panel - Administrative Tools - Event Viewer
Expand the "Windows Logs" tab, and go to "System." If a drive starts developing bad blocks, it will be yellow flag and the source will say "disk." You'll start seeing something to the effect of windows had detected a bad block on disk0. Even if it's just one error replace it. Bad blocks cause the PC to runs really slow when they hit.
You just have to be aware that if the disk referenced is the CD ROM drive, that's only saying the CD has a small unreadable section and not a failing drive.
Control Panel - Administrative Tools - Computer Management
Click on "Storage" and then "Disk Management" this will tell you what disk0, disk1, etc is.
Seatools for Windows is another good way to test a drive if you have suspicions.[/QUOTE]
Looks like my backup has never been set up. I usually do what crunchberry said, manual backup of my documents and some other folders. I have quite a bit of red errors in the 'windows logs tab' under 'system', the only yellow flags I see are for the "WLAN Autoconfig service has successfully stopped", a driver failed to load for usb, and some error loading a webpage. One of the red errors says "the device, \device\cdrom0, has a bad block.
'Disk management' under 'storage' shows my recovery partition as being 12 gb and having 12 gb of free space, which makes me believe my recovery drive is messed up. There's also a 'system reserved' 102 mb disk. Do you know which disk should be used by the computer for recovery? On my other computer it used to show the D drive next to my C drive under Computer, but this computer only shows a C drive.
[quote name='Clak']This is getting harder to do, but simply find a drive with the best warranty you can. It's not if a drive is going to die, but when. A lot of HDD manufacturers have been lowering their warranty period, used to be able to expect at least 3 years, not any more. So just check the warranty length for whatever drive you're looking at it. Personally I like Western Digital drives, Seagate used to be regarded as the best , but that opinion seems to have changed in the last few years.
Assuming this article is still valid
http://www.geek.com/articles/chips/seagate-western-digital-slash-hard-drive-warranties-20111219/
I'd get the WD Black brand as it still has a five year warranty accordion to that article.[/QUOTE]
Do you know what you would do if the drive failed and you had personal files on it and you have to return it back to a retail store or return it directly to the manufacturer. How could you get your files off it if it dies?