K Boot failure, insert system disk

[LwnmwnMan2]

For about a month now, I'll head down to my office (downstairs) to the computer that I have set up for the server for my network.

Once / week or so, I'll get the message in the subject line.

I'll press enter, and everything works as normal. If not, I'll reset the power, and I get another message with a "warning" flashing next to it.

The first 3 letters aren't on the screen for the first word, but the last are RT then "failure predicted on Primary Master : Maxtor blah blah blah.....

Now, I know that the Maxtor is my hard drive.

The question that I have, and I've run both my Norton scan and Ad-Aware scans, both are saying the computer is clean, but I should probably be putting a new hard drive in?? Or is there another solution here that I don't know??

[Shane]

I would get it backed up & replaced asap. You can try running CHKDSK to repair the bad clusters, but once they're bad usually more are soon to follow.

"Smart failure predicted on primary master. WARNING: Immediately back-up your data and replace your hard disk drive. A failure may be imminent"

Smart reporting of errors is deliberately "dumbed down" so as to not make any particular manufacturer's drive look bad (minor errors are not reported), so when you DO get reports of errors, it almost always means you hard drive IS starting to fail.

You can turn off Smart reporting in most bioses, but that doesn't make the problem go away - the errors are still being recorded on the hard drive. The whole purpose of Smart is to give you some time to rescue what data you can befire the drive fails completely.

Shane

[eurolarva]

What operating system are you running and what type of processor?

[DTro]

yep, looks like your HDD is about to go. Back up everything you don't want vaporized ASAP.

Good Luck