Windows 7 user.
Late Saturday night, my system started acting strange with no warning and I was having trouble staying connected via remote connection. After several reconnects, I got a message saying that the hard drive may be about to fail.
I started Syncback running. The remote connection quit and never returned before that could complete, but thanx to regularly Syncback, I didn't lose anything other than most recently saved images and bookmarks.
When I got home Sunday morning, my worst fear was confirmed. A message on the screen said that the hard drive was not working. I held the power button down to shut everything off, waited a few moments and restarted.
I quickly got a message saying there was a problem with the hard drive and that a test should be run on the hard drive. I got to the menu to do that and every time I'd try to run the test, I'd instantly get "failure"
My question is hardware failure or could it have been a virus? At the time of the failure, I had not installed any new programs for some time. I did try using the BarTab add-on for Firefox for awhile, but I doubt that had a virus in it. Windows Firewall was turned on and both Avast Antivirus and Windows Defender are set to automatically update as well as running weekly scans. The hard drive also did not make any unusual sounds as I attempted to run a test on it.
Thankfully, my system is still under warranty, so Compaq is sending me a replacement hard drive (there's even a chance I may end up with one that spins faster than the 5400 it came with) and a disc to reinstall my system. I even still have my slower but perfectly operational WinXP system to use until that's done.
But still, I wonder how the hell does the hard drive in a 4.5 month old system fail when it's still so new and could I have done anything to prevent it?
I also wonder why nothing like that ever happens to the computers in workplaces owned by owners to cheap to keep their systems updated resulting in the employees having to put up with old equipment that just barely works good enough that the owner doesn't want to replace it (we've all worked in places like that)