HDD is about to die

I wont be able to tell which one it is because I have 2 or 3 of the same drive, is it ok to keep it plugged in once it dies though? HD Sentinel reports it has

Current health: 18 %

Hard Disk Sentinel - HDD health and temperature monitoring HITACHI HDT721010SLA360

Get the data off the drive while you can then remove it. With electronics/electro-mechanical devices one never knows what the downstream issues will be when it finally decides to die, what effect will occur during the dying process. I've tested computers, both Desktops and Notebooks, after they have failed and could never conclusively determine which did which to the other, HDD took out the motherboard or motherboard failure took out the drive.

Do the various drives have their own label/name? Should be able to get a clue from that. Also right click a drive you think is good, Properties, Tools, run error checking on those. Check the suspicious drive last 'just in case'.

When you run HDD Sentinel in the Gui in Windows on the Left panel, it shows you the status of the drive and the Drive letter of the drive. (see attached)

Hi there I'll post the bad one from HD Sentinel. It looks like I have another one starting to act up too.

The Bad one is Drive F:\ (New Volume) as shown in HD Sentinel. Backup whatever data you can off of it before it totally fails, then replace it. If the other one is in bad shape, then backup all the data on it and replace it as well.

Two thoughts for the future:
a. Use this excellent program's Alert features to get early warning:


b. Use disk imaging routinely.
- complete backup
- the process of imaging also checks the disk's integrity - if there's a CRC error, it will be flagged, so you get clear notification.

E.g. Macrium reflect (free).

I think you'll be lucky to extract data without loss in this case.

Actually I've backed up all the data on it a couple of weeks ago, so when it dies, it's just a matter of unplugging them... looking at them & determining which one died by plugging them in one at a time in a process of elimination.