Approx. 30 hours ago, I got a very disturbing message that I've never seen before about my hard disk drive, which is now approx. 8 & 1/2 yrs. old, since I got my PC in late May 2012 -
<a href="https://www.turboimagehost.com/p/61345318/Hard_drive.jpg.html" target="_blank"><img src="https://s8d1.turboimg.net/t1/61345318_Hard_drive.jpg" border="0" alt="Free Image Hosting" /></a>
Does this mean that my hard drive is finally going to crash, after all these years? If it does happen, it'll be quite the disaster for me personally, since I use my PC so much every day. I've already backed up all my personal files, which I already do regularly anyway, but any (other) advice, help, suggestions, tips, etc., would be VERY MUCH appreciated - THANKS very much.
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David K wrote:

Approx. 30 hours ago, I got a very disturbing message that I've
never seen before about my hard disk drive, which is now approx.

8 & 1/2 yrs. old, since I got my PC in late May 2012 -

<a href="https://www.turboimagehost.com/p/61345318/Hard_drive.jpg.html"

target="_blank"><img src="https://s8d1.turboimg.net/t1/61345318_Hard_drive.jpg"

border="0" alt="Free Image Hosting" /></a>

Does this mean that my hard drive is finally going to crash, after all
these years? If it does happen, it'll be quite the disaster for me personally, since I use my PC so much every day. I've already backed up
all my personal files, which I already do regularly anyway, but any
(other) advice, help, suggestions, tips, etc., would be VERY MUCH appreciated - THANKS very much.

You seem very relaxed.

You wouldn't happen to have a spare 1TB drive to swap for that
would you ?

You could clone the thing across to a second 1TB drive, if
the situation wasn't too bad.

Now you've waited until the bitter end. I expect the
SMART short test or the SMART long test internal to the drive
is failing, and that's why it's "talking to you".

This program can provide some information about the drive.

http://hdtune.com/files/hdtune_255.exe

This drive is still in fine shape and has 50000 hours on it.

https://www.turboimagehost.com/p/61351539/some-drives-are-survivors.gif.html

Replacements start at around $44 USD and up.

https://www.newegg.com/black-wd1003fzex-1tb/p/N82E16822236625

You can get free programs to clone the drive across.
If the PC has room for two drives, all that you need
is a SATA data cable and a SATA power connector inside
the PC, to support a second drive. For example, on my
Dell refurb, the machine is missing a tray for it, and
so I have to arrange mechanical support to take the
place of the missing tray.

This is what I use for backups and cloning (blue "Home Use" button).

https://www.macrium.com/reflectfree

Click the film strip with your mouse, to expand.

https://postimg.cc/image/soq5qlgrx/

If the drive is too far gone, you'll need a utility
for cloning bad hard drives. A drive which throws CRC
errors, needs multiple passes to try to get all the
sectors, followed by a bit of CHKDSK. Usually this
isn't necessary, because disks live or die and don't
stay in the vicinity of "recoverable but sick" forever.
I would use ddrescue (from gddrescue package in Ubuntu Linux)
for this, but there are likely other free ones around. I'm
not dwelling on the details, because chances are you won't
need the info. The last time I had to do this (years ago),
the drive dropped dead while I was working on it. It
was ... too funny. All you can do is wave goodbye. Of
all the hard drives I have right now, none has a CRC error,
so testing ddrescue is rather difficult at the moment.

Paul

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THANKS very much - all that was quite helpful.
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I’ve backed up all my personal files again, and I’ve already backed up my most important software programs (which I did a couple weeks ago), but the problem is that my PC runs on Windows 7, and so how can I get all those (software) programs onto a new PC that’s on Windows 10? Isn’t that going to be a major problem for me?
Any help (or just sincere attempts to help) would be tremendously appreciated - THANKS.
--- Synchronet 3.20a-Win32 NewsLink 1.114

David K wrote:

I’ve backed up all my personal files again, and I’ve already backed up
my most important software programs (which I did a couple weeks ago),
but the problem is that my PC runs on Windows 7, and so how can I get all those (software) programs onto a new PC that’s on Windows 10? Isn’t that going to be a major problem for me?

Any help (or just sincere attempts to help) would be tremendously appreciated - THANKS.

Laplink PCMover
Zinstall WinWin
EaseUS Todo PCTrans

Some things are harder than others, to do.

It would work best, if going from a 32 bit OS install, to another 32 bit OS install.
You could go from Windows 7 Home x86 to Windows 10 Home x86. It's not that it is
impossible to install software on x64 computers, but it may be a problem in
the other direction, taking an x64 program on an x64 OS and moving it to an x86 32-bit OS. There's no Program Files x86 to store the executable in.

If the old computer had Windows 7 Home Premium, then Windows 10 Professional wouldn't
be the exact equivalent. Neither would going from Windows 7 Professional
to Windows 10 Home be exactly the same (the GPEdit policies would be missing).

I don't understand the topic well enough, to predict the probability
of success. You may want to try a "chat session" with the respective
company web sites, state your from-to combo, and see what they say.
Typical computer purchases today (if I closed my eyes and just bought
a computer), most of them will have Windows 10 Home or Windows 10-S or something. Windows 10-S does not choose to run Win32 applications,
so the PCMover flavor is going to barf right away if you tried
Windows 10-S as the target. You have to flip out of Windows 10-S to
the Win32-running flavor, to make it possible to run traditional programs.
This requires a trip to the Windows Store. And probably setting up an MSA account
as well. You don't really want Windows 10-S if you can help it - it's a
product offer similar to a Chromebook and competes with Chromebook.
And Chromebook is an OS which is "browser-centric". I even managed to
install it on my other PC :-) Worked OK.

If you use PCTrans Free, it doesn't do anything, so is hardly a free lunch. What it is supposed to do for Free, is make a list of your installed programs, and when I tried it, it could not even do that. It could not correctly
work its way through Program Files and list everything in there. Hardly
an auspicious start.

https://www.easeus.com/pc-transfer/free-pcmover-alternative.html

Summary: What you're trying to do is hard.
Most people would move the programs one by one.
The above programs are $50 *per OS transfer*, you don't
own the software, you rent time with it and only get to
move one PC to the other for your ~$50USD fee. I hope if
if the From-To pair is too weird, that they'd refund your
money.

If you can find honest customer reviews for those mover programs,
they'll pretty well all tell you there will be an exception or
two for even the simplest cases. The $50 fee covers "tech support"
for trying to fix the less-good outcomes.
That's why it's so expensive.

Paul


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On Thursday, November 19, 2020 at 8:48:22 AM UTC+2, David K wrote:

Approx. 30 hours ago, I got a very disturbing message that I've never seen before about my hard disk drive, which is now approx. 8 & 1/2 yrs. old, since I got my PC in late May 2012 -

<a href="https://www.turboimagehost.com/p/61345318/Hard_drive.jpg.html" target="_blank"><img src="https://s8d1.turboimg.net/t1/61345318_Hard_drive.jpg" border="0" alt="Free Image Hosting" /></a>

Does this mean that my hard drive is finally going to crash, after all these years? If it does happen, it'll be quite the disaster for me personally, since I use my PC so much every day. I've already backed up all my personal files, which I already do regularly anyway, but any (other) advice, help, suggestions, tips, etc., would be VERY MUCH appreciated - THANKS very much.

--- Synchronet 3.20a-Win32 NewsLink 1.114