I have obtained the S.M.A.R.T. info for my hard drive and I am getting a warning that the TA Increase count is below average limits. The reading is 78 and the worst was apparently 22. It should be between 91 - 100. What is a TA increase count and how concerned should I be? Is there anything I can do about it? SallyT

This might help: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-M...

"....how concerned should I be? Is there anything I can do about it?" SMART is delberately dumbed-down so that it doesn't report problems that don't affect the operation of the drive much, so if you DO get an error message, it "thinks" there is something seriously wrong you should know about, so you should be concerned. There is nothing you can do about it. You should test the hard drive that this error is being reported about as soon as you can, and be prepared to rescue what data you want to save if you have to before the drive fails completely. See the latter part of response 1 in this: http://www.computing.net/windows95/...

Thanks both of you. I'm now a little clearer. This drive is not my main drive but the one I use for backing-up. It is geting on a bit as it was taken from my previous PC so I guess I should think about replacing it. SallyT

You may want to run a test on the drive before canning it. Look here: http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/suppo...