I have a Sony VAIO VGN-NS20E laptop. When I start it the message comes " SMART Failure Predited on Hard Disk. Warning: Immediately back-up your data and replace your hard disk drive. A failure may be

it simply means that you have a hard drive failure and data in it is already compromised. backup the data and replace it immediately before it stops working.

Do what it says and backup immediately.

1. After everything is backed up, download and run Speedfan.
2. then open "S.M.A.R.T" data for your drive and click "Perform an in-depth online analysis of this hard disk"
   

3. I will send the diagnostic data(it is safe as does not contain any private info) to a hddstatus.com webpage and open analysis result.
4. Paste the permalink from results page here. It is on the bottom of page and reads "this".


Then we could see what exactly is about to fail but most likely you will need a new drive(SSD prefered) or a new laptop. Depending on laptop specification replacing HDD with SSD drive could inject a new life in this rather old laptop.

It means exactly what the message says.
The hard drive is going to fail in the near future. I recommend you back up your data before the hard drive fails completely.
When the hard drive fails, replace the hard drive, and use your Compaq recovery disk to install Windows and the device drivers plus your programs to get the laptop working again.

Before you do anything run a full virus scan on your system, sometimes viruses and trojans will give you messages saying mean and nasty things are about to happen. make sure your scan includes everything. it might take awhile but well worth it. if nothing comes of this then you might be in for a major shut down.

Have you ever heard of TDL4 malware? It actually writes a new partition with oddball parameters such that most antivirus and anti-malware products cannot find the infection. But often the new partition overlaps previous partitions, making the internal "not-so-SMART" routines suspect that the hard drive is failing. It usually is not true! But there are only a scant few utilities that even detect TDL4, or any of it's variations. Good Luck!

Hello there,

As per experience, SMART Utility will check your HDD for any errors that may occur.

I backed up everything and replaced a new HDD and got rid of the error.

Opened up the problematic HDD and noticed a very light scratch on its "platters".

As for me. Never ignore this warning before something might happen to your HDD and lost important data.

SMART is the system that monitors the health of a hard disk, in your case  it's close to complete failure. Follow immediately what that warning message says - copy all your data to some DVD's, replace the hd and reinstall.

SMART means self monitoring and reporting tool, this is the option which performs certain test for the status of hard disk health, if its coming it means condition of your hard disk is not good, its better if you immediately back up your data and replace it, by the way you can also disable this warning through the bios, just disable the smart feature in hard disk

You didn't ask any question ....but you already know the answer. The drive is most likely now a paperweight.

If you have critical data to recover, you can contact Drive Savers ...they're pricey, but they're good!

Hope this helps - remember to rate! :)

SMART stands for Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology.

If you want lots of details on what it is, and does, take a look at this link:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-Monitoring,_Analysis,_and_Reporting_Technology

It is highly unlikely that you will be able to fix this since it's a hardware problem on the hard drive. The drive may last for years or it may die tomorrow. At a minimum I would back up everything you care about on a regular basis.

If you found this information helpful I would appreciate it if you would rate this solution. I hate to beg, but over half of the solutions I've posted have no feedback. I'm not paid for this I'm just trying to help.