I have an 1 TB data disk and the bios and Windows are reporting a "Smart" error. At least, I get a Smart event but it doesn't indicate how serious the failure could be. My system is about 6 months old, including the disk so the warranty will cover the damage. Unfortunately, I lack a second disk of 1 TB in size which I can use to make a full backup. The most important data on this disk is safe, but there's a lot of work data which can be regenerated but this would cost a lot of time.

So I ordered an USB disk of 1 TB which will arrive in three days. By then I can make a full backup of the data and afterwards, it can crash.

But will the disk live that long? (Well, I won't use the PC as long as I can't make a backup.) How serious is such a Smart event? I know it's serious enough to have it replaced, but will it live for another week or could it die any moment?

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Update: I purchased an 1 TB external disk and spent most of the day making a backup of the 1 TB disk. It survived that. I then received a new disk, since it was still under warranty and replaced the hard disk. Then I had to spend most of a day again to put back the backup. I need to send back the faulty disk and now have an additional external disk, which could always be practical. :-)

The Smart Error report did not cause any failures on the original disk. I won't advise to ignore these warnings, but the disk still has enough life in it to last a few more days. (Just make sure you have a good back-up.)

And oh, the horror of having to make a complete backup such a huge disk. :-) If your data is important, make sure you have something that supports incremental backups and lots of space. (In my case, the data wasn't very important, just practical to have on-disk together.)