Is this disk about to fail?

[mdwheeler1]

Yes - I would replace this drive - HD/SSD option are great now - the question is can you afford the time if it fails - I would back up now offline - to an external drive - or via a cloud depending on what you need to save. The issue is them how long to wait to get new drive. If it is a system you cannot be without for a few days - get a new drive then install fresh OS - I am not sure a failing drive will necessarily allow a good migration.

[Emirzan]

Thought I should update this thread as the hard drive in question has now entirely failed. Bit odd that swapping the SATA cable bought a few extra months of life but perhaps both the drive and cable were faulty. In any case the drive is now dead and has been replaced.

As originally mentioned the data on this drive was 100% backed up so I've experienced no data loss. And it has already been replaced by a more modern drive speedily delivered courtesy of scan!

[Bryanandrews]

old hard drive tend to fail, and do not store important data on it anymore. you can check healthy condition for the drive with tools like MHDD, PG, etc.
if the drive indeed gets problem, then replace it with a new one

[lisja4ij]

Even if you can "clear" bad blocks from failing hard drive the os and data are not safe, because (this is my opinion) if the drive started to die it will... sooner or later. Another question is it safe to migrate failing drive to another drive, I know that using acronis true image you can create full drive backup and restore it to another drive with resizing partitions, so this trick will eliminate the info about bad blocks on the new drive.