While, it is not possible to accurately predict a hard drive failure, advances in technology have made it possible to monitor certain aspects of hard drives and a deterioration of some of the values indicates a decline in reliability and possibly a near-time hard drive failure. All modern hard drives have an in-built monitoring system, called S.M.A.R.T. or Self Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology. While electronic failures cannot be determined in advance, mechanical failures in hard drives (constituting at least 60 per cent of failures) give fair failure indications. S.M.A.R.T provides certain attributes to determine hard drive failures.

You can monitor your hard drive’s SMART attributes using free software like HDTune, that can be freely downloaded from http://www.hdtune.com. If HDTune shows any of the attributes in yellow, you know there is a problem. Programs like HDTune also indicate the drive’s operating temperature with the help of which you can predict and prevent the hard drive from burning out by providing it with additional cooling or bringing down the ambient temperature.