Users Guide

Figure 125. Recovery key in Notepad
Troubleshooting hard disk failure issues
You may see a disk failure screen during the erase flow in Dell Data Assistant. If you are getting the disk failure screen, it likely
means your hard drive is experiencing critical errors and will not successfully complete the erase process. It is recommended you
back up all important data and contact your vendor for possible options to replace the drive as soon as possible.
Dell Data Assistant uses a utility called Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology (also S.M.A.R.T.) to check the
drive's health.
S.M.A.R.T. is a monitoring tool built into most of the modern Disk Drives (such as HDDs, SSDs and eMMC drives). Its primary
function is to detect and report various indicators of drive reliability with the intent of anticipating imminent hardware failures.
By checking the value of parameters, the health status of a drive can be determined.
Dell Data Assistant uses this S.M.A.R.T. information to prompt you when the drive health is likely to cause a failure during erase.
Figure 126. Hard disk failure
Since S.M.A.R.T. failures are hardware level issues, there are limited resolution options available:
● The most common option is to check for and repair any errors in the drives present on your system. To do so:
1. Open File Explorer. Click This PC on left most column.
2. Right-click on any Volume (such as C:).
3. Click on the Tools tab.
Data Erase
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