Ok, I made a thread a while ago about this.
So far, I lost THREE HDDs to Avast and I almost lose this one too.
I didn’t want to believe it, but after a while of having Avast on my system, the corrupted sectors on my HDDs begins slowly increasing until the HDDs is lost forever.
This time I almost lose this new 2 months old HDD too, I got a S.M.A.R.T. message saying I better back it up fast, couldn’t even do that because the PC was taking 20 minutes to open a single folder.
So, I spent 6 hours uninstalling Avast because it was the main suspect for me.
Guess what? My pc is fine, I managed to fix a couple of the corrupt sectors on the disk.
So yeah, thanks Avast for destroying two new Western Digital caviar blue and almost a third one, still, this one’s life was highly reduced because of this.
i doubt that is the reason been running avast years and nothing like that can happen. unless you have viruses on your pc that avast hasnt picked up. run malware bytes and super anti spyware and see what you find
but i can say it isnt avast that cause that issue
Avast make computer open folder slow down because it scan befont we in.
I never hear about destroy HDD
Hello,
hardware which can be destroyed by software, deserves it
Milos
I was really surprised to see this since a similar thing has happened to me with two HDDs, two occasions the computer started checking the disk after update and lo and behold it turned out that sectors on the drives had broken, I’ve had my HDDs replaced twice with this third some seemingly running fine. I’d be pretty angry if Avast! is causing them to break, the thing is the computer only had an issue with the disk checking after updates… AFTER I purchased Avast! (I have a paid version too which would be even more infuriating).
One thing I would recommend though, have someone take a look at your power unit, that was the thing that guys who made my computer replaced with a new brand of unit. They thought it might have been the unit causing the HDDs to go.
If those symptoms happen again with a totally different HDD, Power Unit and a fresh install of Windows, I might end up looking at Avast! as the culpit as well, however that hasn’t and hopefully won’t happen.
No, avast! certainly doesn’t cause this. Actually, any software cannot break any hardware, it’s just an old myth (let’s say with the exception of SSD drives, they have a limited number of write cycles, but even there it takes some effort).
Sure, an (any) antivirus raises the load on CPU, memory or hard drives a bit - because of the additional scanning, compared to a state without any antivirus - but a healthy system doesn’t have any problem with that. Yes, if the system is running on the edge already (overclocked, improperly cooled, weakly powered, or simply unreliable hardware), then problems may start to manifest.
I am a Failure Analysis Engineer now for 40 years. Most likely this is an electrical issue:
- bad power (all electrical circuits fail over time, and it was written up in E.E.Times magazine over 20 years ago)
- bad power supply (causes same symptoms as #1, but slightly less likely)
- Static electricity (from carpet, or a chair mat, or … I had a 10,000 volt chair once)
These are the causes of this symptom over 95% of the time.
The causes that you site here are causes of hard disk corruption, not failure:
http://advantage77.com/blog/2012/02/03/15-causes-of-hard-disk-corruption/
J.R.
yep more likely hardware issue e.g. PSU failure …
Thinking that Avast or any other software could destroy a hard drive is preposterous. I would like to know his cooling system and if the case has enough intake and exhaust. Heat is the main culprit of any electronic component.