As it turns out, there are several different underlying causes that will cause this error code. After investigating this issue, we’ve put together a list of potential culprits that you should carefully look at: Now that you are aware of every potential culprit that might be responsible for this issue, here’s a collection of different methods that users encountering the same 1720-SMART Hard Drive Detects Imminent Failure error have successfully used to resolve the issue:
Method 1: Clearing the CMOS battery/memory Chip
Keep in mind that in some cases, the SMART monitoring system can actually display a false positive because of cached data that’s being maintained by the CMOS battery/memory chip. This is very likely if you have already tried to swap the supposedly failing drive and you’re still seeing the same 1720-SMART Hard Drive Detects Imminent Failure error. If this scenario is applicable, the first thing you should do is clear the CMOS battery or memory chip, depending on which type of cache technology your PC uses. On desktops, it’s likely that this task is accomplished by a CMOS (Complementary Metal-Oxide Semiconductor) battery. On newer models and laptops/ ultrabooks, in particular, this is replaced with a memory chip. Several affected users dealing with the same issue have managed to fix the issue by clearing the CMOS battery or memory chip, thus clearing the temporary data that’s causing the false positive. To make matters easier for you, we’ve put together a step-by-step guide that will show you through this process: If you still end up seeing the 1720-SMART Hard Drive Detects Imminent Failure error even after clearing the CMOS battery or memory chip, move down to the next method below.
Method 2: Using SPECCY to pinpoint the Failing Drive (if applicable)
If the method above didn’t work for you, you should start considering the fact that you might be dealing with a failing HDD or SSD that is about to malfunction. However, SMART monitoring is known to trigger some false positives, so ideally, you should take the time to investigate whether your drive is indeed failing with a 3rd party tool. In case you’re in the market for a tool capable of doing this, we recommend Speccy – It’s free, easy to install, and it will give you an overview of about 30+ SMART points that you need to be aware of. If the measurements are off the normal range, you can safely conclude that the disk-drive is failing. Note: Keep in mind that you can only go for this method as long as your computer is able to boot up or you have a spare PC that you can connect to the supposedly failing drive as a secondary partition. If you haven’t done this already, follow the instructions below to install Speccy on a working PC and using it to determine if you’re dealing with a failing drive: If the investigation you’ve just performed points towards a failing drive, move down to the next method below.
Method 3: Clone & Replace Faulty Disk-Drive
If none of the potential fixes featured above have worked in your case and you did the investigations to ensure that the drive in question is failing, the only thing you can do right now is to get a replacement for your faulty disk drive and try to recover as many files as possible. If you are still able to boot from the drive (from time to time), try to do it and use an external HDD or a cloud service to back-up all your important files. However, if your disk is partially damaged and it can no longer boot, the only option to save the majority of your data is to use some kind of disk-cloning software. There’s a lot of different tools that will allow you to do this, and with the majority of them, the free plans are enough to help you do this. If you’re considering this option, here’s a list with some viable drive cloning software. Note: Keep in mind that even if the software will be unable to copy some of the files located in bad sectors, you will still get to salvage the majority of your files. Typically, if you’re only dealing with a few bad sectors on your failing drive, the new ‘target’ disk-drive will likely contain over 99% of healthy files salvaged from the faulty drive.
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