Friday, December 16, 2011

Evidence of a Failing Hard Disk Drive

By Jason Sloan


The hard drive is the brain, heart and soul of your computer. It is an fantastic wonder of computing technology as its storage capability and cost have seriously improved through the years. It is ill-fated nonetheless that its basic weakness still remains. Being mechanical, hard drives are prone to simply reaching a cap on their working life, dying out eventually.

For instance, the moving parts of the driveĆ¢€"spinning disk and read/write heads, can bump together (as when the working computer is jostled) and may cause a fatal head crash. Or the electrical motor powering the spinning may shortly wear out. Or the air filter just may break down and the tiniest amount of contamination may get into the gap between the read/write head and the spinning platter to cause a serious problem. The bitter truth is that hard drives, like all things mechanical, do not have an eternal lifespan.

But how do you catch a failing hard disk? What are the signs you should go looking for in a failing hard disk? For the sake of your important information, remember the following:

- PC freezes, mouse cursor is unmovable and keystrokes are ignored
- Frequent, though irregular crashes of your operating system, most especially while booting up
- Frequent and cryptic error alerts, especially while doing easy tasks like creating, moving, duplicating and deleting files
- Sudden scrambling and changing of folder and file names
- Confusing vanishing of files and folders
- Outstandingly long time to access folders and files
- Hard disk goes silent for a lengthy period after opening a file or folder
- Disordered output from open files and prints
- Drive emits sounds like clicks, beeps and grinds

When you notice any of these danger signs of a failing hard drive, backing up your information should be your top concern. In many cases where the hard drive just reached its maximum lifespan, there actually is little you can do to keep it alive longer. The single thing to do is to back up the info it contains and bid your drive goodbye.

If nevertheless , your hard disk fails before you have managed to perform a successful information back up, the services of a specialist data recovery company can help retrieve your lost files.




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