Saturday, December 10, 2011

Preparing for Hard Drive Failure

By Jason Sloan


At some point, almost every PC will experience hard drive failure in some way, shape or form. Like any other item of hardware which has moving parts, a hard drive used long enough will finally fail. But before a hard drive gets irreparably damaged and the info irrevocably lost, there are looming tell tale indications signaling its impending failure. If you are able to recognise these symptoms early on, possibilities are the info on the failing drive can be saved or, even better, you will have adequate time to back up crucial information.

So while working on your computer, try to stay alert for any of these caution signs:

- The drive vanishes from the O. S
- Files suddenly disappear
- You have got to wait very long while accessing files
- Contents of files and folders are scrambled
- Error messages reappear while moving, copying, deleting or creating files
- Peculiar and frequent crashing of your O. S (blue screen of death)
- sounds coming from the drive (either loud, low, irregular, clicking or grinding)

If you have determined that your hard drive is failing based on the above signs, shut off the PC as fast and when possible. Chances of effecting extra damages to the drive is noticeably decreased with the computer shut down. If the drive is physically damaged, it may be that it cannot be fixed but some, if not all of the data can be retrieved before the drive dies completely.

There are essentially a number of programs which offer disk diagnostics to help note early traces of hard drive failure. Smart Utility, for example, can identify a failing and yet technically functional drive. It'll alert you of your drive's upcoming death even when nothing seems wrong.

And if you're therefore cautioned, you can back up vital info or replace the drive early on. In doing so, you save yourself literally a fortune in hard drive data recovery costs.




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