Warning Signs of Hard Drive Failure
What Are The Warning Signs of Hard Drive Failure?
While you may be able to repair software errors caused by bad sectors and in some cases, you may be able to repair the bad sectors themselves, if your drive has begun to fail mechanically nothing will stop the process. Know the warning signs of hard drive failure to help prevent disaster.
So, what are the warning signs of hard drive failure?
The key is to detect the imminent failure of your drives before they give out on you and data is lost.
Let’s look at some common warning signs of impending hard drive failure:
- Frequent but irregular crashes, especially while booting up Windows®
- Frequent and cryptic error messages while performing typical activities like moving files
- Folder and file names that have been scrambled and changed
- Disappearing files and folders
- Really long wait times to access folders and files
- The hard disk is silent for a long period after you request data by opening a file or folder
- Garbled output from open files or printing
- The hard drive grinds away constantly because of noisy bearings
Sound can be an excellent indicator of disk trouble!
* If you previously didn’t hear a peep from your hard drive, but now you do… Check it.
* If it seems much louder than usual or makes occasional clicks or grinding sounds, check it ASAP and be prepared to back up your data and replace the drive.
* If your drive is making regular clicking or grinding sounds, chances are you have a mechanical failure within the drive.
* Turn off your computer as soon as possible as continued use may damage the platters (data storage area) and make your data unrecoverable.
The longer the drive is powered on, the more damage you may be doing to your data.
* You should then make a note of what happened and contact LC Technology immediately.
LC Technology offers hard drive data recovery services. If the data is recoverable, we can get it back.
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S.M.A.R.T: What it is and what it does
Data recovery on a failed hard drive can be difficult and expensive. The good news is that modern hard drives have S.M.A.R.T (Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology) built in. This capability is standard on all modern hard drives and provides each device with a degree of internal status monitoring.
The S.M.A.R.T monitoring system built into your computer’s BIOS is rudimentary, only capable of telling you whether or not the drive is ‘OK’ at boot time based on the conclusion of its internal S.M.A.R.T diagnostics. This can make the difference between getting the data off the drive or losing the data when the drive crashes.
