There are many different symptoms of a failing hard drive, such as awkward noises, or even blue screening, or your computer might not even run the operating system. All hard drives are destined to fail eventually, so it’s best to be prepared.
How do hard drives fail?
Hard drives fail in many different ways, such as logical failures, media failures, head failures, and mechanical failures. Symptoms that tell you if and when your hard drive could be failing are strange noises, disappearing data and disk errors, your computer stops recognizing your drive, your computer crashes, or just really slow access times. The circuits built into the hard drive that direct traffic of data between the hard drive and the rest of the computer is called the hard drive’s firmware. When problems with the firmware make a hard drive stop working, that is called logical failure. Failure caused by a hard drive getting jarred while the heads are engaged or overheated enough so that the platters get warped may lead to media/head failure. The most common type of hard drive failure is mechanical failure, which happens when the motor burns out, or the bearings get stuck.
Here are some basic diagnostics you can use to make sure it is indeed the hard drive failing:
- Check to ensure the power cable is properly connected to the drive.
- Ensure the IDE ribbon cable, or SATA data firmly attached and aligned properly.
- Master/Slave assignment jumpers are positioned correctly, if the drive has jumpers.
- Make sure the BIOS settings for your computer are appropriate for your hard drive.
What can we do to protect your data
Many people don’t use backups; therefore if and when their hard drive fails, all data would be lost, with little chance of recovery. You should plan ahead and employ a backup solution that fits your needs.
Be sure to prepare yourself against a hard drive failure by purchasing a CST Cloud subscription today so you don’t have to risk losing all your data. Other options are on CD Media, flash drives, or external hard drives; however, with those devices you risk the theft, loss, or damage of the device and loss of your data. CST Cloud keeps your backups safely off site, so even in the case of a disaster, you will still have your data.