Losing a hard drive can be difficult to recover from, especially if there are no recent backups available. Fortunately, there are a number of early warning signs that indicate when a hard drive is about to fail. By keeping an eye out for these signs, you'll be able to take steps to backup and secure your data before your hard drive fails.
Five warning signs that mean your hard drive is about to fail.
1 - Clicking sounds
Hard drives are an old technology. They were first revealed in 1955 by IBM researcher Rey Johnson who created them to store data for IBM supercomputers. Hard drives have improved a lot since the 50s, but they still work using a similar mechanism to the ones Rey Johnson designed. They still store data on special rotating magnetic disks and they still use special magnetic heads to read and write data from the disks.Mechanical faults are one of the most common sources of hard drive failure. Often one of the disks may become damaged or the magnetic head may come loose, causing the hard drive to fail. Normally, in situations like this, the hard drive will start making strange noises.
It might start clicking, or squeaking, or making loud grinding noises. If you start hearing these noises coming from your hard drive, it's likely that your hard drive has become damaged and failure is imminent.
2 - Data corruption
Data corruption is one of the most common early warning signs for a failing hard drive. It normally indicates that the hard drive is about to fail due to a mechanical failure with either the disks or the magnetic head inside the hard drive.Data corruption errors can happen when reading or writing files. Your operating system, whether it's Windows, Mac OS X, or Linux, should flash an error message whenever a data corruption error occurs. The more frequent the errors, the more likely the hard drive is to fail.
3 - Computer crashes and freezes
Computer crashes and freezes can occur when the operating system is unable to access the files it needs to operate correctly. It might be unable to open a system file which causes a cascade of errors that eventually lead to the computer crashing or freezing. |
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If your computer starts crashing or freezing regularly, backup your data as soon as you can and start running diagnostics on your hard drive to check how healthy it is.
4 - Faulty data sectors
Data is stored in sectors on a hard drive. A single hard drive might be segmented into billions of different sectors. Faulty sectors normally indicate that there is a fault with a hard drive. It might be that a particular part of the disk has become faulty, or it might be that the magnetic disk head is struggling to read data correctly. Either way, faulty data sectors normally indicate that something is amiss.If you start experiencing faulty data sector errors on your computer, perform a diagnostic on your hard drive as soon as you can. Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux all come prepackaged with software that can detect faulty data sectors. If you find a significant number of faulty data sectors on your hard drive, it might be on the verge of failing.
5 - S.M.A.R.T warnings
S.M.A.R.T. is short for 'Self Monitoring Analysis and Reporting Technology'. This technology comes pre-installed on every hard drive. It attempts to detect problems with the hard drive before they become catastrophic.If your hard drive starts flagging S.M.A.R.T errors, it might mean it is about to fail. Make sure to backup your data and run some S.M.A.R.T. diagnostics immediately.
Summing Up
If your hard drive or computer starts showing any of these early warning signs, take steps to backup your data immediately to an external hard drive, a usb stick, a dvd/blu-ray, or an online backup service. It'll make it much easier to restore your computer and your data if your hard drive does fail.
About the Author:
Easy Recovery Edinburgh are hard drive repair and data recovery experts, for more PC hardware and Data recovery related information, check out our blog.
