4 signs that your hard drive is failing or has failed:
The most common thing that people experience when their hard drive is about to go out is a lack of performance on their computer. If your computer over the past couple of days or a couple of months has progressively gotten slower, that is the first sign of your hard drive failing. This can happen over several weeks, months, years, or it can happen over several hours. If this happens, the best thing to do is to turn off your device and get it to a place where you can get your hard drive tested or replaced.
If you start hearing a lot of noise from your drive, particularly clicking, whirring, or beeping noises, when you click on something or open up a program on your computer, your drive is working harder than it should. This can mean that your drive is about to fail.
If there is an error message saying that it cannot locate the hard drive or that it cannot locate the operating system, your hard drive has probably failed.
If your computer crashes very suddenly and doesn’t boot up again, this can mean that your hard drive has failed. The best thing to do is to take your computer into a repair shop to see if they can recover any data.
If you do have a mechanical hard drive, here are things to avoid doing so your hard drive does not fail:
Do not transport your computer while that hard drive is still running (while your computer is on). Any bumps or movement could cause physical damage to the drive and then cause it to fail. This means you should not be transporting your computer while it is in sleep mode, turn it all the way off.
If your computer gets dropped or hit, it can cause the read head to slap the platter on the drive, which is where all your data is stored. If it hits that platter, it’s like scratching a disc. This can make some data on the drive unreadable or hard to access. All of this can cause a hard drive failure.
A lot of mechanical hard drives are being replaced by solid-state drives these days. SSD’s (solid-state drives) do not have the moving parts that a mechanical drive does. So, you do not have to worry about transportation or impacts (although you probably shouldn’t throw or hit your computer anyways).
If you would like to replace your hard drive for a new one or an SSD, this can be a great way to backup all your data, clean out space and make sure that your computer is not vulnerable to any data loss in the future. If you haven’t had your hard drive replaced in 2-3 years, it’s lifetime may be running out and it is always a great idea to get it tested and replaced so that you don’t have a major failure and lose any work or precious files you have on that computer. Give us a call today or come into our shop for help.