Diagnosis of hard disk drive faults and problems

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Hard disk drive troubleshooting and advice -
Diagnosing faults and problems

What to do in cases of data loss & problematic hard disk drives etc.

This page is intended to offer guidance & advice on how to troubleshoot various hard disk problems - what to do and the actions you need to take should your hard disk drive develop a fault. There are links from this page to further parts of the site should you require more in-depth information.

How to tell if you have a hard drive problem: Disk faults come in all shapes and sizes and there are various failure symptoms which include

  • The computer will start to run slowly, files will take a long time to access -
    • Cause: Often bad sectors
  • The disk will no longer be recognised by the computer -
    • Cause: Either mechanical, electronic or firmware related problems
  • The disk will make a clicking / ticking noise -
    • Cause: Often Mechanical
  • The computer will crash, sometimes with the 'blue screen of death' -
    • Cause: Often mechanical or operating system related

This is by no means an exhaustive list. For further more detailed information on failures read our symptoms and types of hard drive faults section.

What to do if you have a hard drive problem: First of all, you need to assess the value of the data on the hard drive.

  • If the data is not valuable or important and can be easily replaced (eg. restored from a backup etc) then you should discard the faulty hard disk and replace it with a new one (these days there is little point trying to repair a hard drive as their price is such that you may as well just buy a new one).
  • If the data is of value then it is important that no further action is taken that will make the situation worse.
    • DO's
    • DO NOT's
      • Continue to use the drive
      • Open the drive
      • Let someone who doesn't know what they're doing look at the drive (this includes PC shops and unfortunately, some other so called data recovery companies)

       

Find out more detailed information by following these in-site links

Visit our main data recovery section

 

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