Author: Antonis Kyprianou
Sooner or later all hard drives come to the end of their working life. And when they do, the degree of sweat and tears you experience will relate to how prepared you were for the event.
Backing up your data is the all-important thing to remember, but watching for early signs of failure can save you from the shock of a sudden failure.
Hard drive repair has come a long way, but it won�t hurt to learn what to watch out for in order to make recovery of your data after a disk failure that much easier.
The Early Signs of Failure
Advance warnings that a hard drive problem is developing are not uncommon.
Here are a few things to watch out for that should set alarm bells ringing, and prompt full backups be taken of all data immediately:
� The PC locks regularly while booting.
� Files disappear or become inaccessible without warning.
� Saving or opening files takes much, much longer than is reasonable.
� The PC freezes regularly.
� Strange rattling noises come from inside the unit.
Diagnosis
Before you rush your computer off to a hard drive recovery specialist, it won�t do any harm to ensure that what has happened is an actual hard drive failure. Many of the symptoms listed above can be caused by other factors, so the first thing to do is run through this checklist while making a diagnosis yourself before seeking a specialist.
� Is the internal power cable connected to the drive?
� Is the internal data cable connected to the drive?
� Is it an IDE drive? If so, is the ribbon cable properly aligned?
� Is the master/slave assignment correctly set? (for IDE drives)
� Confirm the BIOS can detect the drive. If it can, you have a connection.
� Confirm you can run a virus scan. If you so, the drive is still working.
� Confirm the drive partitions are viewable through a third-party disk management program. If you can, the drive may be operable.
� Confirm you can run ScanDisk or Check Disk. Allow it to perform a full scan and fix anything it finds. If you can’t, you will be looking at hard drive repair options.
Hard Drive Recovery
The likelihood of successful hard drive recovery will depend on the nature of the drive failure suffered. If your data is important (and you have neglected to take backups), it is recommended a suitable hard drive repair specialist is sought in order to maximize the chances that you can recover lost data, and to ensure no further data is lost.
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