Problematic Hard Drives

Most people can’t live without their computers now. We do so many things with it, from school to office work, for storage of personal data and files, for surfing the web and socializing, to many more, computers is a necessity we can’t afford to live without. Almost everything has gone digital now it is a must to keep up if you want to stay updated in life. While we focus too much on the computer as a whole, we tend to overlook that one of its most crucial component – the hard drive – is actually where most of the action takes place.

Whether you are using an Apple or Windows PC, you still need a hard drive for your device to actually work. They can usually endure heavy computer usage but over time, normal wear and tear and other factors can cause it to break down and fail. Neglect or abuse of your device like power surges, not shutting it down properly, and certain mechanical failure on worn parts can trigger a hard drive failure. There are often tell-tale signs alerting you of hard drive problems if you are observant enough of your computer when using it but some computer users tend to ignore these signs thinking they will resolve on their own.

A computer’s hard drive is one of it’s most important components.

It's the thing that Windows or OS X resides on in addition to your pictures, videos, files, and programs. Without it, a computer isn’t much more than a set of instructions with no content.

A hard drive should last a long time, but eventually, it will cease to work. Personally, I have seen hard drives last more than a decade with heavy use, other times they can fail right out of the box or in a matter of weeks or months. The bottom line is that you just never know when your hard drive is going to fail. For this reason, it is important to back up your data regularly.

Most of the time, your hard drive will give you years of service. Over time, your hard drive could develop problems for several different reasons. Improper shutdowns, power surges and mechanical failure are some of the most common reasons for hard drive failure.

(Via: http://www.sanduskyregister.com/story/201810120033)

Unfortunately, not doing something about it can corrupt your data or eventually stop your computer from ever working again. If you are not a new computer user, you’ve probably experienced this at one point or another. Sometimes, a hard drive failure can’t be avoided but more problems arise when the data you stored on your device does not have a backup. It can drive you crazy knowing that your data is somewhere in your hard drive but you already lost access to it.

Data recovery can help but not all the time you are guaranteed of really getting your lost data back. Moreover, it is also a bit pricey with some companies charging $1 for every gigabyte of data recovered. To save yourself from these worries, be wary of the potential causes of hard drive failure because more often than not you can make preemptive measures to salvage your data in the midst of an impending hard drive failure.

Hard Drive Failure: Causes

Usually, hard drives do crash at certain known periods of your computers lifespan: at the beginning or near-end. When a device’s hard disk crashes at the beginning, its caused can be attributed to a factory or manufacturing defect. If, on the other hand, it crashes after years, your computer is most likely nearing (or has reached) its expiration period.

On what causes a computers hard disk not to carry out its regular functions, there are two identified culprits: physical damage and logical damage.

Physical damage to a hard drive or any of its components can cause it to malfunction. Physical damages are also costlier to fix. Logical damage, on the other hand, prevents the hard disk from accessing files and is usually caused by a corrupted operating system.

(Via: https://www.dignited.com/36069/how-to-know-your-computer-hard-drive-is-failing/)

If you have a little technical know-how, you are probably aware by now that there are tools you can use to check for hard disk failure but the majority of people will just give up once they see errors popping on their screen, especially once their computer stops working already because the damage to your hard drive is too severe that you can’t open your device anymore.

Well, when it comes to salvaging your precious data, it is always better safe than to be sorry. Get in touch with data recovery experts who have years of experience recovering lost data rather risk losing your files by trying DIY fixes that you aren’t even sure of yourself. Data recovery requires a clean room environment like https://www.harddriverecovery.org/clean_room.html because the inner workings of your hard drive are extremely sensitive you don’t want to compromise the data recovery process. These experts are also skilled not only in recovering data for individual computers but also to big servers as well https://www.harddriverecovery.org/server-recovery/.

The best thing you can do is to back up your files so you don’t get desperate when the time comes that your hard drive fails on you.

The following article Problematic Hard Drives was originally published to HDRG Blog

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