Signs Your Hard Drive Lifetime is Ending & What To Do
There are a host of signs that hint to a gradual failure of your hard drive.
1Slowing Down Computer, Frequent Freezes, Blue Screen Of Death
These are very unspecific signs that can be caused by a million different things. However, regardless of what the issue behind these symptoms is, it is recommended that you immediately make a backup
2 Corrupted Data
If you’re beginning to find files that fail to open and are corrupted even though they saved without errors or if files suddenly disappear, you should get worried. While again this could be due to a multitude of issues, it is also a typical sign for a gradual hard drive failure.
3 Accumulation Of Bad Sectors
Bad sectors are areas of the hard drive that do not maintain data integrity. They are automatically masked by the operating system and thus hard to identify, especially if large amounts of the disk are currently in use.
You can run a manual disk check to identify errors that Windows has not spotted, yet. In Windows 7, go to > Start > Computer and right-click on the disk or partition you wish to check.
Select > Properties, in the window that opens switch to the > Tools tab and click > Check now…
In the Checking Disk window place a checkmark next to > Automatically fix file system errors and > Scan for an attempt recovery of bad sectors.
4 Strange Sounds
When you hear strange noises coming from your hard drive, it may be too late already. A repetitive sound also known as the click of death is caused by the head as it is trying to write data and recovers from errors in doing so. Grinding or screeching noises indicate that parts of the hardware, for example the bearings or spindle motor, are failing.
Do not rely on signs or software to tell you whether you have a failing hard drive. It is more likely than not that it will fail unexpectedly and without any warning signs whatsoever you should rely on backups.
Tool to Check How Healthy and Fast Your Drive
Crystal Disk Information
If you have a reliable back-up, you'll save yourself many headaches.
There are a host of signs that hint to a gradual failure of your hard drive.
1Slowing Down Computer, Frequent Freezes, Blue Screen Of Death
These are very unspecific signs that can be caused by a million different things. However, regardless of what the issue behind these symptoms is, it is recommended that you immediately make a backup
2 Corrupted Data
If you’re beginning to find files that fail to open and are corrupted even though they saved without errors or if files suddenly disappear, you should get worried. While again this could be due to a multitude of issues, it is also a typical sign for a gradual hard drive failure.
3 Accumulation Of Bad Sectors
Bad sectors are areas of the hard drive that do not maintain data integrity. They are automatically masked by the operating system and thus hard to identify, especially if large amounts of the disk are currently in use.
You can run a manual disk check to identify errors that Windows has not spotted, yet. In Windows 7, go to > Start > Computer and right-click on the disk or partition you wish to check.
Select > Properties, in the window that opens switch to the > Tools tab and click > Check now…
In the Checking Disk window place a checkmark next to > Automatically fix file system errors and > Scan for an attempt recovery of bad sectors.
4 Strange Sounds
When you hear strange noises coming from your hard drive, it may be too late already. A repetitive sound also known as the click of death is caused by the head as it is trying to write data and recovers from errors in doing so. Grinding or screeching noises indicate that parts of the hardware, for example the bearings or spindle motor, are failing.
Do not rely on signs or software to tell you whether you have a failing hard drive. It is more likely than not that it will fail unexpectedly and without any warning signs whatsoever you should rely on backups.
Tool to Check How Healthy and Fast Your Drive
Crystal Disk Information
If you have a reliable back-up, you'll save yourself many headaches.
