How to survive a hard disk crash?
Hard Disk Crash – The world we live in is now a global village because technology has connected everything. Unfortunately, this digitization comes with one big flaw – a hard drive crash that could wipe out your data within a few seconds. Unfortunately, nobody is immune to a hard drive crash.
If you consider the fact that you keep virtually all your data on your PC, tablet and smartphone, you would understand why it is important to prevent hard drive crash. Unless you need to print out certain documents, you always keep your documents in your computer.
If you have ever lost your data to hackers or hard drive crash, you know how disheartening and frustrating it can be. In this article, we will explain what causes hard drive crash and how you can fix it.
What is a hard drive crash?
A crashed hard drive is when your computer hard drive stops working and not capable of carrying out its tasks. The reasons for a crash can be different. So what is a crashed hard drive?
Physical Failure: Heat, shock or moisture can damage your hard drive and cause it to fail. Most of the times, the inability of the fan to cool the hard drive due to accumulated impurities can cause the computer to heat up and damage the drive. Water spillage can also damage the hard drive due to moisture and if you mistakenly drop your laptop, it can result into shock, which can damage the hard drive.
Mechanical Failure: Over time, the mechanical components of the hard drive get deteriorated and fail.
Logical Failure: This is software related issues which can be caused by a virus, human error, corrupted files and malware. When the famous blue screen appears, it is an indication of logical damage to the hard drive.
The worst reasons for hard drive crash
- Manufacturer fault or firmware
- Heat
- Power surges or electronic failure
- Corrupted files
- Human error
How to identify a hard disk crash?
Hard drive crash is often preceded by a few random errors in Windows. Some files will suddenly become corrupt or refuse to open, while sudden operating system crashes can also occur. If any of these happen while your computer is still working, you need to scan your hard drive for errors by using Windows drive error-checking tool.
The process can take some time, so it’s best you leave it running overnight.
How to fix a hard disk crash?
- Check if you can still use the hard drive: Visit a computer repair shop and let them check if you can still use it after repairing. If you are also techy, you can check it yourself and determine whether it can be used again or not.
- Recover your data: The most important thing is to recover your data, especially if you’ve not been backing it up in the cloud or other memory. You can bring your PC to our shop for data recovery to avoid losing your data.
- Format the partition: You can solve some logical errors by formatting the hard disk but remember to back up your data first. While this trick works for simple errors, you may need a little bit effort to fix high-level errors.
- Take it to an expert for a replacement or repair: The best thing to do if you are not tech savvy is to take your computer to an expert to repair or replace your hard drive for you
How to recover data from a hard disk crash?
If your hard drive can still support your laptop, even for a limited time, make sure you recover your data to an external drive. If you don’t know how to do this, take it to computer repair engineers.
Do you need help to fix your crashed hard drive? Contact us.