Symptoms of a Bad Hard Drive
A bad hard drive can signal the loss of personal data, which can be a traumatic event in this information age. Spotting the symptoms in advance can save your files before a hard drive crash.
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Identification
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All hard drives make noise, but when you hear a loud, rhythmic clicking noise and your computer experiences occasional screen freezes, the drive may be bad. Other symptoms include disappearing or altered files, odd error messages and your computer consistently requesting to scan the hard drive at boot-up.
Significance
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Diagnosing hard drive failure early may save future headaches due to lost files. At the first sign of hard drive failure, back up your data.
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Considerations
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Run regular diagnostics and maintenance on your hard drive; not every computer slowdown is a bad hard drive waiting to happen. You may have too many programs running at once.
Prevention/Solution
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Some hard drive issues are software based and not symptoms of mechanical failure. Run the defragmentation utility in Windows to fix or map around bad sectors, and keep your antivirus program updated.
Time Frame
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When your hard drive shows symptoms of mechanical failure, you have a limited amount of time to back up data. Do it quickly, and power off the computer to avoid any further damage.
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