The Warning Signs Your Apple Hard Drive Is Failing
Catastrophic hard drive failure is aptly named. When a hard drive dies a sudden, premature death, you're faced with the loss of files, time, money and convenience. Most people don't plan ahead for the consequences of a hardware failure, so they're faced with the scramble to diagnose and solve the problem at the same time they're looking for a system backup current enough to include crucial working files. Just as maintaining current backups is crucial to data integrity, monitoring your system for the health of its hard drive is a prudent way to avoid a crisis.
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What's That Sound?
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Dying drives often get noisy before they fail. Platter-based hard drives with rotating parts start to sound different: louder, with an odd pitch or timbre. Rather than try to convince yourself the noise is insignificant, it's prudent to check for the beginnings of trouble before you're faced with the way trouble ends up. If it's your work computer, check with the help desk; if it's your personal machine, take it to a technician you trust -- which may mean tearing it down yourself or getting help from a friend or family member.
Slow Startups
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A drive that suddenly becomes balky or intermittently slow is a symptom of looming failure. If your boot cycle seems to be taking a long time for no apparent reason or routine operations leave you staring at the spinning rainbow of the Macintosh beachball, your hard drive may be trying to tell you something. Odd behavior is your signal to dig deeper for a diagnostic result. Scan the drive for trouble and if it doesn't pass muster, back up your files before it fails and replace it. If your drive is noisy as well as slow, you may be faced with impending doom rather than just the prospect of a problem.
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Operational Failures
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If a once-stable system suddenly starts crashing at unpredictable intervals and in random situations, you're getting a warning something's amiss. Once you rule out other possibilities -- software corruption, a bad memory chip, a problematic power supply -- eventually you wind up looking at your hard drive as the culprit. It's tempting to try to fix the problem and keep working, especially if you're busy, but think how busy you'll be if the system actually stops working altogether.
An Ounce of Prevention
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It's easier to find an excuse not to back up your files than to find the time to replace them when your hard drive dies without a backup. The old maxim that a file doesn't really exist until it's stored in three places makes a lot of sense when you think about what can happen to the hardware whose reliability we all take for granted -- until it fails. Make a backup plan and stick to it. Don't be caught with no recourse if your drive suddenly freezes and won't reboot. Pay attention to the health of your hardware and you can keep trouble to a minimum.
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References
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