If you have lost data on your computer, you may want to learn more about hard drives to determine whether it is a software or hardware problem that has caused the data loss. The difficulty with trying to diagnose a failed hard drive is that there are so many things that can go wrong with a hard drive. Nevertheless, there are some common failure issues and telltale signs that might help.
Head Crash – Many symptoms of a head crash commonly include some type of physical noise from your computer. If it is a hardware issue, simply listen to your computer while it is running to see if it is making any clicking, grinding, whirring, or any out of the normal sounds that you wouldn’t expect. Many people refer to the clicking noise as the “click of death”, this is an automatic red flag for hard drive failure. When trying to fix a head crash and the lost data is important to you, we strongly advise not to use cheap off the shelf software. Studies show that users who try to repair the hard drive themselves in most cases cause more damage to the drive or permanently loss the data they were looking to retrieve. Take caution in understanding the issue at hand. If you feel that your data has been lost due to a hardware issue, have a data rescue professional retrieve the data for your and repair or replace the hardware.
The Hard Drive is not Recognized in the BIOS – If a hard drive is not recognized in the BIOS, this could be a problem with the hard drive’s electronics. The electronics are the first point of interaction with your computer’s motherboard, however hard drives also have firmware information on the platters, which might result in problems with your read/write heads of the drive.
Locked Spindle – Symptoms of a locked spindle are also a physical sound, many times sounding much louder than a typical head crash. As with a head crash, this usually requires replacement of the drive.
Recovery of your data can be a difficult process depending on the cause of data loss. Technicians may have to dissemble your drive to recover the data. As they do so, they carefully cover the hard drive to avoid exposure to dust and other particles. Special tools, equipment, and software is needed for reading data on a damaged disk. At Cyber Electronics, you can get a free estimate for recovering your computers lost data along with a money back guarantee if we fail to recover your valuable information.