Hard drives do not usually die in silence. They normally give you signs of trouble before complete failure. Over the course of several weeks before your drive goes down completely, your drive will have many telltale signs: slow performance; files coming and going (flickering); clicking sounds. Each of these symptoms alone would be easily dismissed as a busy computer, a slow running computer, or a nearly full hard drive. These symptoms are all warning signs of an impending failure. The purpose of this article is to provide a “field guide” to all of these warning signs. What does each one look or sound like? What is occurring with your platter(s)? And most importantly, what is the single answer that applies to all of them?
Each sign here states the same message: you need to get those irreplaceable files off now while the damaged drive still responds. The diagnosis may wait but the data cannot.
1. A rhythmic click or tick, louder when first turning on: the read/write heads are attempting to locate the reference track but cannot locate it. This is the textbook symptom, and it has its own guide. If this occurs, please follow our one line solution: turn off immediately and leave it off. 2. A grind, scrape or squeal: parts that were designed to never contact each other now are contacting and each time the platters rotate, a small portion of the platter’s surface wears away. 3. A drive that spins up, stalls, and tries again continually: the motor or heads are in constant conflict regarding maintaining steady state conditions that cannot be sustained any longer.
4. The machine freezes as soon as you open one particular folder; the computer will lock up completely with a spinning cursor, and the hard-drive light will remain on continuously. It’s a sign that the drive is repeatedly hammering away at the failing sector until it either gives up, or slowly pulls the data from that area. If there’s a specific folder that always seems to lock up the computer, that would indicate where the problem started. 5. Copies that used to fly now crawl. Or they may fail to complete at the same spot every time. This is essentially the same “retry loop” we see when something goes wrong. However this time you get to watch it happen. 6. Files that come and go (or their name turns into gibberish), or occasionally you’ll receive an error message stating there was a “cyclic redundancy” issue. At this point, the file system is starting to decay.
Whatever combination of these symptoms you are seeing, the recovery process follows the exact same path. Rescue the irreplaceable first: get all of your important files (photos, documents, etc.) off of the problematic drive and onto a different drive. Do them in order of importance first. Complete the entire transfer process without hurrying. Don’t attempt to clone the whole disk if you think your drive is having trouble. Hours of continuous reading by your computer could tip a failing drive from bad to worse. Leave the repair tools in the drawer. In terms of saving data, it doesn’t help to run CHKDSK or surface scanners, however many times you try. They are going to add additional loads and writes to the very disk you’re trying to recover. Use those tools during the after-process once all of your files are safely backed up elsewhere. And lastly if your drive starts making any of the sounds listed above, do not try to negotiate with it. Turn it off immediately and let it be read at a hardware level.
Anticipate that your data storage will last for three to five years under normal conditions; however, there’s an enormous range: some drives may fail within their first year while others could last longer than the computer itself. What you should focus on is the “tail”, or long-term reliability of the device. Once a device has exceeded its third year of usage, it should be treated as suspect and regular backups made. If age and one or more signs of potential failure occur at the same time, do something about it immediately (not later).
If your disk reports “SMART” warnings, then believe them. Simply because your disk may appear to be working normally (e.g. you have accessed all of your files without incident) does not mean that it isn’t failing. “Seems fine” means your disk was able to accomplish the task(s) you asked of it most recently. What SMART has detected is failure(s) you have yet to encounter yourself: read errors, bad sector reallocations, etc. Hard drives deteriorate from the outside in and the data you access daily is likely to be far removed from the failing areas of the disk. Immediately make a copy of your irreplaceable information before your disk fails completely.
Not to the point you would trust your disk enough to rely upon it again, and be very suspicious of anything that claims to be different. “Fixing” a failing hard drive using “repair” utilities usually only hides the problem areas from the file system. A “bad sector” still exists physically. For professionals, fixing a failing disk usually involves moving the files off of the disk to an operational unit and then discarding the original. The disk is disposable; the data isn’t.
A free 48-hour diagnostic test provides you with an honest assessment as to how far along in the process your damaged drive has progressed, providing you with a written quote prior to our handling it in any way.