Is your hard drive on its way to failure?

Imagine this scenario: You get home, start up your computer, and head into the kitchen to grab a drink as it boots up. Everything seems normal just like any other day until you are suddenly greeted the Blue Screen of Death!



If you're not familiar with the dreaded BSOD infamously presented by the Microsoft Windows family of operating systems then let me clarify... It's bad. Something has caused a serious error and the only thing left for the computer to do is shut down. This can be caused by a hard drive failure. Sometimes a simple reboot is all it takes to fix many problems but once the hard drive has failed there may only be a few options left to potentially save your precious data.


Think of the hard drive as a sort of long-term memory for your computer. Files and folders are saved to the hard drive and stored for later use. Your hard drive stores all of your computer's information including your files and programs. Hard drives actually have spinning platters and a read head similar to a record player with an arm and a needle. Moving parts like these can be very delicate and wear out over time leading to eventual failure and loss of data.

In the event that you suspect your computer's hard drive has failed, don't try to use system restore or reinstall your operating system (Windows) because doing so can actually cause more harm in the current situation than good and WILL NOT fix the problem. Don't try to fix a problem like this yourself unless you are experienced and know what you are doing. You can very easily loose all of your precious photos, documents, programs, and music.

The best thing to do in a hard drive failure situation is to make an image of the drive as soon as possible onto another working hard drive or some other type of storage device. Basically this is a special type of copy where everything is placed into one large file or several smaller files that represent the contents of the hard drive. There are many good software programs for imaging hard drives such as Norton Ghost and Macrium Reflect. Once you have created an image of the failing hard drive you can use it to restore your data onto a new hard drive. Many times this can solve the problem and rescue even your installed programs.

Beware though. A hard drive failure may only be the beginning of more underlying problems. It is a good idea to get a professional computer diagnosis after a major hardware failure like this as it can save you much time and hassle in the long run.