What causes your hard drive to crash?

Everything we do is stored on our computer’s hard drive. Be it installing a new application, setting up a new game, or simply saving our documents.

Bits of data are constantly being saved and read from the hard drive.

However, hard drives are essentially made up of mechanical components are just like everything else, are subject to failure over time. And when that happens, its a very dark day.

The drive might be temporarily damaged or it may be more severe and needs to be sent to data recovery experts for the data to be retrieved.

So what are the reasons behind a hard drive failure and what can you do about it?

Let’s dive into that:

What are the Causes of Hard Disk Failure?

There are several reasons behind hard drive failure, but the damage they cause is the same. Here are five common causes:

• Human Errors – are the primary culprits. A wrong installation of OS, alteration in system files attributes, accidental deletion of directories are hard to repair.
• Power Surges – occurs when there is a sudden uncontrollable spike or drop of the electrical charge in the power lines.
• Water Damage – leads to unwanted surges in electrical current that in turn impacts the mechanism of devices.
• Internal Failures – arises with the hardware components due to malware attack, bad sectors, or improper power supply.
• Overheating – happens due to faulty CPU fan, improper ventilation, high-voltage power supply, etc. The excessive heating up of the system crashes the disk.

What are the Symptoms of Hard Disk Failure?

If your hard disk fails or crashes, or is about to, the following are some signs to look for:

• Blue Screen of Death – due to issues with software or hardware.
• Missing or Corrupted Files – due to system corruption or virus attack on the hard disk.
• Unusual Clicking Noises – due to malfunctioning components in your hard disk.
• System Crashes – due to overheating and bad sectors on the disk.
• Longer Booting Time – due to failed sections on the disk.

What are the Measures to Prevent Hard Disk Failure?

When a hard drive crashes, its physical components stop working, causing difficulty reading and writing data. A higher degree of loss is expected in that case. To avoid that from happening, here is what you need to do:

• Be careful when installing any app or software, as it may contain a virus.
• Do not overload the disk.
• Monitor the health of your device.
• Run ‘chkdsk’ often.
• Take care of power fluctuation and dirt buildup.
• Handle the disk with care and store it in the right place.
• Connect and remove the USB cable from the disk carefully.
• Make way for some air circulation.
• Keep an eye on static electricity in the surroundings.
• Update your operating system.
• Delete unwanted programs from the disk.

So in summary:

It’s best to think of your hard drive failure as a WHEN and not IF.

In other words, think that it’s just a matter of time before your hard drive fails instead of thinking it will never fail.

Therefore, what you should be doing right now is ensuring you have a reliable backup system in place so that your data is safe. You can set up a backup system to back up your info to the cloud or you can set up a NAS system on your own network.

Whichever solution you choose, you need to test it. Most people simply set up a backup process but never test to see if the documents can actually be recovered.

You don’t want to find out that it can’t when it’s too late or have a crashed Drobo recovery.