Computer hardware information

As with most computer hardware, hard drives are a vital piece to your computers overall performance. Throughout the last several years the technology involved with Hard Drives has exploded beyond what anyone expected possible years ago. Back as recent as 5 years ago, it would cost almost $300 to get a Hard Drive with only 8GB of storage. Now a days, it is not uncommon to see a stock computer come with over 300GB of memory and the entire PC only costs roughly $700.

Hard drives have a lot of moving parts and generate a lot of heat as they work. This makes them susceptible to malfunctions. Let’s take a look at some of the most common drive problems and causes, and see what can be done about them.

Dead Drive:

Nothing is scarier that to power up your computer and get an error message related to the hard drive. The number and wording of the different errors that can be presented are too numerous to list here, but they usually contain one or more of the following words from these phrases:

• Primary hard disk/drive fail
• Master hard disk/drive fail
• Cannot find operating system
• Boot device fail

If when you boot up your computer you notice any of the following messages above, or something similar to it, I encourage you to visit our site devoted to diagnosing and repairing dead hard drives. For a direct link to your site please refer to Appendix A at the bottom of this article.

Intermittent Drive Problems

Thankfully, intermittent problems are more common than a drive simply dying, and they give you the chance to get some, if not all, of your data off the drive before replacing it or before it fails altogether.

There are many signs of a drive with an intermittent fault:

Consistently not being able to gain access to a file or files
Crashes, lockups, or rebooting while accessing data on the drive
Drive intermittently not available at system boot-up
New, unusual noises coming from the drive. Scrapping, grinding, or rattling are the usual signs of a worn-out drive.
Error messages from the operating system concerning the drive

If you experience any of the above, stop what you are doing immediately and try to make a safe, off-the-PC copy of any data saved since the last full backup.

If you think you are experiencing intermittent Drive Problems, then I suggest you visit our section on resolving intermittent drive issues. For a direct link to our site please refer to the link in Appendix A at the bottom of this article.