Hard drive failure is one of a computer user’s worst nightmares. Not only does it mean your computer is out of commission for an extended period of time. It also means you may or may not have lost precious files like home movies, pictures, music, tax information, and much more. There is a lot to know about hard drive failure, and not all of it is doom and gloom. Today we will layout what you must know about data loss.

Several Kinds Of Hard Drive Crashes:
There are a lot of different reasons a hard drive might “crash”, and not all of them are physically due to something wrong with the hard drive. More often than not, at least from what we see come across our repair desks, people confuse a hard drive crash with an operating system crash. Symptoms are often very similar, but solutions are very different. If your operating system crashes, it is a quick, easy fix, a simple reinstall of the operating system. If for example, the operating system crashes because of a physical issue with the drive itself, that is a totally different issue.

Our definition of a crashed hard drive is a physical failure, a complete failure. Often times, even if a drive fails, the data is still readable on other computers. Many hard drives operate totally fine with loads of physical problems because they are in areas where no data is stored. There are very few situations where a hard drive crashes and the data cannot be saved by using traditional methods. Such as, hooking it up to another computer and copying them off. So what we are saying is, RELAX! You might not be able to fix it yourself in all cases, but any computer repair shop worth a darn should easily be able to recover your files.

After The Crash:
The key here is not to panic. Try reloading your operating system as a first option. Remember, if the drive is making noise, a grinding or clicking, you should turn off your computer ASAP! You’ll need to take it to a computer repair shop in most cases. If you want to try fixing it at home, you will certainly need to hook it up to a different computer at this point. If the drive isn’t coming up at all, you’ve got some issues. (We hesitate to share this, but we have actually have gotten a hard drive to work long enough to recover files by putting it in a zip lock bag and placing it in the freezer for about 20 minutes. Totally last ditch but it has worked for us.) If the operating system reload doesn’t work, but the drive itself still shows up when your computer turns on, you should be able to get your files just fine.

Dont Try This At Home

Hard drives are amazingly affordable these days. If you suffer a hard drive failure and don’t really have anything you need saved, installing a new one is about a five minute process. Then, providing you have your computers operating or recovery CD, you should be back up and running in less than an hour! (See, it’s not so scary!)

Crash Prevention:
Keeping your computer defragmented, free of virus and spyware infections, and using windows updates, should keep your computer free of software “crashes”. As far as a physical crash goes, there is nothing you can do. Odds are you didn’t cause it. It’s just a part of life. Inside the hard drive there are a lot of moving parts, discs with data spinning at a high rate of speed. Failure just happens, and again that’s why backing up your data is an absolute must.

How To Be Ready:
The only way to be ready in case of a hard drive failure is by using some sort of backup procedure. There are methods like burning cd’s, using a flash drive, or even an external hard drive. The best way in our opinion, is using an online backup system like Mozy. They are the world’s most popular, the easiest to use, and your files are accessible from anywhere, at any time. Sure it costs a little bit of cash, but if you care at all about your files, think of it as an insurance policy. Go to the site now (here is a link) and sign up for their unlimited backup account. It’s more important than you may think, and in the event your hard drive crashes or you accidentally delete something, you will be happy you have it.