Warning Signs of Hard Drive Failure That Could Lead to Data Loss

Knowing the signs of hard drive failure is very important because hard drive failure is one of the most common causes of data loss. Owing to the nature of these devices, hard drives are bound to crash sooner or later. If you are one of those who hope that yours will do so later rather than sooner, then I say good luck to you. The reality is, hard drive failures account for about 44% of data loss incidents and 13% of hard drives crash in their first year!

Here’s a bit of good news, though. Hard drive failures rarely “just happen”. Telltale signs of hard drive failure are actually exhibited before the drive eventually quits on you. While the symptoms themselves are manageable, ignoring them is something you wouldn’t want to do.

Early warning symptoms of an impending hard drive failure include:

1. Your computer often freezes without probable cause. This is usually accompanied by an unresponsive mouse and an undetected keyboard. The only thing that can get it going again is a restart that doesn’t go through the proper shutdown process.

2. Your files mysteriously disappear. While a lost file or two may have been caused by an accidental deletion on your part, the chances of this happening too often cannot be passed off as errors all the time.

3. The computer locks up during booting. The occasional hanging during the boot process shouldn’t worry you too much but when it happens like every other startup, these could be red flags for a serious problem.

4. Accessing, opening, or saving files are taking awfully slow. It’s like your computer’s memory has suddenly shrinked into nothingness such that even small document files are too much for its capacity.

Again, let me emphasize that any of the above symptoms occurring a few times are not necessarily signs of hard drive problems. A repeated pattern of these however, is too dangerous to disregard. Besides, why wait until it’s too late? Start your data backup now!

So now how do you know when the inevitable has already happened?

The actual hard drive failure is mechanical in nature so you could probably hear metallic noises coming from your computer. That would be the read/write head thrashing about within the drive but not functioning the way it should. The most definite sign of a crashed drive is when your computer refuses to boot and all you get is an error screen advising of a critical system malfunction, aptly called the blue screen of death. If you have not bothered to backup files by then, it does spell doom and gloom for you.

Perhaps you have not experienced any of the above situations and are still feeling confident about your data at this point. So then let me talk about what it would take for you to recover from data loss without a computer backup file. That’s if it can be done at all.

When this happens, all is not actually lost because in some cases, the data can still be retrieved by data recovery software or companies. Be prepared though because this service is going to cost you a pretty penny. The cost could rise to about $300 to $400 dollars and even then there’s no assurance that all your data can be recovered. Tough luck.

I use Carbonite Backup as my online backup service. It provides unlimited storage space and automatic backup, and considering that the subscription fee costs only $54.95 per year, why waste time before backing up your files? That’s just around one sixth of how much data recovery costs! You can also opt to use CDs or external hard drives to do data backup, and these devices don’t cost much either.

I have accumulated a lot of data over the years, and continue to do so. That’s why I try to protect my computer files as securely as possible by using an external hard drive as my onsite backup and Carbonite as my remote backup service.

Don’t wait until you observe signs of hard drive failure in your computer. Make the effort to back up your files ASAP! File backup methods don’t really cost all that much and yet you have the assurance of being spared from the stress, hassle, and opportunity loss that comes with losing data.