A dead or dying hard drive can be one of the most devistating things to a computer user. This is where all of your information is stored; your programs, your emails, your pictures, your documents, everything!

If you are looking for information on how to back-up this data so that it is safe when your hard drive does keel over, check out my article on “Backing It Up”.

I guess the first thing we should address is why a hard drive would fail. I mean this is a computer right? All of these parts are electronic and electronics rarely fail (outside of power dips or spikes) right?

Wrong! Computer hard drives use moving parts. They have a spinning metal disk (hard disk - now you know where this comes from) and a head that moves back and for reading from this disk. Many things can happen due to the speed and motion of the disk such as the motor wearing out on either the head or the spindle that spins the hard disk. This is seen even more in laptop computers where hard drives are easily bounced around.

So what are some of the warning signs that your hard drive is failing?

Well the major signs come from sound -

• A metal scratching metal sound, think fork and knife on a plate.
• A constant ticking sound, think that pull cord on your ceiling fan that keeps hitting the light.

Other things that you may notice (these aren’t always related to strictly hard drive issues).

• System Slowness
• Blue Screen Of Death
• Random System Reboots
• Saved Files Not Opening Correctly
• Programs Consistantly Failing to Open and Run

If you think you may have a hard drive issue and live in the North Atlanta Georgia Area, contact us and have one of our Gigasphere Geeks come and take a look. We can run the proper diagnostic utilities and our mobile computer technicians will be able to replace your hard drive if needed.