Symptoms of Hard Drive(HDD) pre-failure

– Slowing Computer, Randomly Freeze or Blue Screen

– Corrupted Data

If you’re beginning to find files that fail to copy or open, even though the file saved without errors, or if files suddenly disappear, all these are the typical signs of a gradual hard drive failure.

– Clicking sound

When you hear strange noises coming from your hard drive, a repetitive sound also known as the click of death is caused by the head as it is trying to write data and recovers from errors in doing so. Grinding or screeching noises indicate that parts of the hardware, for example, the bearings or spindle motor, are failing.

– Hard drive S.M.A.R.T.

There are tools that aim to predict hard drive failure by reading the S.M.A.R.T. (Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology) data that is recorded by the operating system. Unfortunately, like most other methods listed above, S.M.A.R.T. is notoriously unreliable in predicting hard drive failure and the catastrophe will often happen before the warning of S.M.A.R.T. kicks in.

However, regardless of what the issue behind these symptoms is, it is recommended that you immediately make a backup and replace a new hard drive.