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Failing Hard Drives

Hello! And welcome to the new format! After much hounding by one of my readers (you know who you are!) I have finally made an attempt at arriving in the 21st century. Please let me know if it is acceptable. ~ Dan

Failing hard drives

Failing hard drives are occurring with more frequency recently, with many urgent enough to require data recovery procedures, so I thought I should bring up what to watch for, what to do and how to prevent catastrophes.

What to watch for

Symptoms of a failing hard drive can be any of the following. These are the computer trying to read a part of the hard drive that it cannot access, and trying, and trying, and ...

• Trouble booting. The computer will freeze for extended periods, not boot at all until after multiple power-downs and restarts, only then it will finally come up.
• Random freezing. You could be working along, and all of the sudden your computer freezes completely, then picks itself back up and off you go.
• Slow computer. This happens when you have files getting lost on the drive, but it isn't physically damaged enough to freeze on you yet. If you have a good anti-virus program such as Kaspersky, good anti-spyware such as Spybot Search & Destroy, and have scanned your drive and come up clean, it is possible that your drive can be going bad on you.

Note that the last two symptoms will also occur while accessing an external hard drive that is going bad.

What to do

If you have any of these symptoms, DON'T KEEP TRYING TO REBOOT — to work, to listen to that tune, etc. Turn that puppy OFF!!!

Why?

Because if you wait until the drive goes bad, you will have a very expensive ($1,000+) data recovery to go through rather than an hours worth of work and a new drive with at least most of your programs and data intact. It's not much of a choice whether it is your business or your personal computer.

In fact, if you noticed any of these symptoms , and had all of your data files closed,  you would be better off simply disconnecting the power than you would be in doing a standard shutdown of your computer because the longer that drive is running, the less time we have to make a copy of it before it really goes bad.

If you notice any of the above failing hard drive symptoms, CALL US! IMMEDIATELY!!! And we'll have a good chance of saving your data and your programs.

How to prevent catastrophes

If you want to help prevent this sort of trouble, get a battery-backup unit. A power strip is NOT a battery-backup. The device has to say “UPS” (Uninterruptible Power Supply) on the box, and cost more than $50.00. If you have a simple workstation, you can get one rated at 500+/- and have enough time to shut down your computer without worrying about it. If you have a more complicated computer system and/or large monitors, want emergency lights and radio, or you simply want more time to work through a power-outage, get a 750-1500W unit.

Very important bit of data – Do NOT plug your printer into a UPS. Especially laser printers. Keep them plugged into the wall, or even better, the “Surge Protection” side of a UPS. (Some have two banks of outlets with only one bank being “Battery Backup/Surge Protection” and you can plug other electronics into the other side labeled “Surge Protection” without effecting the “Battery Backup/Surge Protection” side.)

The other action you can take is to backup your drives. The rule on this is to backup as often as you can afford to lose your data. ie: How many days of data can you afford to lose without going out of business? There is no shame in not having a backup until your hard drive fails. So if you don't have a good backup, call us and we can come help you get one that will work good for your computer system.

Cheers!
Dan Renner, Editor
Los Angeles Computerhelp Computer Networking News

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