lazserus
Nov 11th, 2011, 7:23 PM
Drives can fail without mechanical issues, so judging whether your drive is failing can at times get tricky. And who wants to pay a diagnostic fee for someone to tell you what you already know? More than 80% of the time it's apparent when a drive shows signs of failure—you can hear it it. Yet occasionally a drive can fail without offering any noisy hints. There are many ways to judge whether a drive will fail, and I will tell you things to look out for.
MECHANICAL FAILURE
Most of the time when a drive begins to fail many warnings are given, mostly audible ones. You will hear scratching or grinding, and at worst a clicking noise when the drive is in use. Hard drives are not too complicated. Depending on age, brand, speed, etc., it all boils down to spinning platters stacked atop one another. When in use, those disks spin as the data is read from them, similar to a CD or DVD, yet the discs involved are metallic and not plastic, and they're stacked/layered. Imagine watching a DVD movie using 4 tandem discs. Your player requires all 4 discs be inserted while watching and, as you watch, the program runs normal for you. Yet behind the curtain all the scenes of the film are spread about these 4 discs. You cannot watch the film without every disc. A hard drive stores information this way, and the device as a whole requires all platters (discs) to function. If a single one is cracked or scratched, there's a good chance you'll witness data corruption. Before describing mechanical issues, lemme introduce you to the anatomy of a hard drive.
http://www.harddrivetech.com/hard_drive_diagram.gif
Because a hard drive is a machine, it is subject to mechanical breakdown. The most common mechanical failure in a hard drive is a head crash, when the head of the drive either shifts or breaks and can no longer read the platters. For those familiar with record players, it's almost identical. The needle can be fine but the head can shift or break, which prevents the player from reading the vinyl. In fact, disc drives in your computer are modeled after record players. Same concept.
As I mentioned in the introduction, you'll likely hear loud scratching, grinding or clicking if a piece of the hard drive breaks or even shifts. The most common issue following someone dropping a laptop is the acuator arm or head shifting in the hard drive, preventing the system from booting or functioning properly. Computers have moving parts and, aside from fans, the hard drive has the most moving parts in any computer, thus more likely to fail before a processor or motherboard.
If you hear grinding, scratching or clicking in your computer, start backing up your files as soon as possible. The drive is dying and can fail in 2 hours or 3,000 hours. You can never know. I had a drive with a twisted head that ran for two years after hearing the initial signs. I backed up my data but continued to use the drive as a backup device. (It still works after 8 years, but I don't trust it to store anything permanent.) It's best to be prepared.
SUBTLE FAILURES
Drives can fail without a mechanism failing. It's less common, but sometimes platters get scratched or there's a defect within one and it cannot record. One of the reasons hard drives have multiple platters is to ensure data is recorded. Even at times a single platter can fail to read or write and you still have full access to your system. But if a single platter fails it's best to start planning a replacement. So how do you know if your drive is failing without audible mechanical noise?
One way to determine if there's a problem is to pay attention to how long it takes to run common software. Any new software will run slower at first because it's creating cache on your system so it can launch quicker in the future. If you run an application regularly, after a few launches it should work rather quickly granted you have the resources to run the application easily. So if you're running an application you use regularly, say like Photoshop, and it once ran faster and is now slow, you should consider the possibility the drive isn't working as it should. Most of the time an application's slow loading time is simply a consequence of having too much shit on your drive, and Windows is plowing through it all when you click the shortcut. But if you only use your laptop for graphics, and only you have installed graphics programs and they're loading lower and slower . . . it's a symptom. Doesn't mean you're HDD is going bad, but it may be related.
The subtle signs of HDD failure are more difficult to recognize because similar symptoms can be seen when you have a lot of adware/spyware on your system, a modest virus is working, your drive is just filled up with software, your drive is filled with software you don't use, your registry is filled with broken links, etc. A symptom of repeated bad sectors (regions of your drive in which data is stored) can point to a defective drive.
Fear not, for there are ways to test the integrity of your drive without spending a single coin.
DRIVE TESTS
Windows is testing inherent hardware testing, though nothing concrete has yet to reach the surface, but the idea is that any MS operating system will be able to notify you if a piece of hardware is not performing as it should. I've seen this work in part in the early days of Vista, though I think MS abandoned the work and focused instead on the interface and common-use functionality. In spite of Microsoft's intentions and abandoned projects, there are more than a dozen simple ways to test your hard drive for flaws if you think it is sick. With exceptions, most drives in retail laptops and desktops or Hitachi or Western Digital—the former more common in laptops and the latter common in desktops. This is only important because they use similar drive technology. You can Google "Hitachi diagnostic" and download for free a tiny scanner that will run a series of in depth tests resulting in whether your drive is healthy. The tests run by the Hitachi program are simple but they are somewhat comprehensive and thus will provide a valid health report. If any test fails according to Hitachi, your drive may be bunk, if only slightly.
To be sincere here, I will say I used to get paid to run drive tests and have seen a share of bogus reports. When data is clustered so much in a sector of a drive, the test may show the sector as faulty. It can be tricky and experience always proves right. With my experience working with computer hardware (since 1995), I've learned to ignore certain signs of drive failure as long as they aren't audible. But never take that risk. If your computing is dragging, it's best to start backing up files. Hell, it's always good to do that regardless.
If you know how to read the free drive tests (always go to the manufacturer, not a third party), and most are simple to read because the source tells you how to read the results, you can always be prepared for a crash. The slightest effort could save you from losing years of work. I know because I lost more than 3 years of work in one fell crash.
MECHANICAL FAILURE
Most of the time when a drive begins to fail many warnings are given, mostly audible ones. You will hear scratching or grinding, and at worst a clicking noise when the drive is in use. Hard drives are not too complicated. Depending on age, brand, speed, etc., it all boils down to spinning platters stacked atop one another. When in use, those disks spin as the data is read from them, similar to a CD or DVD, yet the discs involved are metallic and not plastic, and they're stacked/layered. Imagine watching a DVD movie using 4 tandem discs. Your player requires all 4 discs be inserted while watching and, as you watch, the program runs normal for you. Yet behind the curtain all the scenes of the film are spread about these 4 discs. You cannot watch the film without every disc. A hard drive stores information this way, and the device as a whole requires all platters (discs) to function. If a single one is cracked or scratched, there's a good chance you'll witness data corruption. Before describing mechanical issues, lemme introduce you to the anatomy of a hard drive.
http://www.harddrivetech.com/hard_drive_diagram.gif
Because a hard drive is a machine, it is subject to mechanical breakdown. The most common mechanical failure in a hard drive is a head crash, when the head of the drive either shifts or breaks and can no longer read the platters. For those familiar with record players, it's almost identical. The needle can be fine but the head can shift or break, which prevents the player from reading the vinyl. In fact, disc drives in your computer are modeled after record players. Same concept.
As I mentioned in the introduction, you'll likely hear loud scratching, grinding or clicking if a piece of the hard drive breaks or even shifts. The most common issue following someone dropping a laptop is the acuator arm or head shifting in the hard drive, preventing the system from booting or functioning properly. Computers have moving parts and, aside from fans, the hard drive has the most moving parts in any computer, thus more likely to fail before a processor or motherboard.
If you hear grinding, scratching or clicking in your computer, start backing up your files as soon as possible. The drive is dying and can fail in 2 hours or 3,000 hours. You can never know. I had a drive with a twisted head that ran for two years after hearing the initial signs. I backed up my data but continued to use the drive as a backup device. (It still works after 8 years, but I don't trust it to store anything permanent.) It's best to be prepared.
SUBTLE FAILURES
Drives can fail without a mechanism failing. It's less common, but sometimes platters get scratched or there's a defect within one and it cannot record. One of the reasons hard drives have multiple platters is to ensure data is recorded. Even at times a single platter can fail to read or write and you still have full access to your system. But if a single platter fails it's best to start planning a replacement. So how do you know if your drive is failing without audible mechanical noise?
One way to determine if there's a problem is to pay attention to how long it takes to run common software. Any new software will run slower at first because it's creating cache on your system so it can launch quicker in the future. If you run an application regularly, after a few launches it should work rather quickly granted you have the resources to run the application easily. So if you're running an application you use regularly, say like Photoshop, and it once ran faster and is now slow, you should consider the possibility the drive isn't working as it should. Most of the time an application's slow loading time is simply a consequence of having too much shit on your drive, and Windows is plowing through it all when you click the shortcut. But if you only use your laptop for graphics, and only you have installed graphics programs and they're loading lower and slower . . . it's a symptom. Doesn't mean you're HDD is going bad, but it may be related.
The subtle signs of HDD failure are more difficult to recognize because similar symptoms can be seen when you have a lot of adware/spyware on your system, a modest virus is working, your drive is just filled up with software, your drive is filled with software you don't use, your registry is filled with broken links, etc. A symptom of repeated bad sectors (regions of your drive in which data is stored) can point to a defective drive.
Fear not, for there are ways to test the integrity of your drive without spending a single coin.
DRIVE TESTS
Windows is testing inherent hardware testing, though nothing concrete has yet to reach the surface, but the idea is that any MS operating system will be able to notify you if a piece of hardware is not performing as it should. I've seen this work in part in the early days of Vista, though I think MS abandoned the work and focused instead on the interface and common-use functionality. In spite of Microsoft's intentions and abandoned projects, there are more than a dozen simple ways to test your hard drive for flaws if you think it is sick. With exceptions, most drives in retail laptops and desktops or Hitachi or Western Digital—the former more common in laptops and the latter common in desktops. This is only important because they use similar drive technology. You can Google "Hitachi diagnostic" and download for free a tiny scanner that will run a series of in depth tests resulting in whether your drive is healthy. The tests run by the Hitachi program are simple but they are somewhat comprehensive and thus will provide a valid health report. If any test fails according to Hitachi, your drive may be bunk, if only slightly.
To be sincere here, I will say I used to get paid to run drive tests and have seen a share of bogus reports. When data is clustered so much in a sector of a drive, the test may show the sector as faulty. It can be tricky and experience always proves right. With my experience working with computer hardware (since 1995), I've learned to ignore certain signs of drive failure as long as they aren't audible. But never take that risk. If your computing is dragging, it's best to start backing up files. Hell, it's always good to do that regardless.
If you know how to read the free drive tests (always go to the manufacturer, not a third party), and most are simple to read because the source tells you how to read the results, you can always be prepared for a crash. The slightest effort could save you from losing years of work. I know because I lost more than 3 years of work in one fell crash.