Troubleshooting Hard Drive Failure Issues
Hard drives are built to last but even the sturdiest hardware has a life expectancy and issues can crop up much before it reaches that point. Hard drive issues are among the most annoying but also among the most common problems you can encounter on your computer.
There are many issues related to hard drives and while some of them are very easily fixed, some can be a real nuisance. This article will give you some ideas on how to deal with common hard drive problems.
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Table of Contents
Run a virus and malware scan
Before you can rule out odd computer behavior as a hard drive failure, it's worth running your favorite PC security suite and doing a scan. If you do not use a dedicated home security product, you can always use the Windows 10 Defender application.
To access Windows Defender, you can open your start menu and type in "virus". This will bring up the "Virus and Threat Protection" system settings shortcut. Click it and in the new window click "Scan options", then choose a full scan and run it.
A full virus and malware scan will make sure that the issue you are dealing with is not software related.
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Run an error checking pass
Sometimes hard drives simply go bad. Data corruption and sectors going bad is not as uncommon as many people think. To rule this out and potentially solve any issues related to bad sectors, run the Windows error checking tool. Right click your hard drives in order, then choose "Properties" and in the popup window, select "Tools". Use the "Error checking" section to run a scan that will take care of any physical issues with your hard drives.
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Look for dedicated hard drive scan and repair tools from the device’s manufacturer
A lot of hard drive makers provide their own special utilities that can take care of a wide range of issues with your hard drives. Those toolkits can usually be found on the website of the manufacturer.
For example, Seagate, one of the bigger disk storage manufacturers, has a dedicated page on its website with a number of different toolkits that can sometimes take care of issues the built-in Windows tools cannot handle.
As a final note, always bear in mind that sometimes hard drive failures may be irreparable and you may need to replace the faulty drive with a new one. Always extract and back up whatever valuable and still accessible information you have on the problematic drive before resorting to this step.
