How Do You Detect Hard Drive Failure?
Hard drives are wonders of engineering. An “actuator” motor moves an arm equipped with a read-write head over and between several stacked disk platters, usually spinning at speeds between about 5,400 and 7,200 revolutions per minutes or more. With all these moving parts and electrical components, hard drives are quite the complex mechanical devices. As such, when they fail, they usually fail completely, and they inevitably will as their mechanical components degrade. Unfortunately, sometimes this happens far too early in a hard drive’s life and precious data is threatened. Knowing how to detect hard drive failure early can save your data and the headache that results from data loss. Listen for sounds coming from the hard drive while it is being read from or written to. If it makes mysterious, repetitive clicking noises, a few things could be happening. The hard drive’s read-write head may be failing, the actuator motor may be failing or the disk platters may be spinning incorrectly. Wa
