Believe it or not, hard drives tend to fail right out of the blue. Or at least it seems that way to most people whose hard drives fail.
In reality, your hard drive may have been giving you warning signs for days, weeks or months, prior to that ultimate "swan song."
These warning signs can be commonly overlooked or tempered by users who think, "I'm just getting too much stuff on my drive. I'm going to have to offload some data."
But the next time you have a warning sign jump up and bite you, you better get ready, because the downhill slide of your disk drive maybe on the brink.
Software Glitches
These are one of the most common indicators that something is wrong with your hard drive, especially for programs that make use of significant amounts of data (like QuickBooks).
When hard drives are about to go super nova, they sometimes have dying shudders that cause data to be difficult to find or slow to read. In fact, drives may pause when they should be "full speed" ahead.
If you find you're encounter unusual behavior with programs other than QuickBooks that use a lot of data, and the same symptoms with QuickBooks, the most likely answer is that it's not QuickBooks, there's something wrong with your hard drive or computer's memory management I/O subsystem.
And in reality, the odds are far greater it's the hard drive than memory management.
Lifewire
Lifewire just published (Feb. 2) an updated list of the best free hard drive test software programs. Some of the biggest manufacturers – Fujitsu, Seagate, Samsung, Western Digital –offer programs designed to "test their drives" (only), but many of the other products listed will work with any manufacturers' drive(s).
Noises from Within
These can be scary, especially if you're unclear as to whether they're the result of a system fan going out or a hard drive about to shatter into oblivion. Either way, the end of the noise may mean the end of your computer, or at least your hard drive.
While a noisy fan is all too often the result of too many dust bunnies blocking the air intake, clogging up the fan blades or packed inside your computer's case, the truth is you've never cleaned them out.
The perils of fan noise are not nearly so alarming as the thought that the read head is dragging across your hard drive media or that the drive is about to spontaneously combust and melt before your eyes.
Either way, when the noises start, it's time to immediately power down and get your computer to a computer hardware professional that can hopefully salvage what's soon to otherwise be ailing you.
Performance is a Thing of the Past
Are you running on borrowed time thinking that the ever slower performance of your computer is because you now have 60 percent of the hard drive spoken for?
While it true I believe a computer hard drive is 'too small' when it gets to having more than 50 percent of its belly full, I also believe it shouldn't run as though it was 99.9 percent full. Today's hard drives are designed to give much better performance at greater concentrations of data than the hard drives of just a few years ago. After all, hard drive manufacturers are having to compete with Solid State Drives (SSDs).
If your computer is running like molasses in winter when you query data from the hard drive, and your memory is performing right and left, but the little I/O read, write and other bytes of the Windows processes or performance monitors are just sitting still, chances are you have hard drive problems. These problems can be either mechanical or software based..After all, you could have a nasty virus worming its way through your data, consuming your critical information faster than your hard drive can answer commands, especially if you let your AntiVirus software lapse.
But odds are that if the progression of poor performance has been over the last couple of weeks or so, and your drive isn't nearly full, there's a serious underlying mechanical issue with the drive that's likely to cause failure if you keep thinking, "Oh, it will get better."
The answer is clear – "It won't."
boot failure
Wait, wait and more waiting for your computer to wake up
Oh, those hibernation/sleep mode moments. Of course, I've told you time and time again to turn off hibernation and sleep-mode, along with every other green setting if you're running QuickBooks. So, if you're experiencing prolonged wait times or partial boot failures during initial load of Windows, your hard drive is more than likely about to "bite the farm."
Get out the shovel and start digging the grave, unless of course you've march directly to the IT repair. "Do not pass go." "Do not collect $200." There's no time to "roll the dice" and see if you get a different hand and your hard drive boots successfully.
Now it's true, it's normal for computers to boot more slowly over time, because you typically load more crap into the startup routines, but you can do something about that, including going into the "start-up" folder and removing all those things you didn't really need to put in there in the first place.
You also can use one of several software programs to help sweep away the junk. I happen to like CCleaner to get rid of crap in the windows registry that has been left over longer than the stuff in that Tupperware at the back of the third shelf in your refrigerator. (That green thing is living and breathing in there, ready to pounce the moment you open the top.)
Some of that stuff, along with those dust bunnies just need to be cleaned out of your computer (even more often then you clean-out your refrigerator).
By the way, I guess the reason so many of those hard drive manufacturers offer free software downloads to analyze your hard drive is because so many of their hard drives are failing. A recent survey showed that one in particular – the Seagate drive, ST4000DX000 – a 4 TB drive – had a 13.57 percent failure rate.
On the other hand, its ST8000NM0055 – 8 TB drive had a 0 percent failure rate. I wonder which of those is made here in Oklahoma City?