Having a fail-safe in place for your precious data is crucial to your security detail for your website and business. While your website back-up is an obligatory setting to ensure you are always within the reach of a copy of your website in the event a cybercriminal attack, backing up your hard disk data on all of your machines is equally important.

Your hard disks a prune to various errors, mishaps, and threats, and having a backup in place to retrieve lost files and folders. Cover all of your bases in the event of formatting, accidental deletion or a hacker attacking your hardware. Having a separate backup copy in a different location remains the best and easiest way to recover data lost or destroyed from an internal or external hard disk drive corruption or failure.

The reality is that hard disk failure can occur at any time due to a myriad of issues including but not limited to, virus attack, damaged block, sectors and corrupted operating system files, bad power supply, faulty hardware components, and good old human error. Hardware failure is more common than you think.

Well to note that having the best UK hosting provider with a robust outfit of features, applications and solutions for all your website and hosting needs is equally crucial and beneficial to the health of your website and PC hardware.

We’re going to breakdown the top 6 reasons for Hard Disk Failure and how to avoid and mitigate them. We will also outline a Data Recovery Solution for each one.

Table of Contents

5 of the Worst Reasons for Hard Disk Failure and How to Solve Them

Following is an outline of the six major reasons for hard disk failure with their solutions which will ensure the recovery of data easily, without affecting, corrupting or modifying any data.

1. Firmware, Hardware or Manufacturer Faults

How to Detect:

The hard disk is not recognised by the system or it is undetectable.
After powering up the system fails to boot completely or pauses in the middle of the booting up process.

Reason:

This system error occurs most frequently with a brand new hard disk. Sometimes the new drive works and then after a few days, the error begins. This is because the manufacturer installed a faulty hard disk without testing the machine first.

Solution:

The good news is that you can contact the hard disk manufacturer and request a Return Authorisation or an RA because the hard disk remains under warranty. This is an easy remedy that incurs no costs to you the user.

However, if you were able to use the device at the onset and saved files within the first few days, you may encounter loss of crucial data on the hard disk. These files are corrupted along with the disk and won’t be recovered. If you used a cloud backup during that short time then your files will be safe. This is why employing methods of back up is of the utmost importance at all times.

Unfortunately, the manufacturer of the hard disk will not extend the warranty to your data nor will they seek to recover it from the corrupted disk. Using data recovery software from Windows or Mac that can store your data in your cloud account is best.

2. Heat Damage

How to Detect:

Internal fans are moving slowly or not at all.
You begin to hear clicking sounds or noises from the system hardware.
The computer becomes heated soon after starting use.

Reason:

Heat is a destructive force to hardware systems and is the most common cause of hard disk failure. Most likely it is caused by poor ventilation or a faulty CPU fan. Once a system overheats to a peak temperature it leads to sudden hard disk failure. The disk will eventually crash or incur severe damage that is irreversible.

Solution:

Check that your CPU fans are in good working conditions, ensure that the processor and their peripherals are receiving adequate cooling.

A fail-safe guarantee that ensures the CPU fans remain is thermal paste or thermal compound. This can be applied between the heat sinks of the CPU fan so that they run as designed.

You can also use Stellar SMART tool, which notifies the user about the hard disk conditions and any future risks associated with the hardware, monitoring software for your hard drive.

3. Mechanical or Internal Failure

An internal error that occurs in the hard disk usually caused by a number of reasons like bad sectors and blocks, the spindle motor stops functioning, PCB board becomes damaged and the read/write head is immovable.

Symptoms:

During PC startup you hear clicking or grinding noises from the hard drive.
Files and folders become invisible or corrupt, preventing access.
System freezes completely
Black or the blue screen appears after system boot up and restarting the system is prevented.

Reason:

Hard drives contain moving parts that may degrade in quality over time resulting in a damaged hard disk on the mechanical side. Additional a virus attack can format and erase hard disk data, corrupt system files or reconfigure the hard disk which leads to mechanical failure.

Hackers employ many rootkit viruses through various channels. When the user reboots the system it becomes active this destroying the entire system function at the BIOS level. However, the latest Windows Operating Systems include a built-in malware tool that removes it using UEFI or Unified Extensible Firmware Interface technology.

Solution:

Ensure that you have a top-notch Anti-virus, Malware & Firewall Software installed on your computer or laptop. Schedule your anti-virus software to run weekly checks for any breaches in the system, viruses or malware. Set system updates at a regular frequency, weekly is recommended. The best practice is to replace the hard-drive every 3-4 years.

4. Corrupted Files

Symptoms:

Your key system files become corrupt or damaged, preventing any users from accessing them in the system.
You experience sudden system shutdowns or forced restarts caused by power failure causing files to be corrupted. The hard disk becomes inaccessible.

Reason:

Continued improper shut down of the PC, closing running programs by accident, and using faulty pirated or malicious applications can all contribute to file corruption. Power surges play a factor in making a hard disk unstable and thus corrupting system files.

Solution:

Best to shut down the PC or Laptop the standard way. This ensures all applications are closed properly, as well as stopping the command kernel from powering CPU equipment.
Do not install illegally obtained or pirated software. These are often than not faulty or contain malicious code.

5. Human Error

Mistakes made by users can be the leading cause of hard disk failure and loss of data. These errors include incorrectly modifying or altering system registry settings, changing system file attributes and locations, and installing operating systems incorrectly.

These errors require a professional technician to repair or a very powerful system recovery tool to probe for the issues via a deep search.

The need for Back up

We’ve surely given you a lot to think about when it comes to the health of the hard disk on all of your company systems.

As the leader in UK website hosting, we have many tools at our disposal to help you secure all the precious data housed on your hard drives.

As discussed, safeguarding your hard drives is important via the solutions in this article. However, Storing all of your important data on physical hard drives alone is a recipe for disaster.

As we aforementioned, having a Back up of all your files including your website is the best option to ensure quick data recovery in the event of something going wrong. Our cloud-based back up can store all of your files, your website and its files with ease.

Data Recovery is more accessible with a comprehensive back up in place.