How to repair a hard drive   

Hard drives just like any other component of a computer are susceptible to damage whether that be physical damage or software problems. Encountering a hard drive problem can be frustrating and induce panic because your computer will stop working and you'll probably have a lot of important files, photos, music and videos stored on it. If it's the first time you've encounter this problem - do not panic! Call a professional computer repair company for help right away. However, there are some things you can do to determine help determine the casue of the problem before the technician arrives.

Physical or software hard drive problem?

One easy way to diagnose a hard drive problem is by going to the system BIOS (usually by pressing the F2 key) during boot-up. If the hard drive cannot be detected by the BIOS, then it is likely that the problem is physical in origin. This can be due to loose cables to the hard drive, heat, dirt, moisture or static electricity - maybe even all of them. Another sign of physical damage to the hard driveis if you hear a scraping or a clicking sound coming from it.

If your computer can still boot up but shows some errors and there is no unusual sound coming from the hard drive, it may have what is called a 'logical failure'. Data files are stored at logical locations that relate to a number of physical locations on the surface of the hard disk. These locations are held in a data table by the Windows operating system and indexed when running specific software applications. Windows errors will sometimes corrupt these tables and make the data inaccessible. A logical failure. Logical errors can be repaired using software. There is a lot of software online designed to diagnose and repair various hard drive errors. Read the reviews and features and choose one according to the error you have encountered. It may just fix the problem.

Warning Will Robinson

Before you start tinkering with your hard drive, be sure to check its warranty. You may be ableto get it repaired without any additional cost if it is still under warranty.

Bad sector repairing

If you are trying to open a file and for some reason, errors are being displayed on the screen, the location of that file in the hard drive may have a bad sector. The whole content of that file, however, is not stored in just one sector. They are stored in several different sectors depending on what was available at the time the file was created or updated. The file then becomes inaccessible if these sectors get damaged. Nevertheless, all the data in that file is not lost and it can still be recovered.

Windows has a built-in application that can fix various kinds of hard drive problems such as bad sectors. Here is how to scan and repair them.

1. Open ‘My Computer’ to see the drives and devices connected to your computer
2. Right click on the hard drive that is having a problem and select ‘Properties’ option
3. Select the ‘Tools’ tab and under the ‘Error-checking’ option, click on ‘Check now’ button
4. On the following window, select all the check boxes to fix file system errors as well as scan and recover bad sectors then click on the ‘Start’ button option in the current window
5. A notification then will be shown that Windows needs exclusive access to the hard drive in order to perform the requested operation and that it will be scheduled the next time you restart the computer. Select the ‘Yes’ option
6. Close all application running and restart your computer to start the process

Repairing a corrupt hard drive

Repairing a corrupt hard drive can be difficult and consumes a lot of time. First, you need to find a hard disk utility software that can back up or recover most of the data stored on the corrupt hard drive - assuming that you still want the data. When you have found some utility software, download and burn it into a CD or DVD disk and boot your computer using this software (it should be bootable). Follow the on-screen instructions until the process is completed.

After recovering your data, you need to format the hard drive and reinstall your operating system. Your operating system installer comes with a hard disk formatting utility that erases everything in the hard drive before installing the operating system itself. If all else fails you may need to use the services of a computer repair company that specialises in retrieving data.

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