Computers have become an integral part of every home and office in today's fast paced world. In fact, to carry a computer with you are no more a fashion fad but a business necessity not only to keep you up-to-date but help you process many other things while still on the move. It is no surprise therefore, that we should understand some basics of our computers if we are to ensure its smooth running at all times.
As we work on our computers daily, there are many error messages that keep popping up and most of them are ignored. What we fail to understand is that these messages are indicators of a malfunctioning hard drive which could be on the verge of a crash soon. A hard drive crash will not only affect our daily duties but also cause lot of hardships through loss of important data. Some of the most common errors are, hard drive not Formatted, Operating system not found, hard drive not found, Disk failure or Disk drive corrupted, Unknown booting device etc.
Each error indicates a different problem the hard drive may be facing and most of them need immediate attention. A 'hard drive not formatted' error indicates damaged, deleted or corrupted hard drive partition. Anything from power cuts or voltage surges to viruses can cause this. Some disk partitioning utilities and software downloads or updates could also be the reason. Such a message blinking could mean some alterations in BIOS boot priorities have occurred or the hard disk has turned bad or a virus has infected certain parts of the hard drive. These symptoms should be attended to immediately, to avoid further damage to your hard drive.
Apart from such pop up images, also look out for any tell tale signs like clicking sounds that are emitted from your computer's hard drive. These sounds indicate corrupted firmware or damaged magnetic platters, affected PCB controller, misalignment of the hard drive components due to a fall and power surges. An overheated hard drive could also cause expansion of the internal components, which come in contact of each other causing the click sounds. Another reason could be a broken actuator arm that sways freely inside your CPU.
If the problems are left unattended, it would eventually cause the system to freeze or hang. A computer hangs or freezes when the user is unable to work, give any further instructions and when other accessories like mouse or the keyboard fail to navigate. A freezing or hanging computer means existence of bad sectors on your computer's hard drive making it difficult to read or surpass them. This hinders the hard drive's ability to make necessary transactions like reading files or loading programs and is not able to access other sectors without completing the given command. Though rebooting or restarting the computer may help a few times, this condition should not be left unattended to as the bad sectors may increase with increased usage causing the complete hard disk to crash.
Heed to the symptoms of your ailing hard disk and you can be guaranteed a life time trouble free computer.
Hard Drive Crash Recovery
Most people only think of backing up their data after they experience a problem. Don't set yourself up for a data loss disaster.
Your data integrity action plan should consist of the following:
1) How often you will back up your data
2) What data you will back up
3) What back up procedure you will use
How often you back up your data can only be determined by how important you feel it is. Answer this question "If my hard drive crashed right now, I would be alright if I had the data from at least (time) ago".
Of course you would want everything but if you could have the data from 1 month, or 6 months ago would that be sufficient? Whatever time is sufficient mark it on your calendar both a hard copy and set up a meeting on your PC to remind you.
You change your smoke detector batteries when you turn your clock back and when you turn it ahead right? Well back up your data then too.
If you don't change your clocks then pick some holidays or special dates that happen close to the timeframe you want to back up your data so you won't forget.
What data you back up depends on how you use your PC. Some of the key directories, if you are using Windows, are the My Documents, Favorites and Desktop directories.
Remember if you are using multiple profiles on your PC then the three directories above can be different for each profile and each one would need to be backed up.
You will also want to include your email data. Don't forget to write down the email accounts you have. You should also write down any username and passwords so they are not lost. You should look at every directory to see if it has information that you would need.
Make a list of all the software programs you are using. If you have the physical CDs put them all together in a safe location.
Don't forget the CDs for your peripherals like your scanner, digital camera, PDA etc… Collecting these CDs may remind you of additional data that you need to back up.
If you are running software that you installed from downloaded files, burn them to a CD-R and add it to your collection. If you use a CD-R or DVD-R you can update it as you download and install new applications.
What procedure you use to back up your data can be determined by the amount of data you want to back up. Your data might fit onto a CD or DVD in which case you just need to burn it and you're done.
If it spans multiple DVDs then you might want to consider getting a second hard drive to copy your data onto. If you are not comfortable with adding a second internal hard drive or you are using a laptop then you can purchase an external hard drive to back up your data.
The information you have on your hard drive could disappear in a flash. If you don't want to spend up to $3,000 to have a data recovery company retrieve what information they can from your hard drive, then take a few minutes right now and create your back up action plan.
If you ever have a data emergency your action plan will be your insurance policy. If you adhere to it, your valuable data will adhere to you!
Both Bryan Halverson & Tim Henry are contributors for EditorialToday. The above articles have been edited for relevancy and timeliness. All write-ups, reviews, tips and guides published by EditorialToday.com and its partners or affiliates are for informational purposes only. They should not be used for any legal or any other type of advice. We do not endorse any author, contributor, writer or article posted by our team.
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