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Keeping Your Data Safe: Tips to Avoid a Corrupted Hard Drive

Samantha Gonzales1546 06-Nov-2018

Keeping Your Data Safe: Tips to Avoid a Corrupted Hard Drive

Your hard drive is a place where you mostly store most of your important data and files. But here's the thing ‒ uncontrollable circumstances happen. Your data might have been corrupted, your hard drive stopped working, or your laptop got stolen.

These things are just examples of worst-case scenarios that can happen to anyone, but they do occur. That's why it's crucial to have all your data secured and backed up. Also, you need to understand that you need to take an extraordinary amount of care to your hard drive and to limit its exposure to highly damaging activities.

Signs that your hard drive has a problem

While most hard drive failures are due to a highly damaging event, there are some cases wherein they slowly degenerate over time.

Here are the tell-tale signs of a failing hard drive:

  • Constant crashes of the hard drive
  • Grinding, clicking noises, often in a cyclical pattern
  • Increasing number of bad sectors throughout chkdsk scans
  • Increasingly hot temperatures of the computer
  • Problems throughout the boot-up process
  • Poor computer performance during standard procedures
  • Constant computer freezes
  • Files that are corrupted fail to open or suddenly disappear

Always Handle It With Care

An average lifespan of a hard drive lasts for about six years. But that doesn't mean that they don't die off sooner. Sometimes, some people blame it solely to the manufacturer, while failing to realize that a hard drive's lifespan also depends on how they take care of it.

There are some things that you have to take into consideration to ensure our hard drive's longevity. For instance, you have to be diligent enough in maintaining proper airflow in your computer case as heat can build up quickly.

Here's what you can do ‒ open your computer case and clean out all the dust that might have accumulated. Always remember to keep your laptop in a flat, hard surface to optimize the circulation of air. Also, opt to use a surge protector to protect your hard drive from frying. As electricity isn't always constant, and a badly-timed surge can be detrimental to your hard drive's health.

Remove Unwanted Data

Defragmenting your hard drive can sometimes be a pain. You need to schedule it at a time where you're not using your computer. It also requires that you have an extra disc space, allowing you to save some of your files in a USB.

While the entire process is tedious, experts urge to defragment hard drives. Doing so will keep all your data in order, as well as not to damage your hard drive in the long run. Moreover, it also significantly boosts your computer's overall speed performance.

Check Your Hard Drive’s Temperature

When hard drives grow extremely hot, it's already a clear indicator of a looming hard drive failure. Chances are, hard drive components are susceptible to burned circuit boards if it is exposed to high levels of temperature. To prevent this from happening, make sure your device as sufficient cooling and ventilation systems. Backup your files beforehand by using a second hard drive, cloud systems, or other document management programs. If these overheating problems persist despite recent ventilation changes, it's also advisable not to boot the drive as this can escalate the damage.

Make it a Habit to Scan for Viruses And Malware

Nope, doing a simple virus scan won't do it for you these days. You have to tediously scan your computer for possible spyware, adware, Trojan horses, worms and others.

Malware causes your computer's system to lead to unusual hard drive activity and crashes. That's why it's essential to check your computer from time to time for potential malware, for you to be able to address most of these problems.

Scanning your computer for possible viruses usually takes several minutes or longer, depending on the number of files that you have. So the more data that you have, the slower your computer will be, and the more time it will take to scan your PC.

Seek a Professional

Hard drives fail to function for many reasons. In some cases, hard drive damage becomes extremely severe that it's virtually unusable. Luckily, there is still a way to recover all those lost files if your data isn't backed up beforehand. If you encounter a failed hard drive, a professional in data recovery service will help you recover your data.

If you experienced any data loss, you need to come up with a solid backup plan to retrieve all those precious information back. As early as today, back your computer as soon as possible. Also, by seeking the help of a professional, you'll be able to identify the extent of its severity. These experts will be able to recover the precious data that you've lost.


Updated 07-Sep-2019
Samantha is an Outreach Community Specialist and part-time blogger/writer. Her goal is to drive awareness to people through her writings.

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