Statistics show that at some point in your computer’s life, your hard drive is going to fail. It just is. The frustrating thing is that there’s not really much you can do to prevent it. There is, however, much you can do to prevent a disaster from turning into a catastrophe.
The first thing you can do is call a hard drive recovery specialist, those lost files need finding and a decent technician should be able to recover at least part of your lost cache.
But if you’re on a budget there are some insider tricks to try first before you call the professionals in. Hard drive failures usually fall into two categories, mechanical, something broken in your hardware or environmental such as overheating, too cold or similar. We take a look at both:
If you’re computer or device has overheated and you think this has led to a total shutdown then it’s time to cool things down. Take out the hard drive and place it in the freezer for up to 20 minutes, then re-install and see if that helps. Remember to put it in a plastic bag so you don’t end up adding water damage to your list of problems.
There may be an ongoing issue inside your machine, so if you can get your hard drive up and running again, then now’s the time to very quickly transfer all your important data to external storage.
If your laptop or computer has shut down but you have no idea why, then it may be that the fault isn’t with your hard drive alone. This won’t help you recover any files on your own machine but there may be a chance of recovering them through another device. Using an adaptor, you may be able to hook it up and run a diagnostic programme through the second machine. If you’re really lucky, the hard drive will be intact and you’ll be able to download your files, breathing a long sigh of relief.
Of course the best thing to do is to plan in advance to prevent a worst case scenario. You don’t want to be left in a position where you have nothing backed up and no access to your precious files. Prevention, as they say, is better than cure so make full use of your Cloud storage and yes that might involve some payment but better to have them up there in the clouds then in the depths of a malfunctioning piece of hardware.
Hard drive failure isn’t just an issue limited to businesses it can spell disaster for anyone using their laptop or computer as a storage device for photos, music and personal files. As robust and impressive as our modern devices are they don’t last forever and won’t fare well in a natural disaster such as a burst water main or fire. Think today about how you are going to save your files for tomorrow should the unthinkable happen, and it probably will.
[Image courtesy of Pixabay]