Why Some Hard Drives Fail Prematurely
August 13th, 2011 Tags: 
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(Free Members Only) While some hard drives fail prematurely for no apparent reason, others fail because of environmental reasons such as heat or physical shock, or maybe even an occasional power surge. While these are understandable causes for sudden electronic failures, I want to focus on a more subtle reason for most of the hard drive failures I see on a regular basis. Reasons that result in unwanted computer down time, data loss, and a quest for a data recovery company that can recover your lost files without costing an arm and a leg.
As a PC Technician, I spend quite a few hours with my customer’s computers and get to know them reasonably well. But to do my job thoroughly, I have to poke around, install utilities, run scans, view logs, perform tweaks and observe performance. In the end, I can usually piece together a simple scenario of what happened. I’m not talking about computer forensics, but a rough sequence of events and the neglect it took to cause your computer problems. I say neglect, because most computer problems are preventable, but once the problems start, most people procrastinate in getting them fixed and just continue using them until they don’t work at all.
The subtle scenario I was talking about goes like this: (a) computer gets infected, (b) computer acts up, (c) customer puts off repairs, (d) computer gets worse and dies. Lets break this down to see how you get from point a to d.
Computer Gets Infected
Whether it was a total lack of computer security or just not enough, coupled with poor or outright risky internet habits, it isn’t hard to get your computer infected these days.
Computer Acts Up
Infections typically cause your computer to slow down and may even cause Windows to become unstable resulting in all sorts of strange computers problems.
Customer Puts Off Repairs
Since the computer may still work somewhat, some people will still keep using it. Whether it be time, money, or lack of know-how, repairs just get put off until sometimes it is too late.
Computer Gets Worse and Dies
Computers don’t get better by themselves. In fact, if you keep trying to work around the problems and just accept the degraded performance as the new norm, it is just a matter of time before it hits critical mass and fails completely. Don’t fool yourself into thinking that you can maintain some status quo with your existing computer problems and limp on with your computer forever.
Your computer may begin randomly freezing in the middle of whatever you are doing, or hanging during shutdown, prompting you to perform bad shutdowns by holding in the power button or pulling the power plug. While you might get away with this a few times without any immediate consequences, eventually, the bad shutdowns may lead to permanent hard drive failure, and maybe even a total loss of data. Imagine your repair bill to replace the hard drive, install Windows, and to recover your data, if your data is even recoverable.
Data Recovery
Actually, your data may still be recoverable, but not through some method as easy as slaving your drive to another computer and using some Data Recovery utility. It might only be recoverable by using an ISO clean room certified Data Recovery company. While there are many Data Recovery companies to choose from, their prices, reputation, experience and success rate varies like any other group of competetive companies would, which means that there is probably a leader in the business that the rest strive to be like.
Whether you choose the best or end up picking someone from the middle of the pack, just remember that it is “your” data you are risking, and only you know just how important it is.
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