3 Common Hard Disk Problems and How to Fix Them

 

Whether you’re on a mac or a PC, it doesn’t matter, the hard drive is one of the most important components of a computer. A corrupt hard disk can disrupt your work making it nearly impossible to use your PC.

 

Hard disk usually starts to fail when it starts accumulating bad sectors after being used for a long period of time. The complete hard disk failure is hard to detect since the symptoms match with that of virus and malware infection.

 

These symptoms usually slow down the computer or start corrupting your files, rendering them useless. But the worst part is that hard disk failure is almost sudden and there is very little possibility of recovering full data. If you have ever encountered a problem that you suspect is due to your old hard disk, don’t worry.

 

Geeks on Repair has established itself as a company that fixes these hard disk errors for our clients. But we also believe it is important to educate them so they can troubleshoot common disk errors at home.

 

In this post, we will list down the 3 most common hard disk problems we see at our store and how to fix them at home.

 

Error 1 – Hard Disk Not Found

 

• There are times when you turn on your system and you see a message saying that the ‘hard drive was not found’ on your screen. This prevents your system from starting and sometimes you can’t even use the typical commands to get out of the screen.

 

This error usually occurs when your hard disk is not connected properly to the motherboard through cables or the connector of the HDD is loose. Water or physical damage to the HDD can also cause this error to appear.

 

• Solution – The simplest way to get past this error is to shut down your system and open your PC case to see if the cables are working properly. You may also want to check for physical or water damage. If the connection is loose, just tighten it up and boot the system again.

 

Error 2 – Volume is Dirty

 

• Sometimes you may get an error while copying a file that says your disk or volume has been corrupted. The problem can occur on both external and internal hard drives. This is due to a bad sector on your HDD, or if you are using an external drive, the file system may not be supported.

 

Solution – If you are seeing this error more times than usual, it is a good idea to see if your hard drive has bad sectors. To find out, simply run the Windows disk error checking tool by right-clicking on the drive icon in your system.

 

• You may also want to try and reconnect your external hard drive to see if the disk starts working again.

 

Error 3 – Unable to Boot Operating System

 

• The hard drive stores the firmware of your system which means if it gets into trouble, you might have problems booting your system up. There are all kinds of on-screen errors that tell you of this when you power on your system.

 

If the operating system does not start, there could a problem with your BIOS settings, or it could mean essential system files present on the hard drive have been lost or corrupted.

 

• Solution – The best way to deal with the Hard disk problems is to enter the BIOS of your motherboard and restore the factory settings. After that, restart your system and if anything was wrong with the BIOS settings, they will be fixed.

 

Or if you are an advanced user, you can boot your system in command prompt and try to recover OS files or completely reinstall the OS. You’ll need a bootable USB drive containing important system files to do this.

 

Get Professional Help for Hard Disk Problems

 

• If these did not solve your issue, there could be a bigger problem with your hard drive. In times like this, it is always a good idea to have your hard disk checked by professional computer repair services.

 

If you continue to use a hard disk with bad sectors, it may completely fail at some point making it impossible for you to recover your data. Before this happens, bring your system to a computer repair store and get it fixed.

 

At Geeks on Repair, we will not only help you backup your data and fix possible errors within your hard drive, but we will also make sure that your system starts up and works faster. As a bonus, we will even remove junk/temporary files from your hard drive which are known to corrupt HDDs.