▷ How to know when a hard drive is going to die

Mechanical hard drives are the most widely used mass storage medium in the world, this is due to their low cost for each GB of capacity, which makes them the preferred alternative for many users when storing series, movies and all kinds of large files. Hard drives are made up of moving parts, so all of them end up failing over time. In this post we explain how to detect that your hard drive is starting to wear out and is on the way to the final failure.

Index of contents

How to recognize when a hard drive is starting to fail

Hard drives are made up of one or more magnetic plates where the data is recorded, and one or more read and write heads, which are responsible for recording the data on the magnetic plate and accessing them. Both the plates and the heads move at high speed and many times throughout the day, so they wear out little by little and at some point they will pass to a better life.

The failure of a hard drive is something very feared by users, because it can make us lose a lot of very valuable information. For this reason, it is highly recommended that you make a backup copy of your most valuable data, since in the event of a hard drive failure, you can recover them from the backup medium (generally another HDD).

Although it may happen, hard drives do not usually break overnight, but it is a process that can take several days or even weeks, so we will have time to react and make a copy of the data before the hard drive fails permanently. So, let's look at some of the symptoms that indicate that a hard drive is dying.

Strange noises

The first symptom that a hard drive is breaking is usually the appearance of strange noises, which did not occur before. The noise of a hard disk is very characteristic, so if you appreciate a change, you had better make a backup of the most important data, it is impossible to know how long it will last before it fails definitively.

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Slow access

Another symptom that our HDD is dying is that access to stored data becomes much slower. The PC will take longer to boot, files will take longer to open and save… if you are experiencing this you probably don't have much time to react. Another symptom may be that the PC freezes (hangs) very often for a few seconds, a symptom that the processor is stuck due to slow access to data on the hard drive.

Disappearance of files

Unless you are sure you have a poltergeist in your home, the files you have stored on your HDD should not go away on their own. If you see that your documents, photos or files are disappearing, it is a sign that the surface of your hard drive plate is being damaged. Malware can be another cause of file disappearance, if your antivirus doesn't detect anything, your hard drive doesn't have much time left.

PC does not recognize hard drive

At this point, it will be very difficult for you to do something, because when a hard drive is not recognized, it means that it is at the limit of its useful life if it is not already dead. To make sure the problem is on the hard drive, you will have to put it on another PC.

Blue Screenshots of Death

Also known as BSOD. This problem can really have an endless number of causes, and it is often difficult to know that it is failing. Again the simplest solution is to test the hard drive on another PC, if the problem is reproduced, you know who is to blame.

CristalDiskInfo can be your ally

CristalDiskInfo is a free software that shows us information about the hard drive and, although it is not infallible, it alerts us when its condition becomes worrying. The interface of the program shows you the status of the hard drive in a very simple way: blue means that it is fine, yellow that is at risk and red means that you can start preparing your funeral.

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With this ends our post on how to know when a hard drive is going to die, remember that prevention is the best medicine in these cases, do not have your most valuable data in a single medium, because you risk losing them irreversibly. We recommend that you take a look at our hardware forum.