Signs that your Hard Drive is failing, like mine...

13 January 2018

Most everyone has a PC desktop nowadays.  We all rely on it for our day to day routine, our kids' homework, for some their work if they're lucky enough to work-from-home.  It's an indispensable tool.

But what if this dependable tool suddenly shows signs of nearing its lifespan?  Would you even recognize these?  Would you know how to prepare for it?

From my recent painful experience, I will tell you what happened and hope that you learn from it and be able to rescue your data too :)





Last January 12 was the last time I was able to use my computer.  I had two hard drives in it - both Seagates, one 500GB (the older one) and the other a 2TB (that was still under warranty).  For months (thinking back),  the older one was showing signs of impending doom.  It started with the older one being undetected by Windows Explorer.  It was appearing in the BIOS but there were times as if Windows couldn't find it.  When the PC booted it was there and then later on, it wasn't.

At this point, I started moving some files from it to the other larger drive.  Naturally you don't want your files to disappear, right? So, I thought I was being proactive hehe  But even then, I knew it was having a hard time transferring files since it took so long and I even had to keep repeating the process.

So, I thought there was a problem with the SATA cable since I thought there was a miscommunication between the CPU and the BIOS.  For a while it worked, and then it didn't.  Later on, I noticed that it wasn't being detected by the BIOS at all.  If it was, it wasn't showing the full capacity of the drive, like it read only 160GB instead of the full 500.  And then, it was gone.  I eventually had to disconnect it from the motherboard in case it affected the motherboard or the other hard drive.

It wasn't too hard to accept that that drive was gone because it was older and we didn't have too many important files in there anyway.

What was hard was when our newer 2TB drive just refused to boot up on the morning of January 13.  I was able to use it up to the evening of January 12 with no signs of malfunction, unlike the older one.  And then suddenly, it wasn't booting.

We were actually scheduled to replace the PC that Saturday! I had researched and researched motherboards, Intel or AMD, video cards and we were supposed to head to our favorite store to buy the parts and have them assemble a new PC for us.  Hard drives weren't in the budget, until ours refused to boot.

When I checked the BIOS that morning, it was detected but not at full capacity like the previous one.  When we took it to the store, they weren't able to detect it at all, which meant it really died and the files couldn't be recovered.

That was tough! This was our back up drive.  Everything we had was here.  All of Patrick's work for Top Gear, all of my freelance writing jobs was here.  All of our pictures, videos, music - everything gone!  I actually shed tears when they told me that it was dead.

But we had to move on.  Fortunately, we bought that hard drive from that store, Dynamic PC in Gilmore, and they said that they can have it replaced since it was still relatively new.  So that was a relief to have a new hard drive but goodbye to the old files in the old one.

Anyway, we were able to come up with these new parts for our budget, plus a new hard drive LOL What I really like about Dynamic PC and their staff is that they don't push you for the most expensive parts.  They really work with your budget and are friendly and efficient :)  This setup cost me around P20K. 

So we have a new PC.  We didn't have to buy the mouse, keyboard and monitor since ours was still working. We did have to buy an HDMI converter since our monitor was still VGA haha That's next on the list :)

Edit: after about 2 weeks, I got a text from Dynamic PC that our replacement drive was available for pickup.  We ended up getting it 2 weeks later due to a hectic schedule and they installed it for free! Thanks Dynamic PC! :)