What to do if your hard drive fails

You are just about to finish the major project you have been working on all week and suddenly the hard drive fails. You have been too busy to back up any of your data for weeks now or you are one of those who believe that this will never happen to you; it had never happened before.

The first thing you need to ascertain is whether the hard drive is really faulty. If you have recently installed any new hardware, remove it and try rebooting. Next try starting your Windows in Safe Mode (press the F8 key while your PC is starting). If you can get as far as the Windows login screen you are unlikely to have a failed drive.

There are lots of utility programs that can help you recover data from a damaged disk but if your data is important and you are not technically trained, my advice would be not to attempt that yourself. You may extirpate any remaining chance of recovering the data. Most IT firms have general expertise to recover faulty disks but where the damage is extensive the job is best done by specialists. With such experts however you could spend $1,000 or more to get your data back. Most firms charge a small initial assessment fee before advising you of your chances. Some work on a no-result, no-fee basis.

Prevention is better than cure. Occasionally run a free program like Ariolic Disk Scanner to check the drive for read errors which are usually the first signs of potential disk failure. If your business is reliant on the uptime of your IT, then I would strongly advise you to invest in robust hard drives. Opt for SAS or SCSI, rather than SATA, disks. These disks can be 15 times more robust than the cheaper SATA drives. Which is why most servers run SAS disks.

The most useful thing to do is to back up your data regularly. Believe me, hard drive failures do happen and they could happen to you.

By Alan Chew

Managing Director of the Houston Technology Group

This article appeared in the May 2009 edition of the Waikato Business News, for which Alan writes a regular column as "Your IT Adviser".