Repair a damaged hard drive

Repair a damaged hard drive

A hard drive failure can result from software problems or mechanical failures . In the first case , some utilities can restore the system. Otherwise, it is necessary to use a company that specializes in recovering data if the hard drive has physical damage.

Determine the failure

The hard drive is one of the busiest PC components and over time it may have failures. Accordingly, if the computer does not operate normally , it is essential to determine the type of problem which is the subject prior to repair. First, it is advisable to check whether the problem is due to a damaged or corrupted data , or if it results from sectors or bad blocks , among other programs . To do this, you can use utilities to detect and repair disk. Generally, one of the symptoms for this problem is that the operating system starts smoothly but blocks to read or write data or crashes after a few minutes and requires a reboot. In such a situation , you can try scandisk Windows to solve the problem .

use scandisk

The scandisk utility Microsoft can detect and repair a damaged hard drive . It is available in all versions of Windows and Windows XP, it is located in Computer Management . To access it , click on Start , then right-clicked on the workstation. We select Manage and then later in the storage menu , click on Disk Management to display all the drives on your computer. After you right- click on the one that is damaged and select Properties. Then select the Tools tab and error checking is started . In some cases , the computer will restart before performing the analysis may take several hours depending on the size of the hard drive.

Repair hard drive with CHKDSK utility

If the computer will not start but will restart automatically after the Windows logo appears , you can not use scandisk . So you need a CD to install Windows XP to repair the hard drive. To do this , you first configure the BIOS so that the BIOS to boot from the CD . We then insert the Windows XP CD and the installation process begins automatically when you put the PC on. It was subsequently the choice between a new installation or attempt to repair an existing installation.

By validating the latter, you can access a DOS prompt . We then tape “chkdsk ” with the name of the damaged hard drive . This step is important and if the damaged drive is “C:” , for example, you must type the command ” chkdsk c: ” because the CHKDSK utility does not work when you run it without any arguments. During the analysis, the utility detects and repairs the bad sectors. These can be at the beginning of the hard drive and that is why Windows is unable to start . The analysis can take several hours, but when it is complete, you can remove the Windows XP CD and restart the computer. In 90 % of cases , this solution can solve the problem.

The program GetDataBack

GetDataBack is a paid software to repair a damaged hard drive . This is one of the best on the market because it not only can detect and repair all parts of the hard drive, but it can also correct formatting errors that can , among others, damage the hard drive. Moreover, it is also able to recover accidentally deleted files, but often is criticized its slowness . Indeed , analysis of GetDataBack can sometimes take whole days , but the results are nevertheless remarkable.

Use a specialist company

Nevertheless, one should keep in mind that software is ineffective if the drive has physical damage (shocks, drops, scratches , etc.). Accordingly disc, use a company that specializes in the repair disk drives is imperative in such a situation . This solution is certainly expensive, but it is essential if we want to recover important data that could not save .