How to Determine If Your Hard Drive May Be Failing or Faulty in Your Laptop

The hard drive is located inside the laptop computer & is used to store Windows, your programs & your knowledge. When a fault develops it is often difficult to be sure of the cause, this article will indicate lots of the things to check to arrive at a conclusion.

You may notice any of the following that may be caused by a defective or failing hard drive located inside the laptop computer:-

1. Laptop computer dead no power lights etc. Surprisingly a defective drive can occasionally cease the power up of the laptop computer. The power light may come on; the battery light may come on. In case you remove the drive & the laptop computer powers up to the bios screen then this would confirm that the drive has failed.

2. The laptop computer is slow to power up to a Windows screen. Additionally, it may reply slowly when you try to run a program from the desktop. The drive may be causing the slow responses but so may defective ram, defective CPU or defective application, more tests would be necessary to confirm that the drive is flawed.

3. The laptop computer may start to power up in to Windows then cease either with or without a picture on the screen. Hard drives may generate 'bad blocks' where part of the surface of the drive medium is broken, this can account for the stalling in the loading of Windows. Other caused of stalling may be defective ram, defective CPU or defective application, more tests would be necessary to confirm that the drive is flawed

4. Most drives have a feature called 'Smart'. This can give early warning to the laptop computer user that the drive is about to fail. The drive may apparently be operating correctly, but if a smart warning is seen then your work & knowledge ought to be immediately backed up & the drive replaced.

5. Sometimes a drive becomes noisy; this may indicate that it needs replacing, although some makes are noisier than others.

6. When beginning up the laptop computer a requester is seen indicating that scandisk is going to be run. This may be caused by the hard drive detecting a feasible misread of the media. The scandisk application attempts to check the full structure of the application on the drive & correct where feasible. In case you don't always close down the laptop computer properly then scandisk may be triggered.

It is often not realized by the laptop computer user that the hard drive can fundamentally be damaged by slightly bumping or banging the laptop computer when it is turned on. Bearing this in mind laptops ought to not be used on laps but on a solid surface. Also when finishing work on the laptop computer it ought to be shutdown properly not the lid closed as the method of shutdown. This is because sometimes the laptop computer does not complete shutdown when the lid is closed; then the laptop computer will be bumped around when the hard drive is still active. Time the laptop computer has closed down properly then minor bumps & bangs ought to not cause destroy to the hard drive. Always close down the laptop computer properly, don't force power off as this may cause hard drive errors that may or may not be cleared by scandisk.

Often, the only way to be sure that the hard drive is the reason for issues in a laptop computer is to replace the drive & see how the performance changes.