Common Disk Failures

Common Disk Failures
By Tan Jocelyn
Just what are the reasons behind these failures? What are the symptoms to look out for? This article breaks it down for you in the different types of failure.
Electrical Failures
The printed circuit board (PCB) controls, communicates and coordinates between the hard disk and the computer to read and write data. Data loss occurs when a power surge damages the PCB. It is also possible that the pre-amplifier circuit of the read-write head is damaged. The common symptoms of this failure are the occurrence of a clicking sound, disk knocking or when a powered-up drive shows no sign of function.
Mechanical Failures
Mechanical failures usually happen due to wear and tear or a physical crash. The read-write head and motors can become kaput without any warning. The symptoms of a mechanical failure are clicking, grinding sounds. Sometimes, no sound emanates from the hard disk due to the fact that the motor has frozen.
Logical Failures
Logical failures refer to non-physical failures. These include accidental deletion or formatting, file corruption, virus or malware attacks and other common bugs. Even corrupted Microsoft office files, databases or mail folders can also lead to logical failures. The computer might prompt you to execute a chkdsk function but the rule of thumb is to avoid doing so.
Firmware Failures
Only disk manufacturers will have access to the firmware. The software is for them to perform low-level disk testing and other functions that help to ensure the healthy state of the hard drive. Without the firmware code, it is not possible to communicate between the PC and the hard disk. Most firmware codes are located on data platters and also the PCB. When the platter is corrupted, the drive will fail.
When this happens, the hard drive will power up but will not be recognised by the computer. In the case where the hard drive is recognised, foreign characters will appear. Other times, the hard drive will freeze when starting up.
Bad Platter Area
This is also termed as bad sectors. This problem arises when the platter surface is damaged due to wear and tear, manufacturing defects, tracking errors or a head crash. When this occurs, the hard disk can still be accessed but it will take a long time to do so. Users will also have problems accessing files or folders, even though they are still intact. The constant cyclic redundancy error will also pop up.
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