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- In this sub lesson,

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we're gonna talk about
hard drive failures.

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It's not a matter of if,

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it's a matter of when.

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Hard drives will fail,

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it's just a matter of time.

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This sub lesson contains
a big mix of elements.

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There's a lot of things

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that we're gonna be talking about.

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So keep in mind that we're gonna be

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running through a lot of possible issues

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with hard drives.

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Let's get started with the sub lesson now

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- We'll start with read/write failures

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and slow performance.

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If you have a little bit of a problem

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reading data from the drive

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or writing data to the drive,

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let's say you can't save
a Microsoft Word document

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or another document
that you're working in,

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or let's say it's very slow.

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Let's say you load up an
application, or a file,

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and it's very slow
coming up on your screen.

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Well, you're gonna want
to analyze that further.

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And there's several tools
you can use to do that.

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One of the first tools is disk management,

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and you can open this
from the search tool,

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or you can go to run prompt

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and type DISK MGMT.MSC.

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It's also in the computer management.

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And so, however you want to get to it,

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once you open it you'll
see all of your volumes,

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and you'll see the healthy status,

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well you'll see the status column.

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And hopefully they're healthy,

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but quite often if you're getting a lot of

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read/write failures or slow performance,

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it may say something different here.

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So, you're gonna wanna check that out.

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And it also shows it here,

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whether they're healthy or not.

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It could be that you have too much data

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on that particular volume.

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You know, for example,

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this volume here C has
120 gigabyte capacity

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and the free space is only 24 gig.

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If we start going any lower than that

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if we start getting below, say 15% free

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you might actually see some
performance degradation

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and even possibly some read/write failures

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but possibly that slow
performance on this guy.

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So this disc, you know, it's,
it's getting pretty packed

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and I'm gonna have to work on that

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to be honest with you, you're
gonna have to check that

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and probably remove some data,
move it to another partition

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another volume, or uninstall
some applications, et cetera.

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But the main thing here is that status.

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You really wanna check that status field

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and see if your device is healthy or not.

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And if not, then you might have to

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do one of a couple things.

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First, you might need to do a disc defrag

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and disc defragmentor,
this could be opened up,

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from the search tool
or from the run prompt.

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You can type DFR GUI

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and that'll bring up your
disc defragmentor tool.

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And you can check each volume
that has been activated

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and has been formatted.

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Has to be a formatted
volume to show up here.

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You see here that my C
drive is 1% fragmented

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not a big deal, but it wasn't checked.

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It wasn't analyzed since two years ago.

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So if you see that

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then you're definitely gonna
want to analyze the disc

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and if necessary defrag it
generally, you don't have to

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unless it's 5% or higher fragmented.

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This becomes a little less

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of an issue with solid state drives.

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But contrary to some of the
popular belief out there

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solid state drives do sometimes need to

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be defraged as well.

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And so that'll depend
though, but generally

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it's the magnetic discs
that you're looking at.

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You wanna see if they're
5%, 10% fragmented

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then you wanna run the disc defragmentor.

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So if you have read/write
failures or slow performance

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that's a couple of things you can check.

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You can also go to your
command prompt and use some

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of your hard drive checking tools,

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for example, check disk

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and you know, you'll see
you have lots of options.

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If you do a slash
question mark, for example

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slash F can fix some errors

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on the disc that might be
causing you the slow performance

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and you might also have bad sectors

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and you can try to recover
those with the slash R.

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So that's a possibility as well.

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So a couple tools there in the
command prompt, for example

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also SFC you might use.

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And we'll talk about
that a little bit more

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in the next sub lesson.

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So use your command prompt, use your disc.

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Defragmentor, use your
disc management to check

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on hard drive issues and
see what the problem is.

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These usually can be fixed, you know

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through a combination of
check disc and disc defrag

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and uninstalling applications
that are causing problems.

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Usually these things can be fixed

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but there are other
symptoms you might encounter

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that get a little bit worse.

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For example, loud clicking noises.

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If you start to hear clicking

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or grinding from a drive that
uses moving parts, you know

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a drive that is a magnetic disc

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then you're gonna want to
back up that data right away,

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verify the backup and make sure

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that you can view that
data from another system.

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Make sure that backup went through, okay,

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use the verification option
when you do the backup

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and then actually view
some of the data on that

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drive, randomly select some data

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and make sure it comes up
properly on another system.

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And then replace that drive
altogether, reload, dos

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and restore the data. Don't mess

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with any loud clicking noises.

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The only time that loud
clicking noises is okay, is for

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much older scuzzy drives,
parallel scuzzy drives.

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Nowadays you don't want that.

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For the newer scuzzy drives,

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serial attached scuzzy drives,

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you're not gonna have that.

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And you shouldn't have that
for a SATA magnetic disc.

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You shouldn't have any noise

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for a solid state drive.

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Next it's failure to boot.

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Well, if you can't boot to the drive, well

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that's the big problem, right?

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And then you're gonna want to look

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at this from more of a physical
and firmware standpoint.

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If there's a failure to boot altogether

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then you're gonna wanna check in the bios

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or your UFI see if the drive is recognized

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and see if it is the first
drive on the bios boot order,

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or at least somewhere
on the bios boot order

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where it would be possible to boot from.

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Then you're also gonna
wanna check the connections.

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You may need to check the
power and data connections

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to that drive, make sure
that it is getting power

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and that those connections are secure.

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The drive might not be recognized.

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It could be for some reason

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that the firmware didn't
recognize the drive

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and you need to update the firmware

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with flash, or the drive
isn't connected properly,

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or perhaps Windows did
not recognize the drive.

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It's a possibility.

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It's also possible that that
drive was not initialized.

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Again in disc management.

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If you have a drive that you want to use

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you've gotta initialize that disc.

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And you've got to do this
here in some cases, in order

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for it to show up in Windows
Explorer or File Explorer.

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And you also wanna make sure

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that it is formatted to a file system.

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For example, NTFS, here

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the C drive is formatted
to NTFS and we can use it.

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And that's why we could see
it in the disc defragmentor

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and in windows Explorer,
but the G drive that's raw.

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That means it hasn't been formatted yet.

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I created the primary partition.

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You can see that

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with the dark blue, here,
but hasn't been formatted.

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So it shows up as raw

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and it won't show up in windows
Explorer or File Explorer,

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and it won't show up in
the disc defragmentor

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because it's not been
recognized fully yet.

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So a couple possibilities for the drive

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not being recognized.

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And the OS not found, that's
always a good message as well.

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The operating system not found

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then you can't boot to the OS.

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This is the bane of technicians.

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And it could be, again, a media issue.

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It could be that the boot priority's

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not configured properly,

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and there could be ...

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it could be that there's a faulty disc

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in the optical drive,

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and the optical drive is set to first.

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You always check that
bios boot order, if not

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you're gonna have to look

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at that hard drive and
see what the problem is.

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Now, if the hard drive seems
to be accessing properly

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but the operating system isn't there

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then you're gonna want to go further.

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You're gonna wanna check the boot sector,

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the master boot record
if you're using NBR.

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Check the GPT if you're using that,

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and check the main boot manager file.

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So for example, for Windows 7 or Windows 8

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that's gonna be boot MGR.

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You're gonna wanna check
if that file's there.

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If it's loading up properly,
you can always take the drive

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and take it out of the system and slave it

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to another machine and see
if those files are there.

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See if anything needs to be replaced,

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you can also do an automated
repair if necessary.

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But, generally it's a
priority type of thing

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or the drive hasn't been
recognized, that type of thing.

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So that that's some of the common symptoms

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you might see, your read/write failures,

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your slow performance, and again,

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remember to use that disc
management tool for that.

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It's gonna be very telling,

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you're gonna be able to identify a lot

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of problems from here,

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and then you'll know which
way to go to fix the problems.

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You know, again, you might
have to defrag the drive,

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do a check disc, you run
an SFC, which by the way

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you have to run as an administrator

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in the command prompt,
loud clicking noises.

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You're gonna need to replace
that drive right away.

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You have to back up the data right away.

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Imaging the drive might not be a good idea

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because that might put it over the edge.

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So watch out for that, definitely back

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up all the data and check
that data somewhere else

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and then restore to a new drive.

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Failure to boot, drive not recognized,

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OS not found for these things.

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Make sure that you check the connections,

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make sure that you check the
bios or the UFI boot priority.

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Make sure that the firmware
can actually identify the drive

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which may require a
flash of that firmware.

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And make sure that the the NBR and the

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boot system is set up properly.

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You know, sometimes you
might have a dual boot

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or you might have changes
to the operating system

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which change the NBR or the GPT.

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And you might need to go
into the startup repair.

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You might need to go into the
Windows recovery environment

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and either do a automatic startup repair

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or use the boot rack
command to repair the system

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with the rebuild BCD option
and/or the fixed boot option.

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And maybe even the fixed NBR,
if you're doing a dual boot.

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So lots of possibilities
here, and some things to watch

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for when it comes to hard drive issues.