Community poll forum: When did you last experience a complete hard disk failure?

My hard drive crashed and no I did not have a backup. My data was cloned and usable, but my program files were not, this lead to a search for the originals most of which I did have some I did not .

I'm 14 years old, and I've been using computers since... oh about 8 years or so... more frequently now than that long ago, but never a crash that was this serious.

Last monday I bought new used protsessor AMD Duron 1600Mhz. By my mainbord manula it should support this new protsessor (mainbord chaintech 7AIVL). Before I had AMD Duron 800Mhz. I intall the new protsessor and BIOS recordnise it as Athlon protsessor and therefore I can't install new OP system (OP system couldn't copy some of imprtant file and it failture). So I ried to update BIOS but I couldn't find suitable software. I tred many times and different ways to insatll new OP system but it not copy some file (like shall32.dll). So thursday I turn on my computer and there was black screen and computer makes terrible noise as peeping.It not let me even BOIS. I make COMOS cleening but same thing. I think this adventure cost me my new protessor or mainbord - I haven't figure that out yet. I will but my old protsessor on then we see.

The first HD failed shortly after installation, but after I had trusted it with my backup files so that I could reorganize the original disk.

The disk stopped spinning. (No noise and you could feel no vibration.)

I removed the disk, wrapped it carefully and put it into the kitchen freezer overnight.

Next day, it worked for long enough for me to retrieve most of the files.

The second HD was hit by an incompatibility:

It was in an external case with USB connection to a Windows 98se PC. I had partitioned it into two "drives." A 2GB FAT16, and a larger "extended" FAT32. It worked fine with the Win98 PC.

When I connected it to a Windows XP PC, that PC failed to read the drives correctly and in trying to "repair" them, trashed the files.

Moral: Use only a single (FAT32) partition.

MY external H.D. ran well with both Win 98 and Win 2000, but when I purchased a new computor running Win X.P., the external H.D. not only corrupted the running programns on the new computer but also on the old win 2000.

In November, 2004, I was running two Western Digital Caviar HD's - the C: drive was the original, 20 GB, drive and the second, a 40 GB drive, was divided into three partitions: one for Linux (Reiser FS), one for documents for both Linux and Windows app's (FAT 32) and one for Windows games (NTFS). Both HD's failed soon after I upgraded a video card. At the time, I didn't connect it with the video card but in hindsight, one of two things caused the failure, probably - 1) the increased video card load caused power supply overload and malfunction, which then damaged the HD's, or 2) a neighborhood voltage loss and then spike damaged the controllers for both drives. And RE: the data: a local shop was able to recoved much of the data, including the Win XP files, on both drives, but eventually I had to repair windows XP and re-install most of the games. At the time, two new HD's were installed (Western Digital), but I later installed a much better power supply as well AND a much better power spike protector.

My hard drive packed up a fortnight ago. As I do do technical I took it to a shop. I asked why it had given up. Just shook his head and said; Oh! I've had one go in three weeks. Luckily I had my hard drive partitioned and he could save all my personal stuff. Wish he had partitioned it again for me. As I have not a clue how to do this.

While using my laptop one day it suddenly started loading (or re-loading) all the drivers. It could not be stopped and after it stopped working the display was super-size and nothing worked correctly. I messed with it and messed with it and finally gave up. A friend, a very knowledgeable company network manager, attempted for a week to salvage the laptop to no avail. One evening while working with the laptop his 4 year old Emma said, "Daddy, why is that dot yellow?" I do not remember which dot it was now but when her father saw the dot he quickly corrected most of the problem but some elements still did not return to normal. The Presario 1690 crashed completely two times before causing the need to do a reformat from the install disc which required the updating again of many, many programs to include the OS. Needless to say, I am not a fan of the Presario! I went back to a desktop.

most hard disk failures are caused by magnetization.
you can solve it running hdd regenerator, a russian program that you can downloads free (the demo version)
try it, it's just incredible

I've rarely experienced a total hard drive failure, and I've been computing since 1984. But I have had hard drives no longer boot up and I just make them into a slave drive to see if I can access the data on them. I almost always can.

I did have one hard drive that had intermittent problems at being recognized by Windows. It would work sometimes and not others. Well, this drive did work when I put it up on end inside the computer case. It did for quite a long time until one day it simply would not operate no matter how I placed. However, by that time I had everything backed up that I wanted.

I could tell you how to make a slave drive for a desktop system, and I would bet it is the same for a laptop, but it may be more practical to buy an external USB hard drive enclosure for a laptop hard drive (2 1/2'').

You would need to replace the existing hard drive in the laptop and install the operating system, but could, once replaced and the old drive in an external enclosure, try to pull data off the old one through the USB port. If the drive seems to work fine that way, you could simply reformat the old hard drive (after you have retrieved all data needed) and use it as an external backup drive for any computer you have.

Go here for step-by-step instructions to make a laptop hard drive an external one: http://www.allcam.biz/support/fixusbhdd.html

After much poking and help, my gurus finally discovered the basic problem with my hard crashed HP Pavillion 521n, which I had bought with XP installed -- HP had installed the XP on TOP of Windows ME. Thus when it crashed, up popped the Windows ME stuff, which of course didn't work since the rest was XP (or something like that). ANYway, when we couldn't access the restore functions properly after many hours of trying, I had to call in and purchase the set of CDs and do a full reinstall of everything on my own. I apparently didn't get it quite right as I now have problems I didn't experience before.
WHY didn't HP clear the disks before installing XP! They pretty much guaranteed an unrecoverable crash, in my case beyond their initial warranty, of course.

My Radeon 9800 failed and whilst trying to discover what was wrong - using an unreadable screen - I caused a major problem somewhere and then sent the PC back to JAL Computers for replacement of the Graphics Card.
They used the "excuse" that the hard drive had also crashed badly to reinstall Win XP Pro, Service Pack 2 and SOME of my other programs. This wiped out all my data and, unusually for me, I had not backed it up. I'm just now learning how to burn to CD and DVD because I was only used to Iomega Zip and Floppies on my old machine.
I no longer have trust in my machine and have so far been unable to install and use the Digital TV Card & Software that came with it without causing what looks like another breakdown of the new Graphics Card (NVidia GeForce 6). Not a happy PV User at present!
John, York, UK

Once who knows how, a second when I tried using an HD that was cloned by Acronis 8 and the third when an update for Quicken failed and when I rebooted (following the advice of Quicken) when it would not boot and asked me to reinstall HAL.DLL. I took the HD from my laptop and connected with a USB caddy to another computer and copied the .dll to system32 as directed. It did not recognize and could use no other repair so reinstalled Windows but to another directory....Windows1...and managed to save almost everything the was in different folders.

Windows XP SP 2 and all updates as of last week.

Sanders in Rome