In our last post, we covered some basic Windows reporting features to help understand hard drive problems. We wanted to delve into more detail on another Windows function, which focuses on actually repairing these issues. This feature can be especially useful for fixing problems with solid state drives.
You can find some details on this page. I will share an excerpt from the article, so you can see how easily this can be done.
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If you have hooked up the drive to another computer, you don’t need to access the BIOS at all. In Windows, click the key combination Windows + R, which will launch the Run input window. Type cmd into the field and hit Enter. This will open the Command Prompt. Here type diskpart and hit Enter, to open the respective tool. In the diskpart window, type list volume and hit Enter to show all drives connected to your computer.”
Now that you understand the process, let’s cover the importance of using this feature.
The simple repair function of Windows does quite a lot in the background.
Hard Disk Drives
With HDDs there is a special case of defective mechanics, which usually makes itself noticeable by creepy noises. Apart from the mentioned clicking noise, this could also be grinding, rattling, very strong vibrations or a beating. Basically everything that a thin, movable metal arm and metal discs moving at 7.200 rpm can cause.
In this case there is nothing you can do except to contact professional data rescuers. They won’t repair the hard drive either, but will simply try to recover the data. For which, among other things, a clean room is needed.
Solid State Disks
The special case with SSDs is probably mainly due to the fact that they wear out at some point – however, only very, very early models are more than just a mental game. Nevertheless: If you are really using one of the first SSDs, or if you’ve been maltreating an SSD with write accesses almost deliberately for many months, it could be that at some point the hard drive says: “I’m used up”.
Fortunately, the remaining lifespan of an SSD can be tracked pretty accurately. How this works and why they wear out at all, we will show you here in detail: Extending SSD life – these tips will work
What to do in case of emergency?
If serious errors occur, i.e. S.M.A.R.T. gives warnings, the disk makes noise or Checkdisk aborts with error messages, you should if possible stop using the disk and give it to data recovery. But this is of course rather theoretical and only worthwhile for really important data. But that’s exactly what you can do then: Try to recover the data, i.e. copy it to another data medium. Because after the first serious error, it is not unusual for many more to follow. If the error occurs on the system hard disk, you should connect it to another computer and copy data from there – the Windows operation itself will otherwise continue to use the potentially defective hard disk and make things even worse.
If HDDs don’t work at all, make a lot of noise and shouldn’t be sent to the data recovery service, you can try a little violence. As with the old CRT TV, a gentle kick may well result in a few more minutes of operation. Or at least reduces frustration.