Taking care of those bad hard drives.

Ok, so we now know the scenario, but what do we do about it? 

Getting Started

Well before we get started, if your computer is having the issues described on the first page of this blog post, the very first thing you should do is check for viruses and spyware.  Be sure to do so with fully updated software and after your virus and spyware checks are finished and you don't find anything serious then it's time to move onto the next step. 

Normally when I receive a customers computer that has slowed down and is getting a lot of errors I run it through a full diagnostic to try to pinpoint the exact problem.  The most common problems are viruses and spyware, followed by memory and hard drive malfunctions.  When a non experienced end user starts having issues they almost always decide to get more memory.  For some reason, more memory is always associated with making the computer faster, or at least bringing it back up to normal operating speeds when the system has slowed down.  However, adding more memory to a system may not always solve the problem as the problem could be something else.  For the sake of this blog post, that problem is going to be a failing hard drive. 

Testing The Hard Drive 

Well the first thing we need to do is establish if the hard drive is bad or not.  To do this we will need to test it but before we start running hard drive diagnostic tools let's check one very simple thing.  

With your computer on, take a close listen to the area near the front bottom of your computer.  If you hear a clicking or tic toc noise emanating from inside the computer it could be the sign of a serious hard drive internal hardware malfunction.  The clicking noise is most often referred to as the "click of death".  If your computer still boots up and is at least semi functional while hearing the click of death, then consider yourself to be extremely lucky as normally by the time the click of death happens, the hard drive is usually completely dead with no chance of saving it. If you hear the click of death but yet are still able to boot up the computer then also consider yourself on the clock as a clicking hard drive that is still booting is on borrowed time.  How much time really depends on how long it has been clicking and acting bad.  It could be as little as just a couple minutes to days or weeks.  Regardless, you need to act fast as once it dies there is usually only one way for you to recover the lost data and that can cost you thousands of dollars.  But we will get to that later, for now skip to the part below about getting a replacement hard drive and read on from there.   If your hard drive has the click of death and will not even boot up, then you need to also just move down to the section about buying a replacement hard drive.  You can also read the section on Data Recovery, but be warned, it gets really expensive.  If your hard drive is not making the click of death sound then let out a loud cheer and move on to the next paragraph. 

So if your hard drive is not making the click of death noise then we need to establish if there is some sort of other error that may be the issue.  This error could be bad sectors or other problems with the actual disk that can only be determined by running advanced hard drive diagnostic programs.  Currently there are many different software based tests used to determine if a hard drive is bad.  All of the major hard drive manufacturers have their own programs.  But what if you don't know what brand of hard drive you have, or you have more then one brand in your computer and you want to test them all?  Well the tool I prefer for this job is the IBM/Hitachi Drive Fitness Tool (IHDFT).   The IHDFT works with pretty much all brands and types of hard drives.  I have used it with SATA and IDE drives, laptop and desktop drives, pretty much everything.  After downloading the IHDFT you will need to use a program like Nero or Cyberlink to burn the ISO file to a bootable CD.  After you have burned it to a bootable CD, restart your computer with the CD in the drive.  You will need to ensure that your computer will boot from the cd drive before it boot's from a hard drive.  Most computers have an option to select the boot menu from the very first start up screen, usually you need to press F10  for the boot menu, but it could change from brand to brand.  If you need more info on how to set up your computer to boot from the cd drive first rather then the hard drive, you can just punch in a search query in Google. 

Once you have your computer set up to boot from the cd drive first and the computer is starting it will auto load the IHDFT.  The first thing it will show you is the license agreement, select A to agree and move onto the next screen.  The software will then detect what drives you have and then show you a list of drives in your computer.  It will list all cd drives and hard drives.  Make sure the list is correct and then click "Yes".  Then on the next screen it will display the device/drive list again, only this time you need to highlight the drive you want to test.  After highlighting the drive you want to test you have two options.  You can do a Quick Test or an Advanced Test.  As you have most likely figured out, the Quick Test is a really fast single pass test that doesn't really check to much.  If your hard drive is having deeper more troublesome issues, the Quick Test will most likely not find them.  So based on that I recommend using the Advanced Test as it will go over everything in your hard drive.  If there is even the slightest issue it will find it.  So select A for the Advanced Test and then you will see the Advanced Test screen.   Select S to start the test and then wait.  Depending on the size of your hard drive you could be waiting for up to an hour.  Once the test is complete you will see one of two screens.  A green screen means your hard drive tested ok, a red screen means your hard drive tested bad. 

If your hard drive tested green then you are having other issues that need to be sorted out.  However we aren't going into that now.  If you have done all of that and you have a good hard drive, let me know and if I get enough I will write another blog entry asap about testing the memory, PSU and other hardware.   

If your hard drive tested bad you then need to move onto the next step and the next step is replacing the hard drive or getting somebody to replace it for you.  If you are comfortable with opening up your computer and working with the hardware inside it then continue to read on.  If you are not comfortable with working on the hardware in your computer then at a minimum you have some really good ammunition for when you have to face off with the computer geek that is going to do the work for you.  Before you go to face the geeks though, be sure to read below where I talk about what you will want to look for when selecting a replacement hard drive. 

So, if you are comfortable enough to open up your computer and work on the hardware inside it I won't mess around with the small stuff then.  You should already know the basics about working with the hardware inside your computer so let's just get to what you need to do to get the hard drive replaced and also be able to keep your operating systems and file structure completely intact. 

Buying A Replacement Hard Drive 

Obviously the first thing you will need is a good replacement hard drive that is at least the same size as the bad one or bigger.  You will also need to ensure that you are getting the right kind of drive, such as a SATA or an IDE drive.  If your old drive is an IDE drive but your motherboard supports SATA you can replace the old IDE drive with a SATA drive which will also help with performance. 

         IDE Hard Drive ^^^                                   Sata Hard Drive ^^^

Since were talking about performance, just about any time you replace a component in your computer, you usually replace it with something better then what you had before and hard drives should be the same as not all hard drives are created equal.  A larger hard drive doesn't always mean better because what good is a larger hard drive if you don't need all that extra space?  Some people are just fine with a standard 80gb hard drive.  But if you would like to increase your computers speed just a little bit, there are a few things you should look at before purchasing a new replacement drive.  

Capacity - You will want a drive with at least the same amount of storage space as your old drive if not more.

Latency - This refers to how fast the disk spins and how fast the actuator can find the sector needed.  You want this number to be lower.

Seek Time - Another factor in determining how fast you can retrieve data off of your drive.  You want this number to be lower. 

Write Time - As you can imagine, this is how fast you can write data to the the hard disk.  You want this number to be lower. 

Cache - Hard drives have a cache built in to hold data that is being written to or read from the hard disk. The purpose of doing so tries to reduce the number of occasions in which data has to be physically written and read from the hard disk platter. By retaining recent data within the cache, performance is increased as this memory is much faster and saves time on repeat recalls. You want this number to be higher.

Brand - Which brand of hard drive is best really all depends on who you ask.  One persons favorite may be completely different then anther's, and likewise with one persons least favorite.  I personally am partial to Western Digital and Seagate and I personally hate Maxtor (which is funny because I believe Seagate owns Maxtor). 

Cloning the old hard drive to the new hard drive

After you have purchased your new hard drive you will then need to clone the old hard drive over to the new one.  You can do this with any popular disk cloning software.  I personally use Norton Ghost but there are others that work and work well.  Most of these programs can cost anywhere from $50 to a couple hundred dollars.  So you will need to determine if that cost is worth it to save your data. 

So if you have your disk cloning software then we need to get to work.  You will now want to install the new drive into the computer.  If you are using SATA drives then the install should be fairly easy by just plugging in the power and SATA cables.  If you are using IDE drives you will want to make sure that you set the master/slave jumpers correctly on the new and old drives.  Most newer IDE drives usually have the proper jumper settings printed right on the drive, but if not, you can always look up the jumper settings for your model of hard drive at the manufacturers website. 

Next you will need to insert your disk cloning software CD into your cd/dvd drive and boot up your computer from the cd drive.  I am not really familiar with most of the other cloning programs, so I will mostly be referring to Norton Ghost when talking about cloning.  Since we are working with a drive that potentially has bad sectors you will need to make sure that your cloning software will force the clone regardless of bad sectors (Norton Ghost has this option listed in the general options).  By doing so, the clone could take as long as 24 hours to complete, but in the end it is worth it as you will still be able to retain all of that valuable data that you are working so hard for.  If you don't do this then the clone could fail and you have to start over from the beginning.  I recently had a customer who had a bad Maxtor drive and I wasn't sure if I was going to be able to get a good clone as the drive was in such horrible shape.  However I turned on the clone with the forced cloning of bad sectors and then just let it run all night.  About 16 hours after starting the clone it finally finished and I was able to get a good clone retaining 100% of his data.  The reason why it takes so long to get a clone from a drive with bad sectors is because the cloning software, in order to get a valid clone, needs to rebuild those bad sectors as best as it can before it copies them over to the new drive.  This process can take a very long time, depending on how bad the condition is of the old drive.  This process of rebuilding the bad sectors of the old drive before cloning can also make your hard drive heat up very fast.  Hot hard drives are not good, especially if your drive is suffering from the click of death.  So I would also recommend keeping a fan or two blowing on the drives as the clone is going on to help dissipate the heat. 

Another thing to keep in mind when setting up your clone is which drive your are copying from and to.  I know of several people, including myself, who have mistakingly copied the wrong drive.  What I mean is, the 2nd time I ever tried doing this a few years ago, I accidentally cloned the new hard drive over to the old bad hard drive, there by loosing all of the customers data.  Needless to say I not only learned a very valuable lesson but also didn't get paid for that job and in fact paid allot of money to the customer for the lost data.  It wasn't good.  So always check, double check, and triple check that you are cloning the old drive to the new drive and not the other way around. 

After your clone has completed you should be all set.  Disconnect your old drive from the computer, smash it with a sledge hammer and throw it away/recycle it.  Put the rest of your computer back together, turn your system on and enjoy.  Good job, you're finished. 

Data Recovery

This section is for people who can not get a good clone of their drive because of the click of death or another problem that won't allow the cloning software to complete or even load up. 

If your hard drive still boots or still at least seems to work in some sort of manner, but you can't get the cloning software to work right, then you will need to resort to other options. 

What tech's do here varies from geek to geek.  I like to use a program called MiniPE to get into the hard drive.  I will hook up the new hard to the computer and then boot the computer from MiniPE to access PowerDesk Pro.  I will then format the new drive in the proper format. To copy important files from the old drive to the new drive, I make a new folder on the new drive usually called "Old Files" or something and begin copying all those pictures, documents, MP3's etc... After getting all the files I need, I will do a fresh install of the operating system on the new drive, but instead of formatting the new drive I will leave the current file system intact.  When the operating system is done installing I will see the "Old Files" folder listed with the other folders on the C: drive.  Most likely though most of you won't have access to programs like MiniPE and will have to do something else.  Although I have never tried it, I would imagine that cd bootable versions of Ubuntu Linux would allow you do do almost the very same thing as MiniPE and PowerDesk Pro.  Programs like Bart PE are also pretty popular to do this.  

Now if your hard drive is one of the drives with the click of death and won't boot or operate at all, which again is usually the case with the click of death, then you will need to do some research on professional data recovery.  What has happened is the internal hardware of the hard drive has gone bad.  It could be any number of things so I won't get into that, but what you do need to know is that the hard drive needs to be rebuilt in order to get your valuable data off of it.  The rebuild can only be done in a certified clean room.  Most larger cities and populaces have data recovery company's that do this kind of work and a quick search on Google will reveal tons more across the country that you can ship your hard drive to.  Prices for the work varies from company to company.  The cheapest I have seen it go for is about $600, and I have seen prices go all the way up to $6,000.  At this point, you really need to decide if the data on the drive is worth the cost to recover it. 

Data Backup

At this point if you have read through all of that, and have done the work to recover your hard drive or are facing the click of death and the possibility of a completely lost hard drive, you are probably slapping yourself on the head wondering why you didn't back up your data to begin with. 

I can not stress enough how important backing up your system is.  I find it truly amazing that people with trust their family photos, financial information, music, documents or whatever to a $100 piece of hardware inside their computer with no form of back up plan for a "just in case" moment.  I personally keep no less then 3 backup's of my original hard drive and I have been doing this for about 9 years now.  I have music, documents, financial information and all kinds of other stuff on my computer that is in some cases almost 10 years old.  I can't tell you how many times I have seen people literally cry over the fact that all of their family photos from the last 5 years are now completely gone with no chance of getting it back without spending a couple thousand dollars. 

Backing up your computer can be done with a minimal amount of money and time.  $150 can get you a decent 300gb to 500gb external hard drive, and if you are using XP Media Center, XP Professional, Vista Home Premium, Vista Business, and Vista Ultimate you have backup software already built into your operating system.  If you don't want to use the included software with Windows try something else like Cyberlinks Power Backup.  Regardless, it is much cheaper and easier to do all this before a serious hard drive problem happens. 

I hope this blog post was helpful to some of you.  If you have any questions and I am sure some of you will, please feel free to post a comment with your question.