A hard drive crash happens quite often these days, that’s why you should be very careful if you have important data on your hard disk. A hard drive crash can happen as easy as dropping a laptop on the floor, because the laptop hard disk is very sensitive. If you don’t like to back-up your data, at least you should know what symptoms appear before a hard drive crash.

If you hear something that sounds similar to a click from your computer or laptop, you could have problems like a bad pcb controller, overwritten servo’s, damage to the hard drive’s platters or a power surge. You should immediately back-up the important data!

A blue screen is also a sign that something is wrong. If it happens while you are in the middle of something it could mean that you have bad sectors on your hard disk or a virus. However it can also mean that other hardware is damaged. Anyway you should still back-up the data to be sure.

If you get a message which says that your hard drive wasn’t formatted, it is most likely that the partition has been damaged. This can be caused by several things like viruses, malicious software, partitioning software and so on.

A computer which reboots itself all the time indicates that something is wrong. If it is because of the hard drive, then probably it is the work of a very bad virus. You should get rid of the virus as fast as you can. If you can’t, back-up your data and get someone to fix the problem.

Another common symptom is when your computer stops for no reason when you try to access something. It is called a freeze and it is usually because of bad sectors on your hard drive. It is recommended to repair to try and repair those sectors, but before doing that, copy everything that is important somewhere else.

If the BIOS doesn’t detect your hard drive it could mean that the hard drive is physically damaged. You should leave the computer how it is until a professional will be able to check your hard drive.

If you get a message that the operating system can’t be found, that can only mean that something is wrong with the hard drive. All you can do in this case is to turn off the computer and call a data recovery company.

I hope you remember these symptoms, because they could save you some money. Data recovery isn’t very cheap!