Usually people use a laptop to be able to work wherever they go. Having a lot of important data on your laptop can mean disaster if the laptop hard drive crashes. That’s why it is always better to regularly back-up your data. If you don’t and your hard disk crashes, you will have to pay a lot of money to recover it. In some cases you might even lose it forever. So I recommend buying CD’s or DVD’s from time to time and write all the important data. It’s the safe and the cheap way. If your hard drive crashes it will be much cheaper to replace than to recover the data, if it’s physical damage you will have to replace it anyway.

The most common types of hard drive failure are produced by accidental deletion of an important file, attacks from a virus, corruption, physical damage; the hard drive could also crash if you drop your laptop.

There are a few things you shouldn’t do if you suspect hard disk failure, because you could make things worse. If it was damaged because of a fire don’t try to clean it. You can amplify the damage done that way. If you know that the damage is physical don’t shake the laptop and don’t remove the hard drive. Leave it as it is until a professional inspects it.

After the laptop was physically damaged you should immediately turn it off. It can prevent further damage. If it was damaged because of water, you shouldn’t try to clean it or get the water out! If you see messages similar to “Volume Corrupt” or “Operating System Not Found” it is strongly recommended that you shut down the laptop right away and call a professional to see what could be wrong.

If you suspect a mechanical damage, meaning, if you hear weird noises coming from your laptop don’t use scandisk or checkdisk or anything similar. Finally, the worst thing you could do is to try to recover the data, without knowing what you are doing. That’s the best way to permanently lose your data.

So, if you suspect that something is wrong with your laptop hard drive, you shouldn’t do a thing, only if you know what you are doing. The first thing to do in case of hard disk damage is to call a professional and let him take a look!