Drives rarely fail without warning. If you know what the warning signs look like, you often have time to save your files.
The warning signs
- Clicking, grinding or repeated beeping from a mechanical hard drive. Switch it off.
- Very slow opening of files and folders, especially if it used to be fast.
- Freezing when you open or save something, then carrying on as if nothing happened.
- Files that will not open, or have gone missing, or folders that show as empty.
- Blue screens or Windows repairing itself every time you start up.
- The drive vanishing from your computer, or an external drive asking you to format it.
The one thing to do first
Copy the files you cannot replace somewhere else, now, onto a different drive or a cloud service. Photos and documents first. A drive that is struggling can fail completely the next time it spins up, so do the important things before anything else.
If the drive is clicking, do not keep switching it on to try again. Each attempt can do more damage. Switch it off and ask for help.
What not to do
- Do not run repair tools or reinstall Windows on a drive you think is failing. They write to the drive, and that can overwrite what you are trying to save.
- Do not shake, tap or open the drive.
- Do not install recovery software on the same drive you are trying to recover from.
Can the files be saved?
Often, but nobody can honestly promise it. It depends on what is wrong with the drive and whether files have been overwritten. We look at the drive, tell you what is realistic and what recovery would cost, and only then do you decide.
If it is a laptop that no longer starts, data recovery is the page to start with.