PC Hardware Annoyances

Chapter 5. Hard Drive Annoyances

I love flashy sound and video as much as the next geek, but hard drive technology has always impressed me. Those little electromechanical marvels can spin tiny steel platters at thousands of revolutions per minute, while delicate read-write heads skim the surface on a microscopic cushion of air. Yet the drives store hundreds of gigabytes of data error-free, access that data in a matter of moments, and (at least theoretically) run for up to 30 years without breaking down. Heck, I have to jiggle the handle just to get my toilet to stop gurgling.

But like most other PC components, hard drives can be finicky, and because today’s computers absolutely rely on proper drive operation, any trouble can result in system performance problems and file loss-trashing days (even weeks) of your hard work. This chapter covers a multitude of hard drive annoyances. It starts by addressing a bevy of configuration annoyances (ones you’ll likely encounter when adding or replacing a drive), and then looks at ways to perk up drive performance. It also includes a series of maintenance fixes that will keep your drive error-free, and finally examines a range of backup and restoration issues to protect your important work.

CONFIGURATION ANNOYANCES

DRIVE GOES MISSING

The Annoyance:

I can’t access my internal hard drive and it no longer appears in the list of hardware detected by the BIOS at boot time.

The Fix:

Power down and open the PC, and make sure the 4-pin power connector is securely ...