Repairing and Upgrading Your PC

Troubleshooting Hard Drive Problems

Problems that occur when you have just installed a hard drive are almost always a simple matter of a bad or incorrectly connected cable, incorrect jumper settings, or some similar trivial problem. If a newly installed drive isn't recognized by the system, turn off the system. Check the cables—make sure that they're aligned properly and seated completely—and replace them if necessary. Make sure that the drive has power, and restart the system.

Once a hard drive is configured properly and recognized by the system, it generally continues working properly until it fails. If you're fortunate, you may get some warning of impending drive failure, such as odd noises coming from the drive, dialogs warning of read or write failures, or a SMART drive failure warning when you start the system. Unfortunately, hard drives often fail like light bulbs—perfect one moment and dead the next.

Any News Is Bad News

If a hard drive shows even the slightest sign that it has problems, immediately copy the data from that drive to another hard drive or optical disc and replace that drive. Drive makers and third-party utility vendors offer software that claims to repair hard drive problems. Don't believe it. Once a drive has shown signs of impending failure, it will inevitably fail completely, and probably sooner than later. When a hard drive exhibits problems, your only goal should be to rescue your data from that drive. Don't even think about continuing to use a hard drive ...