10 ways to fix a sick PC (Part 2)
Thursday, July 10. 2008
6. Test the health of the hard drive
The hard drive is where all of your computer's data is stored. Unfortunately, like everything inside or connected to your PC, these will, overtime, degrade and eventually fail.
Before a drive fails entirely though, it will give you tell-tale signs of impending doom in the form of sluggish performance, louder than standard operation and, if bad sectors have developed on its storage platter, ‘clicking' sounds. If you've noticed any of these, it's best to try and first back-up all essential data and then run a check to test the drive's health. Before you get cracking however, we recommend disabling any non-essential software.
To check your drive's health, double click on ‘Computer' and then right click on the drive - that you want to run a check on - and select ‘Properties'. Now, click the ‘Tools' tab and then hit ‘Check Now'. Make sure to un-tick the ‘Automatically fix file system errors' but tick the ‘Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors' option boxes. Once done, hit ‘Start'.
This process could take anywhere from 30 minutes to several hours (depending on the health and size of the drive). If problems are detected, we recommend - if you haven't already - first trying to back-up your essential data before allowing the app to try and fix the issues. If a problem is detected and cannot be corrected however, it's a sure fire sign the drive is close to failing completely.
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