Hard Disk Fault and Recovery Process

General Faults

The followings are typically 3 primary hard disk faults commonly occurred to pc users :

• Failure Of Operating System
  
  
  This happens when you are unable to boot into your operating system due to corrupted or missing system files or virus infections. Recovery effort is largely achieved by software utilities.

• Failure Of Physical Disk Component
  
  This can range from a simple damaged circuit to a nasty mechanical head crash. This is usually seen as the disk drive produces weird grinding sounds or stops spinning totally. In some cases, you might notice smoke and a burning odour emitting from the drive. These symptoms reveals a physical failure and software recovery at this stage will not be helpful or at worst, it will do more damage than good. In this case, recovery must be done by hardware fixes. If drives have to be opened up, they have to be done in Class 100 clean room environment.
  
  
• Failure of Firmware Code
  
  The firmware is a microcode that provides instruction for the drive to function properly. It can be prone to corruption (such as development of bad sectors on factory reserved area) and render the disk unusable and undetected by the BIOS which may refuse to recognize your boot drive and displays an array of strange drive model or error messages when you power up your computer. Degree of difficult is generally extremely high.