Home > Surveying a hard disk?

Take out emergency checklist and try to set things right. Don't panic. A blank screen or a failure to boot up doesn't always mean you have a crashed hard drive. Today's hard disks often outlast all other key PC components, and running system utilities unnecessarily or removing and reinstalling your hardware can do more harm than good. Try to restart. Turn your computer off, wait 10 seconds, and turn it back on. This resets the computer which is often all that's required to solve the problem. Check the obvious. If your screen stays blank, check all power cords, cables, and connectors to make sure they're firmly attached. Check your surge protector to make sure it hasn't blown a fuse or been destroyed by an errant voltage spike. And make sure the brightness and contrast settings on your monitor haven't been turned all the way down. Listen for clues. As your PC starts up, you should hear the power-supply fan rev up. You should also hear your hard disk spinning merrily. If all is quiet on the hardware front, you may have a bad power supply or a loose power connection.

Open up your PC's case and make sure all the power-supply cables to your hard drive and motherboard are attached properly. If you hear a series of beeps before your system locks up, note their number and whether the beeps are long or short. This audio error message from your system's BIOS provides information about a problem it has detected. Check with the manufacturer of your system to identify your particular error. Look for clues.

When your PC starts, it runs a Power-On Self Test that confirms the presence of such essential hardware components as memory chips, video cards, and hard drives. Watch for error messages as the results of each check appear on the monitor. You may also see confirmation or error messages as your system initializes such higher-level devices as the CD-ROM drive. You don't always need an error message, however. If your system locks up while configuring such a peripheral, then chances are that's the culprit.

If your system launches Windows, your disk is at least partially functional. Windows 95 and 98 still use the DOS autoexec.bat and config.sys files to load drivers for some old hardware. Your PC can't load Windows from the hard disk. This may indicate a badly damaged drive. Boot from a floppy. This process bypasses the hard drive and confirms that your computer is otherwise healthy. Use the Windows start-up disk that came with your system. Restart your system with the start-up disk in the floppy drive. If your system successfully boots and displays the A:\ prompt, your PC is working properly. Check your CMOS settings. If you get an error message saying Drive C: not found your PC may not recognize the hard disk because it lost all its CMOS settings, which happens when the CMOS battery starts to die. Most PCs will reenter them for you by using the CMOS setup program's hard-drive auto configure utility. If you've taken all these steps and your hard drive is still as useful as a trailer then it's time to consult the experts. Thus, this is the procedures for surveying the hard disk, if it is not possible then take it to the disk recovery shop and then need a serious consultant.

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