How to Fix A Dying Hard Drive?

Theo Lucia

May 25, 2023 • Filed to: Answer Hard Drive Problems • Proven solutions

“Is my hard drive dying? Whenever I turn my computer on, the hard drive makes a clicking sound. Can someone tell me what to do if my hard drive is failing?”

As a friend of mine asked me this, I realized that a lot of people suffer from a corrupt or dying hard drive issue. Even if your hard drive has died, there are a few precautionary measures that you can take. Besides that, there are a few things that you can do to revive a dying hard drive again. In this post, I will let you know how to fix a dying hard drive and diagnose any related issues like a pro.

Common Symptoms for a Failing Hard Drive

Before we discuss how to fix a dying hard drive, let’s look at some of its common symptoms that would help you catch this issue in the first place.

• The overall performance of your system might be getting affected radically.
• Your hard drive could be making a mechanical sound while working.
• Your system takes a lot of time during the startup process.
• If your computer hangs a lot or stops any process abruptly.
• Getting numerous storage-related issues or SMART (Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology) errors could be another symptom.
• There are numerous bad sectors or unavailable/unallocated space in your drive.
• Your files have gone missing or your data has become lost/unavailable.
• Your system is getting overheated or making clicking sounds.
• Lastly, getting the blue/black screen of death could be another sign of a corrupt disk.

How to Diagnose if Your Hard Disk is Dying or Not?

By closely examining the above-listed symptoms, you can check if your hard drive is dying or not. Apart from that, when I wanted to be certain if my hard drive died or not, I did a quick examination of my disk. If you want, you can also do the same and get the status of your hard drive in the following way.

1. Firstly, just go to the Start menu from the taskbar and look for “Command Prompt”. Make sure that you open Command Prompt as an administrator on your system.
2. Once the Command Prompt window is launched, just type the “wmic diskdrive get status” command and press enter.

This would automatically check the present health status of your hard drive and would let you know. If the Status is “Ok” then it means that your hard drive is working smoothly. In case you get errors like “Bad”, “Unknown”, or “Corrupt”, then it implies your hard drive is failing.

What Should You Do After Realizing Your Hard Drive is Going to Fail?

When I realized that my hard drive died, the first thing I did was to take a backup of my data. In this way, you can preserve your important files from getting lost or deleted. If your hard drive also died, then take the assistance of Wondershare UBackit. It is a dedicated application that can take an entire backup of your dying hard drive. You can select a disk to back up, or even pick the folders of your choice to save.

To learn how to back up your entire disk using Wondershare UBackit, you can follow this basic drill.

Step 1: Select the Disk Backup option

To begin with, just install and launch the UBackit application on your system. From here, you can choose to back up the entire disks, partitions, folders, or emails, etc. If your hard drive died, then you can pick the “Disk Backup” option instead.

Step 2: Choose the Drive to Back up

To proceed, you can just select which drive you want to include in the backup.

Here will simply display a list of the available disks present in your system. From here, you can just select the drive that is failing and click on the “Select” button.

Step 3: Select a Location to Save the Backup

Afterward, select a location to save the backup. If your disk has been corrupted, then you can select any other location (or even an external hard drive) to save the backup.

Step 4: Back up your data successfully

That’s it! Once you have selected the location to save the backup, just click on the “Backup” button and simply wait for the process to complete.

If you want, you can click on the gear icon on the backup file to set backup schedule. This will enable you to set daily, weekly, or monthly automatic backup that you wish to perform after completing the backup.

Just wait for a while now and let Wondershare UBackit complete the process. When it is done, you will be notified and can restart your system. If you want, you can check the backup file from here and can later use it to restore your data.

How to Fix a Dying Hard Drive: Possible Solutions

By now, I was able to check if my hard drive is dying or whether there is any other issue with my system. In case your hard drive died and you are facing some issues with it, then I would recommend the following methods to fix it.

Fix 1: Check or Replace the Power Cables

Before you take any drastic measures, make sure that the hard drive is connected properly in our system. To check this, you can just open the case of your system and verify if the data/power cable is connected properly or not. You can also clean the drive, its box, and connected cables from here.

If there is an issue with the power/data cable, then you can get a new one as well. You can connect it to the same or existing slot in your system. In case any changes are made, then you can go to the BIOS settings on your system to correct its booting sequence.

Fix 2: Repair the Drive via Windows Disk Check

Windows also has an inbuilt disk checking feature that you can use to scan the status of your drive and fix it. To learn how to fix a dying hard drive via Windows Disk Checkup, you can just launch My Computer (or This PC) on the Explorer.

Now, just select the drive’s icon, right-click it, and go to its Properties from the context menu. As the Properties window would open, visit the “Tool” tab and click on the “Check” button under the Error Checking feature.

This will automatically open the disk checking wizard that you can follow to revive your hard drive and repair it.

Fix 3: Update the Hard Disk Drivers

When was the last time you updated your drivers or the firmware? If it has been a while, then an old or unsupported driver can also make your hard drive die. Thankfully, when my hard drive died, I was able to fix it by following this approach.

To update the drivers, you can just go to the Start Menu and look for “Device Manager”. You can also find it in Control Panel > Computer Management > Device Manager. Once the Device Manager window is opened, go to the Disk Drivers option to find your hard drive’s drivers.

That’s it! You can now just right-click the driver and choose to update it. This will open another click-through wizard that you can follow to update your hard drive’s drivers.

Fix 4: Reset or Rollback the Drivers

Apart from updating the drivers you can also reset or roll back their settings to learn how to fix a dying hard drive. Once you visit the Device Manager, right-click the driver’s icon to go to its Properties.

Now, to reset the drive, you can choose to disable it first and wait for a while. Afterward, you can follow the same drill but select the “Enable Drive” option instead to reset it.

Besides that, in the driver properties window, you can also find an option to roll back the update. Just click on the “Roll Back Driver” button to reverse the recent update and change its settings.

Fix 5: Update the Windows Firmware

Apart from drivers or the security settings, there could be an issue with your Windows firmware as well. It can also be a reason for your dead hard drive that you can easily fix. Just go to your system’s Settings > Update & Security > Windows Update. From here, you can view the recently available updates and upgrade the firmware of your system easily.

Fix 6: Consult a Professional or Use a Repairing Tool

Well, if nothing else seems to work and your hard drive is still dying, then I would recommend considering a professional. You can go to the service center of the relevant brand to get it fixed. There are also a few trusted DIY hard drive repairing tools that you can further explore to revive your dead hard drive on your own.

How to Recover Data from a Failing Hard Drive?

By now, I have already discussed what to do if my hard drive is failing and how to revive it. Though, if you have lost your important data in the process and your hard drive has been corrupted, then you can use Wondershare Recoverit Data Recovery. A professional and user-friendly application, it will let you retrieve your deleted data from your hard drive easily.

• Recovery Data Recovery supports the retrieval of data under all scenarios like lost partition, corrupt disk, failed hard drive, and more.
• You can select a partition or folder to scan or extract your data from the entire disk as well.
• The application will let you filter results based on different parameters and you can even preview your files in advance.
• Recoverit Data Recovery has one of the highest success rates in the industry and is extremely easy to use.
• It supports the recovery of all the major data types and hard disk file systems like exFAT, FAT, NTFS, APFS, and more.

To know how to retrieve your data from a failed hard drive using Recoverit Data Recovery, you can follow these steps:

Step 1: Select a partition/drive to can

At first, you can simply install and launch Recoverit Data Recovery on your computer and select a location to scan. For instance, you can choose a partition, folder, the entire drive, or any external source.

Step 2: Let Recoverit scan the selected source

Afterward, just click on the “Start” button and let Recoverit look for your lost or deleted data. There would be an on-screen indicator to show the progress of the scan and you can even halt/stop the process in between.

Step 3: Restore your lost/deleted data

Once the scan is over, you can simply view the recovered data that would automatically be listed under different categories. You can visit them or use the inbuilt filters to look for your data based on file size, type, date, etc.

On the native interface of Recoverit, you can even get a preview of your photos, videos, audios, documents, and other data types. You can now select what you wish to get back, click on the “Recover” button, and save your extracted files to any location of your choice.

After reading this guide on how to fix a dying hard drive, I’m sure you must be able to fix the same issue as well. Apart from including my experience after my hard drive died, I have also listed some smart tips. For instance, you can first diagnose the issue and even take a backup of your data in advance. Alternatively, if your hard drive died instead, then you can simply try Recoverit Data Recovery to restore your deleted content in a jiffy.