Harddiskfeil

Harddiskfeil refers to a fault in a hard disk drive (HDD) or other non-volatile storage device that results in data becoming unavailable or the drive failing to operate. The term covers both physical failures (mechanical or electronic damage) and logical failures (data corruption, file system errors) that prevent normal access to stored information.

Common causes include mechanical wear, bearing or head crashes, PCB faults, firmware bugs, power surges, excessive heat, and aging. Symptoms may include unusual noises such as clicking or grinding, the drive not being detected by the computer, slow or unreliable access to data, frequent crashes, or visible file system errors and unreadable files. Logical faults often arise from file system corruption or bad software shutdowns, while physical faults tend to manifest as drive inoperability or degraded SMART attributes.

Diagnosis typically involves SMART data checks, vendor-provided diagnostic tools, and tests for read/write errors. It is important to distinguish between logical and physical failures, since physical damage often requires professional data recovery services. In many cases, data recovery depends on having a recent backup.

Prevention and data protection measures include regular backups and the use of redundancy (such as RAID or cloud backups), monitoring SMART attributes, protecting against power surges with an uninterruptible power supply, keeping drives cool, and avoiding physical shocks. For suspected failures, cease using the drive to prevent further damage and consult professional recovery services if data is valuable or not backed up.