In this article we examine typical symptoms of hard drive failure and possible causes. We will identify issues that will prevent you from having to perform a hard drive data recovery.

What are the signs to look out for? While there are few sure-fire signs of impending disk failure there are some warning signals that give us the hint. Watch out for: disappearing files, very long wait while accessing files, files/folders whose contents appear to be strangely scrambled; reoccurring error messages while moving/copying/ deleting/creating files, and strange but frequent crashes of your OS.