Determining Hard Drive Errors: Logical Vs. Mechanical

Computer hard drives are the most vulnerable hardware plugged in to a computer. Due to a variety of reasons, it will often fail or show an error, or crash. As we are talking hard drives the loss of data is always one of the biggest concerns. If failures shall occur, the first step to saving your files is determining what caused the problem.

This approach is basic diagnostic, you check for all the hardware installed on your computer. The most common to cause an error such as a crash or failed startup is the hard drive. Now, branching onto the hard drive, the problem can be software or hardware (also known as logical and mechanical)

First, let us make a comparison for the two. When we speak for a logical or software error, it means that a file (e.g. an important system file) has been tampered or corrupted or moved to another location. Either you have installed a program (a new device driver perhaps) and it messed up your system, or that you've been under a virus attack. It's less probable that you have manually tampered or deleted a system file since they are by default inaccessible and trying to modify them returns you an "access" denied error. Make sure to remember if there are any new software, changes, programs, or whatnot that you have installed before your computer crashed, then you can figure out that it is a Logical Hard Drive Failure and make fixes appropriate as depends on the error.

The latter is mechanical failure, which I have been talking about on some other article (The article talks about recovering files from physically damaged drives, it can be found here.) Mechanical Failure often cannot be detected by the system and goes from mild to worst. This is physical damage incurred to your hard drive. Maybe dropping a notebook computer some height, using it beyond the advised tolerable condition (example: overheating, overclocking)

Hardware/Mechanical errors are the most difficult and the best you can do is to just backup your files as quick as possible before this error extends more.

But, remember that you encountered such error or failure doesn't mean you can still always salvage your files, or even run the operating system to do so.

Here are some fallback tips to do in case of severe failures.

Condition: Operating System is no more accessible

Solution 1: Plug in your hard drive to another computer, or use a bootable system like a pendrive, to see, and browse through your hard drive files.

This might not always work as per the extent of the physical damage, and the last thing you can resort to is using a file recovery service which costs quite some cash.