Signs of Camcorder Hard Drive Failure

Many modern camcorders offer amazing capacity to their users by way of built in hard drives. Hard drives are, after all, extremely inexpensive, fairly durable, and capable of containing a tremendous amount of data. Unfortunately, they're not perfect, and the hard drive in a camcorder can fail, especially after a camcorder has been dropped or otherwise abused.

Here's a look at a few of the most common signs of hard drive failure in a camcorder.

Various error messages. If a camcorder indicates that it can't read data or write video, it could be a sign of hard drive failure. However, it could also be a sign that the hard drive is full or that the camcorder has software issues, so it's best to check for other symptoms.

Clicking sounds. Clicking or whirring noises may indicate that the fragile heads which read and write data on a hard drive have failed. After a hard drive fails, the heads cause noises by coming into contact with the platters that contain your videos. As such, you should immediately turn off a camcorder if its hard drive is making excessive clicking noises or any strange sounds that you don't recognize.

File corruption. Sometimes a hard drive doesn't display major symptoms, but rather, some of the videos on your camcorder will suddenly become inaccessible. The camcorder may display some sort of error about file corruption. This can mean that certain sectors on the hard drive have been detected as bad, which essentially means that your camcorder's hard drive is gradually breaking down. Transfer any videos off of the camcorder as soon as possible.

What to do. If your camcorder's hard drive fails and it's within its warranty, you should be able to get it replaced, and in some cases you can even get a free replacement if you've dropped your camcorder (although I wouldn't mention this to your camcorder company's customer support). However, getting the data off of your camcorder's hard drive is a trickier process. To successfully retrieve data, you'd have to use a data recovery company, and that can cost upwards of $1,000.

Unfortunately, the costs of data recovery are generally not covered under your camcorder's warranty. This is why data backup is especially important if you have a camcorder with a hard drive-if that drive goes down, you could end up with a big bill on your hands.

Have any tips or questions about dealing with hard drive failure in a camcorder? Post in the comments section below.