The Life and Death of Your Hard Disk

The hard disk in your system is primarily a data center. Being a data center, it becomes one of the most indispensable and important devices in your system. In current parlance, hard disks run parallel with advanced microprocessors in terms of technology and the progress they have made in storage capacity, speed, to name a few.

But the impending thought that arises is on its lifespan – How long will it last?

Your hard drive life expectancy should be more, i.e. it should have a considerable amount of life before it dies down. This is because the more the life of your hard disk, the longer you would be able to store your important data. However, it’s hard to comment on the lifespan of your hard disk: it could be a year, three years, five years, or more, considering the fact that the standard warranty of most of the hard disks is only 12 months.

However, the average life of a hard disk depends on a number of factors such as Brand, Type, Size, Storage Capacity, Interface Method, Usage, etc.

As per research conducted by Backblaze, an online backup service, who researched on 25,000 hard drives from different brands and categories, found that about 80% of the hard disks that were regularly used survived for approximately four years. This means that about 20% of them did not fail or failed sooner than four years. However, a loaded but dormant hard disk can last for long and keep your data safe and secure for several years in the future, provided the data storage conditions are under optimal range.

Whatever be the reason, the repercussions that you have to face with a hard drive that simply stopped working is severe. The reason being, the moment your hard disk dies down, your data stands at risk. The chances are that this may lead to permanent data loss beyond the scope of recovery.

However, there is a reason to look up. Hard disks do not die suddenly; rather, they show warning signs, which therefore, gives you considerable time to back up your critical data so that you do no lose it permanently. Also, many a times data can be recovered, the conditions being that the data in the hard disk should not be overwritten or corruption in the hard disk is minor.

A hard disk failure usually shows signs and symptoms which are easily identifiable. Occurrence of cryptic and other error messages, scrambled and altered ‘folder’ and ‘file’ names, stored ‘files’ and ‘folders’ disappearing, long ‘wait time’ to access folders and files, files and folders not opening quickly, distorted output while opening files, tickling sound or noise from the hard disk, and frequent crashing of hard disk during the Windows boot up process, etc. are the notable ones which you may come across at one point or the other.

All of these signs are an excellent indicator of some or the other kind of issue in your hard disk that would ultimately make it stop working. Should you observe any of the above signs or symptoms, back up your hard drive fast.

Backing up your data regularly is a good habit. Also, you should always go for a reliable hard disk brand as this gives a significant amount of warranty for your device. With this, you will be prepared for the worst-case scenario that could spring anytime.

Next, picture another scenario where you did not back up your data due to which your hard disk stops working, consequently leading to a data loss situation. This requires an immediate solution; and, to do so, you can either purchase a hard drive recovery or visit a data recovery service center. Sometimes a service center may not be within your vicinity but purchasing a data recovery software is just a click away!

There are several niche products available for you to choose from; however, one that deserves special attention are the data recovery products from Stellar – Stellar Phoenix Windows Data Recovery and Stellar Phoenix Mac Data Recovery, which are advanced utilities. Let’s delve upon each.

Stellar Phoenix Windows Data Recovery Pro (SPWDR) easily recovers all your inaccessible data due to loss, deletion, and formatting of the partition of your hard disk which runs on Windows. Available in two versions – Professional (Pro) and Technician (Tech), they deftly retrieve partitions and data of all types such as text, images, audio, and videos from your damaged hard disk. Not only they are capable of recovering raw data, but you can also instruct it to do so when required. And, its Tech version possesses an additional feature of RAID data recovery, therefore, supporting several versions of RAID server. It is compatible with Windows 10, 8, 7, Vista, and XP versions.

Stellar Phoenix Mac Data Recovery (SPMDR) seamlessly recovers all your lost, deleted, and inaccessible data from your Mac system, be it iMac, MacBook Pro, Mac Mini, MacBook Air, or Mac Pro. Here, you can recover data in the raw form even if you’ve lost your Mac volume, or your filesystems are encrypted. With this utility, you can retrieve data from all file systems, be it HFS, HFS+, FAT, ExFAT or NTFS. Further, you can achieve even Mac recovery from OS X volumes that are not mounted. What’s more! You can recover data from all versions of OS X running on your Mac.

Now that you are aware of the features and benefits of Stellar Phoenix Windows Data Recovery- PRO and Stellar Phoenix Mac Data Recovery (SPMDR), you can use them to recover all your data from your damaged or corrupted hard disk successfully. However, you should keep in mind that these software tools will work only when the software is able to detect your hard disk.

So, the next time your hard drive stops working, help is just a click away!