Common Errors & Symptoms of damage to the hard drive

The following are the common symptoms are problems that are associated with the hard disk failure.

• Missing Power or data cable.


• Incorrect BIOS configuration.


• Incorrect Hardware configurations.


• Devices Conflict.


• Data cable is not connected.


• Drive not powered on.


• Port disabled.


• Power supply might no be connected to the hard disk.


• Missing operating system and hard drive boot failure message appear.


• Disk out of space message appears.


• No boot record, no disk found or invalid disk message appear, which indicates that the system boot files are not located on the root directory.


• Hard disk controller failure message appear.


• Display is present on the screen and front panel lights are also visible but there is not boot up.

Solutions:

While booting up the computer observe the BIOS’s hard disk configurations and information. Make sure that the system BIOS is displaying the exact information of the installed hard disk and there is no devices conflicts. Check the master/slave jumper settings and if you have attached more than one device to the same interface cable then make sure that all the devices are of the same type. If you cannot access the hard drive even its configurations and BIOS settings are correct then the problem must be in the components that are associated with the hard disk.  These components include drive, signal cable and hard disk controller.

For troubleshooting the cables related errors, unplug all the cables from the hard disk and plug them back.  For configurations related errors, check the system BIOS and make sure that it’s displaying the exact information and settings of the hard disk. 

Any kind of noise indicates the mechanical problems, which may be associated with the hard disk plates or any other components.  Replace the hard disk with new one.

No boot record found, disk failure, invalid disk and “NTLDR missing” errors indicates that either the operating system is not installed on the root directory or it has been corrupted.  Repair the operating system with the recovery disk or install new operating system.

To troubleshoot the surface errors of the hard disk run the following two commands one by one at the command prompt and press enter.

Scandisk

CHKDSK

These commands will check the hard disk for possible errors and troubleshoot them.

Troubleshooting USB Device

• Make sure that you have the latest software installed on your computer because if the software doesn’t have the latest components then the devices can cause problems. 


• Visit the manufacturer’s website to see any latest drivers for the device.


• Unplug the faulty USB device and plug it back.


• Unplug all the USB devices from the computer such as USB drive, USB keyword, USB mouse etc and then plug them back one by one.


• If it’s a new USB device then replace it with another and if it’s an old one then figure out the changes that you did just before the device stopped working.  Did you install any new hardware or software?


• Check the USB device with all the USB ports of the computer and see if it works with any port or not?


• Check the USB device with the other computer and see if it works fine with it