This column will focus on hard drive problems. Before we begin, I have noticed an interesting local phenomenon. People tend to call the entire PC box the "hard drive". Unfortunately, there is no formal name that I know of - I just call it the PC, or the system unit, or even just the PC box. A "hard drive" is just one component of the PC. It resides inside the system unit and is the component where all of your files are stored. It is usually hidden inside and is not visible on the outside of the case.
Modern hard drives are fairly reliable. But if you ever delve into the reliability of electrical components, you will find that the mechanical components - those that rotate or move - tend to fail more often than chips or circuits. A hard drive has two mechanical elements - a series of rotating platters of magnetic material and the record/playback heads, which move in and out.
Hard drives can and do fail. They can fail in two different ways. A 'soft' failure is one that is (at least temporarily) recoverable. Your hard drive will continue to run, but you may get errors on some files and the system may appear to slow down. A "hard" failure is a catastrophic failure of the device, and there is no recovery - your data is gone.
But it doesn't matter how it fails. Your only hope of recovering your data is to back it up. I say this again three times - BACKUP, BACKUP, BACKUP! You should take regular backups (I recommend using writeable CDs) and be sure to take some of the CDs off site. If you don't do this, you will lose all of your data if a hard drive failure occurs.
Diagnosing a "hard" failure is straightforward. Your PC just stops running. It won't boot and it may display a brief error message that there is no operating system available. The best way to test this is to then boot from a startup diskette. If the diskette boots OK, but you get an error after entering "C;" at the prompt, then the hard drive is probably bad. If the diskette does not boot, you have some other system error. Of course, you have to remember to write a system diskette beforehand.
The problem may be other hardware in the PC, such as the hard drive controller on the motherboard. If other devices on the same interface still run OK (CD-ROM, etc.) then it is probably the hard drive. If no other devices run, then it may be the motherboard.
To create a startup diskette in Win98/SE/ME you do this by going to Start / Settings / Control Panel and then selecting Add/Remove Programs. You will see a tab for "Startup Disk"- then follow the directions. Creating the diskette in Windows 2000 or Windows XP is not easy; I recommend you find a friend with a Windows 98 system and get one from them. This will only work if your hard drive is formatted in FAT32, not NTFS. If you don't know what this means, you will probably need professional help here.
"Soft" failures are harder to diagnose. Individual files may fail, your system may start to run very slowly, or you may hear clicking sounds from the system unit. "Soft" failures tend to become worse over time. If you suspect that you have a "soft" failure, you should make even more of an effort to ensure that your backups are recent, because the end may be near! If the PC is under warranty, the manufacturer may ask you to reformat the hard drive to correct the problem. I have found that this is not effective if there is a real, physical problem with the hard drive. But you need to follow your manufacturer's directions, so you may have to try this step.
Now, what to do about it. If your PC is old, you might just consider a new system unit. A new hard drive will cost about $100, and if you can put it in yourself it's probably worth doing. But to have a service person replace the hard drive, load a new operating system (Windows), and reload your data it will take hours of work. This would result in a bill that might be 1/2 the price of a new unit. Replacement of the entire system unit should be considered in this case, because for a bit more money you will get not only a new hard drive, but a much faster processor, more memory, and a newer version of Windows.
Replacing the drive is actually fairly easy, if you know enough about PC innards to be able to figure out which device is the hard drive. I won't go into it here, as there are lots of tutorials on the Internet to do this. After you get the new hard drive in, you will have to load Windows and then restore your data.
For most of us, this will never happen. But that is no excuse not to take good backups!
(Bob Seidel is a local computer consultant in the Southport / Oak Island area. You can visit his website at www.bobseidel.com or e-mail him at bsc@bobseidel.com).