Windows is one of the most popular operating system and it is widely used by computers and servers due to its convenience and good performance. Hard drive is hardware placed on all computers storing data and installing program and Windows. When hard disk gets damaged, the result is losing important data or even system. Hard disk problem happens to all computers without any foreshadow and there are a great number of causes of HDD failure such as virus attack, bad sector, sudden power failure, etc.

All HDD problems can be divided into two groups: physical failure and logical failure. This post will explains both and their differences.

Hard drive physical failure

Hard drive contains many mechanical parts which easily get damaged after violently crash or dropping to grand. It has been mentioned just now, sudden power failure may cause severe problem. It's well known that traditional hard drive writes and read data by way of heads moving forth and back above rotating platters. Normal process of system shut down sends signal to hard disk and heads will withdraw. But sudden power outage forces heads to withdraw from stack of moving platters, which is very likely cause bad sectors and do harm to head and data.

Solution of such HDD failure differs from the importance of missing files. Some users seek hard drive recovery solutions while some want get HDD repaired. However, in fact, neither of them is easy to realize, as certain damage is irreversible and even specialized machines can't handle it.

Logical hard drive failure

As it suggests literarily, errors or problem happened on logical level. An easy example, hard drive partition becomes inaccessible or corrupted because of file system error. Reasons of file system error are many, which can be virus infection, unplug drive improperly or partition table damage. Windows hard drive failure brings about data loss, as corrupted partition or drive can't be opened.

It's easy to fix such issues. Formatting is able to make an inaccessible partition normal again and chkdsk command helps fix file system error. One point should be noted is that Windows data recovery must be done prior to formatting or any other repairing actions; otherwise recovery result will be affected, as files might be damaged.

Hard drive failure repair and data recovery

The most common hard drive damage is bad sector. To some extent, bad sector also can be further divided into two types: logical and physical bad sectors. The former can be fixed by some software, and yet physical bad sector requires professional machines. However, there are still many bad sectors can't be repaired. Besides, once heads within the hard drive go wrong, it is not workable to get it repaired.

HDD failure won't be repaired on its own and lost files won't be recovered automatically either. Thus third party tool or service is needed, for instance hard drive recovery software Eassos Recovery is capable of retrieving missing files from damaged HDD. There are many online and local HDD repairing shops aiming to fix physical problems.