Possible hard drive problems? Start here

A computer's hard drive is one of it's most important components.It's the thing that Windows or OS X resides on in addition to your pictures, videos, files, and programs. Without it, a computer isn't much more than a set of instructions with no content.A hard drive should last a long time, but eventually, it will cease to work. Personally, I have seen hard drives last more than a decade with heavy use, other times they can fail right out of the box or in a matter of weeks or months. The bottom line is that you just never know when your hard drive is going to fail. For this reason, it is important to back up your data regularly.Most of the time, your hard drive will give you years of service. Over time, your hard drive could develop problems for several different reasons. Improper shutdowns, power surges and mechanical failure are some of the most common reasons for hard drive failure.If your computer is starting to give you hard drive errors, problems starting up or won't start at all, it could be caused by a problem with your hard drive. If the drive is damaged enough, there might not be much you can do to get it to work, but if it is just starting to go bad, or perhaps the mechanical parts are still good, but a power outage caused some corruption to the data, there is something that can be done.The following instructions for checking the hard drive and fixing the problems could cause more problems if the hard drive is very damaged. They could cause the drive to fail. Before running this process, make sure to back up your drive and don't run the process unless you are having hard drive problems and have to.If you are using a Mac, you simply need to boot the computer up holding down the "Command" key and "R." This will boot OS X Recovery, which will enable you to check your hard drive. Once it boots, simply choose "Disk Utility" and then "Continue." From there, you will see your hard drive in the left-hand side of the window. Simply click on it to select it and then click on "Verify Disk." A test will be performed, and it will tell you if your hard disk is OK. Other versions of OS X may not show "Verify Disk" but say "First Aid" instead. Click on it and follow the promptsIf you are running Windows, you will need to boot up from your recovery partition. While this can vary among different computer manufacturers, typically you want to hit "F10" or "F12" when the computer is starting up. Look for the prompts. When it is done loading, you will be asked what you would like to do, select the letter "R" and you will then start up in Windows Recovery Console. You will now be asked what partition you want to boot into, select the partition that has Windows installed on it — in most cases this will be your only partition. When prompted for the administrator password, enter it and press enter to continue.A command prompt will now appear. Type in the following command exactly: "chkdsk /p".Your computer will now test your hard drive for errors. This process could take a while, depending on the size of your hard drive.If you get a message that one or more errors were detected, you can type in "chkdsk /r" exactly. This will attempt to repair the errors, otherwise, there doesn't seem to be anything wrong with the hard drive.Running the "chkdsk /r" command could take a long while as it is checking every sector on your hard drive and then trying to repair any problems. Once it is done, it will return you to the command prompt again.To be certain there aren't any more problems type in "chkdsk /p" again. If it says there are no problems, you should be done. If there are more problems, it is likely that your hard drive is physically dying.Now that you are done you can exit the recovery console and restart your computer and the computer should boot like normal.Next week, we'll take a preemptive approach to data loss and I'll share some different ways you can protect yourself from losing important information like documents, photos, and more.Lee