Hard disk failure

[dayb]

Hi i’m not very knowledgeable on computers and I didn’t want to just go messing with my things because of this, so I wanted to see if anyone can help me out. My computer gradually had some issues, like the task manager disk usage was always shooting up and my computer would take forever to boot up. I also heard clicking noises in my PC and it didn’t sound good so I just turned off the PC. One day when I decided to turn on my computer, it turned on, shut off, then turned on again. This time is just said it was repairing, but couldn’t fix itself through the repair. I’ve tried some of the other settings it gave me, but nothing seems to work. I didn’t back up anything and i’m not sure if I should just buy a new hard drive or not. If anyone can help me, that would be much appreciated!

 

[USAFRet]

Yes, that sounds like a dead drive.

 

[seagate_surfer]

dayb, by the description you provide the drive had gone south. You need a new one in this case and take this as a learning opportunity in regards to backing up your information.

The conventional wisdom by tech experts on backups is known as the 3-2-1 method. Basically you want:

3 copies of any data you don't want to lose
2 different mediums it's stored on (so 2 different drives in your computer, for example)
1 copy kept offsite, to prevent against disaster.

Best of luck.