Question Removing failed Hard Drives from PC

[SLR2009]

Hi, I have 6 Internal Hard drives in my PC. 2 of them have failed and I would like to remove them from my PC. Is there an easy to know which are the failed hard drives on the inside of my PC without unplugging each one at a time? Thanks

 

[Lafong]

Do they differ by brand name?

Do they differ by brand name and model number?

Do they differ by capacity?

I assume you have no idea which is drive D or E or G or L?

You should be able to learn something by looking at Windows Disk Management or Device Manager or the BIOS.

 

[SLR2009]

Thanks. 5 of the internal Hard Drives are Hitachi 2 of which have failed. They are all the same capacity. I would like to unplug the power cables and remove from the inside of the PC.

 

[dwd999]

Thanks. 5 of the internal Hard Drives are Hitachi 2 of which have failed. They are all the same capacity. I would like to unplug the power cables and remove from the inside of the PC.

It would depend on which part of the drive failed. If the motor failed you should be able to touch the drive's case and tell by the vibrations or lack thereof which drives are spinning. If its a failure of the actuator, you could try reading and writing files to each drive and see if you can tell by touch or sound whether or not the actuator is moving. If its the electronics, then unplugging the drives one by one would probably be your only option.

 

[Misgar]

There's no mention of these six drives being part of a RAID array or just a bunch of disks. If the former, I hope the array is RAID6 or RAID-Z2.

Assuming you're not booting the PC from any of the six hard disks, it shouldn't take more than an hour to check all drives individually, shutting down the machine every time you connect/disconnect a drive. If you disconnect a working drive, it will disappear from the operating system.

If you have Hard Disk Sentinel Pro (or similar) installed, you can identify the unique serial number of each drive together with its status (good or bad), then check the drive labels for the serial numbers (assuming you can read them without pulling the drives from the chassis).