Question from Randy F.:  My hard drive started making a combination of loud whining and clicking sounds last night.

I did some research (thanks Google!) and found a forum post that said to run chkdsk to see if the drive has any bad sectors. It then said if bad sectors are found to run chkdsk/r to fix them.

I ran chkdsk and it did find a bunch of bad sectors. I started to run chkdsk /r to fix the bad sectors but then I remembered reading a follow-up post that said running chkdsk /r can kill a hard drive outright.

What’s your advice on this? I’d like to fix the drive and not have to replace it if that’s possible, but I don’t want to lose my pictures and other files by killing the drive. I need some advice on how to proceed.

Rick’s answer:   [Read more…]