My hard drive needs fixed?

Question

i have a hard drive that is kind of old but still works the thing is it used to be 40 gigs but now it only reads 2 or 3 is there anyway to fix this

Answer 1

~ SAVE IMPORTANT FILES (BACKUP).

Old hard drives are awesome... as long as they don't get tired of spinning at 7,200 rpm, or what ever... when they crash... your files are kaput/shot/goner... Be prepared to toss it out one of these fine days, but in the meantime:

DELETE FILES YOU DON'T USE (TAKING UP VALUABLE SPACE)

If you haven't viewed them for 6months, TRASH 'EM!

Answer 2

well you should try reformatting it. But if thats the master hard drive on your computer it probably isn't a good idea because thats where all the files are to run the comp.
So----
1.Click My Computer
2.Right-Click your hard drive disk.
3.Click Properties.Then tools
4.Click Check now and perform it.

If it still doesn't fix the problem reformat it, but make sure you have the recovery cd. But if you want to play it safe just go to an expert.

Answer 3

A rule of thumb is that for a hard drive to funciton well, about one third of it should be free. Usually the space is not free because files are taking up the space. You will need to use explore and look at your files and get rid of a lot of them. The operating system also takes up space, so you can never have as much free space as the drive is rated as.

Answer 4

If the external hard drive actually boots up and runs, down load a Linux LiveCD, burn it to a disk and boot with this and look ate the hard drive using Linux. When you say it went out doesn't really explain what it was doing. There are probably other things you could try if I knew what it was actually doing.

Answer 5

You can try reformatting the drive, however, if you reformat the drive you will lose whatever data you have stored on it. Does the BIOS show that it's 40GB? The drive will be as much as what the BIOS says it is.

Answer 6

Isn't it reading so little space, because you have things on the drive??

Otherwise re-format it.

Or scrap it and get a new one. A newer one might be cheap and faster.

Answer 7

I am not a computer expert but you could always try getting hold of a computer technician and seeing if they have any ideas on how you could fix it yourself.