Physical Disk Assessment

First, let's check for physical damage:

Listen carefully to your hard drive:

🔊 Normal sounds:

• Gentle whirring (spinning)
• Soft clicks during access

❌ Warning sounds:

• Clicking/ticking repeatedly → Head failure
• Grinding/scraping → Mechanical damage
• Beeping → Spindle motor failure
• No sound at all → Power or connection issue

If you hear bad sounds:

• Back up data immediately!
• Avoid using the drive
• Consider professional data recovery
• DO NOT continue with software fixes

Sounds normal? Continue to next step.