LOGICAL REASONS FOR HARD DRIVE FAILURE

The failure of a hard drive can be caused many things that indicate a logical failure.  The section below details some common logical causes of failure.

MASTER BOOT RECORD FAILURE
The master boot record is located in the first sector of the hard disk.  It gives the operating system boot instructions.  The
master boot record can become corrupted due to many factors including shutting down the computer improperly, power
surges, and computer viruses or worms.

BOOT SECTOR FAILURE
A boot sector corruption can be caused by many factors including hardware malfunction or a computer virus/worm.  If the
sector contained operating system files, it may cause the system to not be able to start.

OPERATING SYSTEM MALFUNCTION
Also referred to as a "system crash", an operating system malfunction can damage the master boot record or boot sectors.

DELETED DATA
Data can be accidentally deleted by the user, but still reside on the hard disk.  In most cases, the data still exists but the
path to the data has been deleted.  Such data is recoverable.

CORRUPT FILE SYSTEM
Files can become corrupted for many reasons including improper shutdowns, computer viruses or worms, or a number of
physical causes. 

CROSS LINKED FILES
Files that are cross linked share the same point on the hard disk.  This can be caused by improper shutdown, or during a
system crash. 

IMPROPER SHUTDOWN
This occurs either intentionally or accidentally and results in the system not being able to go through its normal shutdown
process.  It is not advised to shutdown your system in this manner as doing so can cause a multitude of problems.

DISK REPAIR UTILITIES
There is a great amount of disk repair software utility programs on the market today that should not be run on a hard disk
that contains important data to be recovered.  Running these utilities could potentially cause data recovery to be much more difficult or actually cause a permanent loss of data. 

REPARTITIONED OR REFORMATTED HARD DRIVE
A reformat will wipe the hard drive of all of its data.  You should never reformat a hard disk that contains important data that
needs to be recovered.  Repartitioning can create and delete partitions on the hard disk.  This is also something that is not
recommended if the data on the disk is of any importance.

COMPUTER VIRUS
An piece of code that when introduced to a computer can replicate itself in the memory causing a loss of data or damage
to the systems on the computer.