Disk Drives and Data Problems

Hard Drive issues will result in intermittent and unexplained system errors they may corrupt data and make ProfitSystem un-useable. Hard Drive issues fall into two classes: ​ A) Viruses B) Physical hardware issues

100% of all Hard drives eventually fail. Disk errors occur frequently and the user never knows a problem occurred, since most computer hardware systems can automatically recover from minor issues.

However, at some future point, that cannot be predicted, a drive will have a significant failure that will result in data loss or total system shutdown. This is why it is critical to make backup copies of important data everyday. Since most drives die slowly, data issues may creep their way into your backup data. For this reason we recommend at least 1 week of daily backups be maintained, i.e. 7 copies of data, one for each day of week. Each copy would a data snapshot of how the computers data was that day. So, in the event of data loss or corruption, a user could step back each day until a good clean set of data was found. At which time that data could be restored to the computer and the input that occurred after that backup to the current date/time could be re-entered. Please consider BBL's Titan Off-Site backup service for the most reliable backup. Review the Backup Topic for addition information.

Please follow the this checklist when trouble shooting a Hard Disk. Perform these steps on/at the primary computer (server) where ProfitSystem data is located: ​ * Check for Viruses & remove any found. Use popular programs like Norton or MacAfee. A Virus that cannot be removed may cause the need to Reformat & re-install Windows and all applications/data.

  • Are any other programs experiencing issues also. Does all installed programs start up and execute properly. If not, consider replacing the hard drive.

  • Run Window's Error Checking utility and review any errors (click Start-> My Computer-> Right Click on the hard drive to check [usually C]-> Select Properties-> Click Tools Tab). Replace hard drive when excessive errors are found.

  • Copy a large file from (500mb+) from one folder to another on the suspect hard drive. If the system fails replace the hard drive.