Hard Drive Drivers

You are probably aware that your computer has a device in it called a hard drive. Hard drives are like most other parts of your computer in that they need drivers to function properly. Hard drive drivers are one of the oldest driver families other than graphics drivers in the computer programming industry. Your hard drive driver is similar to a traffic light in that it controls the flow of data between your hard drive and your computer’s memory.

Before Microsoft XP and comparable operating systems, installing a hard drive and its associated driver was a difficult task for the average end-user. Microsoft XP, Vista, Windows 7, and just about any modern Apple system makes installing a hard drive and its driver a plug and play experience because most hard drive drivers already come pre-installed on your system.

Common Hard Drive Drivers Problems

Rarely will you ever have a problem with your hard drive and even rarer will you have a problem with your hard drive driver. Sometimes odd things do happen in computing environments and occasionally an operating system will develop a hard drive driver issue that prevents you from using your computer. Some common issues related to hard drive driver failure are:

1. Sudden inability to read any or all files.

2. Sluggish loading or saving of files.

3. HDD controller failure notice.

4. The Blue Screen Of Death in Windows OS’s.

5. Inability to save files.

Troubleshooting Hard Drive Drivers

If you are having hard drive problems the last thing you should suspect is your hard disk driver. Hard disk drivers are always at the kernel level and protected from everything but the most invasive forms of intentional or unintentional tampering. If you suspect you may have a hard drive driver problem there are several steps you can take to resolve the issue.

You should run a standard scan disk routine on your computer. Scan disk will usually find and correct any errors on your hard drive that are interfering with your access to the drive. If scan disk completes with no errors then you can safely assume that your hard drive is working properly. After performing a scan disk routine you should run a virus check on your entire system. You will probably have to go into the options and turn on some selections that are not ordinarily ran after the first time anti-virus software completes a full scan on your pc. If your computer successfully completes a virus check with no positives, you probably have a hard drive driver failure or a conflict with another driver.

If none of your diagnostics work correctly you should try to do a system restore while booting your pc. A system restore should return you to a working desktop with complete hard disk access. If you continue to have problems or your computer refuses to reboot or restore to a previous state then you probably have a hard drive that has already or is getting ready to fail, a HDD controller failure, a bad power cable or bad data transfer cable.