Recently, we had a thread about “What to do”. Well, if it isn’t dead, some experts say do a chkdsk first, others say back it up first, then do a chkdsk /f /r.
Making a backup first can’t hurt. If the disk is dead due to system file corruption, doing a chkdsk /f /r can’t hurt. If it starts functioning again after that and the report says corrupt files were fixed, I’d say it’s worth doing the backup again to replace the prior copy.
Here, Tina Sieber at MakeUseOf.com (LINK) was dealing with a dead hard disk.
It wasn’t a total loss since she had a prior backup, just not a very recent one. That’s why people producing art, etc. should have a cloud storage as a backup as well as a physical, external drive and should backup daily. I do, despite what I do not qualifying as art.
Anyway, the article is here and worth the read.
Article:
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/how-to-diagnose-and-fix-a-dead-hard-drive-to-recover-data/