PC Troubleshooting Questions and Answers - Primary Master Hard Disk, Status Bad, Backup and Replace Error at Bootup

Johnrey writes in with a troubleshooting question

Question: This is my problem. When I turn on my PC, this screen appears that says Primary Master Hard disk, Status Bad, Backup and replace.... Press F1 to continue.

When I hit the F1 key it works, but there's a notification pop up that a failing hard disk was detected and it says to backup your files immediately. Hoping that you can help me.

Answer: If your computer's hard drive is starting to go bad it would be a very good idea to backup your important files to something like an external hard drive, flash drive or DVD because if it goes bad you won't be able to get the files off of it without spending a lot of money to have them professionally recovered.

Once you have everything backed up you can either replace the hard drive right away or wait until it actually fails and then replace it. Also make sure you get the right type of drive to replace it. It should either be an IDE or SATA hard drive.

You will most likely have to reinstall Windows and your programs on to the new hard drive but you can also try to make an image of your current hard drive onto an external drive and see if you can restore it to the new hard drive.

If your computer came with a recovery CD or partition then you can use that to restore your computer back to the way it was when you bought it but keep in mind any files or programs you added after you bought it will not be restored.

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