Need a fried hard drive?

Did you ever fry a hard drive? I did one a few weeks ago and learnt an important lesson. It was a small issue and hardly worth noting but it did cost me a hard disk(in replacement). Here's what happened.

PC/laptop overheating issues

Many of my friends and myself have faced this problem sometime or the other. And this is a common problem with people using laptops and and also with those having old pcs. What usually happens, is that we are working on our computer and then suddenly it shuts itself down (sometimes it restarts too but generally its made to shut down). This happens more often when playing a game on the computer or while doing some resource hungry work.

I have inquired about this with many people and mostly they face this problem while gaming and the computer shuts down. They get confused and some even get worried. People who know how to format a pc generally do that followed by a clean install, thinking that it would solve their problem. Others, who don't know how to do it, call up their technician and get it done for about 500 Rs (approx. 11 $).

What they don't realise is that a little self diagnosis can solve this problem most of the times. It's a general misconception that viruses/malware cause such problems and therefore the formatting and all that follows. Virus is not always the reason for computers to start behaving oddly.