It could be your gaming pride and joy, or it could be your essential kit for school. It might just be a mundane tool for your job. Whatever it's used for, computers are expected to work without problems: fire them up and away you go. Hah, not so fast... like all electronic devices, PCs don't last forever, and the parts inside them will eventually fail.

While it's relatively easy to replace a broken device, the same can't be said for the data stored in your machine. Most modern PCs rely on solid storage, which is great news because SSDs are more durable than HDDs. SSDs don't have moving parts and they can withstand accidental drops and other shocks and vibrations in laptops better than HDDs ever could. However, SSDs can fail, too, as do other forms of flash memory.

Here are 5 signs that you should keep an eye out for (or an ear), warning you that the drive storing your documents is nearing its end.