Prolonging/degenerating The Life Of Your Hard Disks

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NEW AND RECENT FINDINGS ABOUT PROLONGING/DEGENERATING THE LIFE SPAN OF HARD DISKS LEARNED FROM A PROFESSIONAL COMPUTER TECHNICIAN:

• A hard disk's life is measured by the number of times it was turned off which is approximately 30,000 times. That is why, it's better to leave your notebook or desktop turned on if intended to use again than turning it off and on to save energy consumption. Actually, turning on the your pc eats up more energy than leaving it idle, if intended to be used again. (Besides, one shot buying a new internal HD is more expensive than paying your monthly electricity bills. Plus, you don't want the hassle of buying a new HD: backing-up files, the tedious installation of OS, drivers, applications, softwares, etc.)
• Black-outs can cause serious damage to your HDs. So be sure to run your batteries while using AC power if there is a big chance of a sudden electric cut-off.
• If your HD reached to a point where your pc fails to detect its presence without further display of error or detailed cause of malfunctions, it means that your HD has crashed.
• Crashed or burned HDs are non-repairable and disposable. You cannot manipulate or send it to a professional to fix it. HDs eventually wear out, and it is normal.
• Cooling fans can prolong your HD's life-longetivity.

Symptoms of a Failing Hard Drive:

Logical Failures
Logical failures occur when the electronics of the hard drive failure or the software (firmware) has a problem. This kind of failure is usually the cheapest and easiest to have fixed. Unfortunately, it’s also an uncommon failure.

Media Failures
If the hard drive has been handled roughly, or the magnetic platters are scratched, have read/write errors or low-level formatting problems, this is a media failure. These are also relatively uncommon. Once the platters are scratched, the data should be considered scrapped.

Head Failures
A head failure occurs when the read/write head crashes into the platters (the head crash), has an “improper flying height” or the wiring between the logic board and the head is faulty—among other failures related to malfunction of the read/write head. This is a common failure. The head crash is particularly nasty.

Mechanical Failures
Mechanical failures probably make up the bulk of hard drive failures. The motor burns out, the drive overheats, bearings get stuck—the kind of thing you’d expect to find when a car fails. These can be nasty but if the failure didn’t affect the platters, you might have a chance of recovery, but at a cost.

How do I find out when it’s going to fail before it fails?

That’s not always possible, and sometimes a hard drive will just die—but it’s still important to keep an eye on the symptoms of an imminent hard drive so you have the chance to back-up your data and get professional help.

Hard drives are incredibly sensitive bits of hardware, so don’t try to crack it open and have a look inside unless you know what you’re doing. And most definitely ensure that if you do crack it open, the platters don’t get exposed to the open air—hard drives can only be opened in Class 100 clean rooms or they’re pretty much instantly destroyed by dust.

It’s a lot easier to back-up than to get your data recovered. Once you detect any of the signs of failure you need to ensure that you have a back-up and if not, make one. Then when the drive dies, you can claim your warranty if you still have it, or buy a new drive, and be on your way.

Recovery can cost thousands and thousands of dollars; it sure is a ridiculous amount to pay, but there’s not much you can do but shop around and find the best price. The cost of transferring a back-up onto a brand new drive is much cheaper than having a recovery specialist do the same for you.
Strange Noises

Sometimes hearing strange grinding and thrashing noises means your drive is beyond repair—for instance, if you’ve had a head crash, it very often is. Or it could just be that the motor has failed or your hard drive is grinding away because of noisy bearings. If you’re hearing strange noises then act very, very quickly—you probably don’t have much time.
Disappearing Data and Disk Errors

Computer won’t let you save a document? Or you’re sure that you had a file on your desktop yesterday that’s nowhere to be seen today? Programs that always worked suddenly stop working, asking where a file it depends on is stored?

These are all potential signs that your hard drive is on its way out. Of course, it could be that your kids moved your files for fun or a virus is eating through them, but disappearing data is never a good sign for your drive if you can rule out those alternative causes.
Your computer stops recognizing your drive

This may seem obvious, but if your computer no longer recognizes your drive chances are there’s a problem with it, not the computer. Test it in a friend’s computer and see if your hard drive is recognized by it.

Often, this will be a logical failure—unless you can hear strange noises that indicate a severe mechanical or head problem.
Computer Crashes

Does your computer regularly blue-screen or suddenly reboot? Does it crash often, especially when booting your operating system? If your computer is crashing, especially at times when the computers is accessing files (such as during the boot sequence), it may indicate a problem with your drive.
Really Slow Access Times

It shouldn’t take half an hour to open a folder in Windows Explorer, or two hours to empty the trash. I’ve come across this problem plenty of times over the years, and it’s always followed by a failing hard drive within a month or two.

If you have this symptom on your computer and your drive does not fail, please uninstall Vista from your 486.

Sound is a great indicator. As soon as the sound changes from the norm, or you get plenty of clicking and grinding from your hard drive, you need to power it down immediately. Get to know the sound of your hard drive while it’s young and in working order, because you’ll need to be able to hear the slightest differences when it gets older.

WHAT TO DO:

Don’t try to be a hero. If there’s time, get your data backed up. If there’s not—nasty noises, for example—get it out of the computer or enclosure, wrap it in anti-static plastic or aluminium foil and keep it safe until you can send it to a professional. Hard drives are very sensitive, just like those kids who die their hair black and write poems about suicide. Don’t mess with them.

When you contact a recovery specialist, they will give you details on shipping the drive, though they tend to prefer you hand-deliver it to prevent further damage.

When it comes to hard drives, just remember to keep an eye on it and act quickly. And, of course, keep extensive back-ups, even if you have to skip groceries one week to do so.

For further info: try checking this site:
http://http://www.lifehack.org/articles/technology/how-to-tell-when-your-hard-drive-is-going-to-fail.html


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Hope this helped

 

Is putting the computer to sleep the same as a shut down and start up?

 

Here is the correct link to the article. http://www.lifehack.org/articles/technology/how-to-tell-when-your-hard-drive-is-going-to-fail.html

 

a) and b) are borderline leaning strongly to the 'false' side of the aisle.

 

I agree. Also the last one is fairly dubious as well:

http://labs.google.com/papers/disk_failures.pdf

 

yup, nothing like a blind cut and paste from a dubious source.....

 

As an example we had a blackout last night, and all 4 hard drives that were running are perfectly fine. I also can't count the times I've shut power to an external enclosure. Never a problem.

 

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