If you've ever walked across a thick carpet and felt a shock after touching a grounded object (or shocked a friend on purpose) you know about the general effects of static electricity. But do you know how it works, or how damaging it can be to computer components? Although it may seem a bit silly and unimportant, ?static shock? or Electrostatic Discharge (ESD) can cause significant damage to your hard drive. Comparable to a lighting bolt damaging a tree, ESD can act like a bomb exploding in your drive, blowing apart parts of the circuit board. But don't worry ? if you follow a few simple steps you can ensure you're well protected and avoid letting a minor thing like ESD cause major problems.
WHAT IS ESD? ESD or "static shock" is a portion of an imbalanced high voltage field on a non-conductive surface (e.g. your hand, the carpet, a screwdriver) that has just moved to a conductive surface in a rapid, uncontrolled fashion. "Static electricity" is the same portion of an imbalanced high voltage field on a nonconductive surface, but it has not yet reached the point of releasing it's electrons to equalize the imbalance between a conductor with a greater positive charge than itself. This imbalanced high voltage field will not "discharge" until conditions are right, that is until the number of electrons the charge grabs from around its location builds to a point in which no more electrons can be sustained. When a conductive surface of some type gets within 'jumping" distance, the process of equalising the electrical field is experienced.
Imbalanced high voltage fields are everywhere, constantly flowing over and around us, and people feel them because we are good conductors. The shock you sometimes get when touching a door knob after shuffling across the carpet is made in the same way a thunderstorm makes a lightning bolt.
Some Examples of Voltage:
? 3,000 volts - the average human can't feel voltage below this threshold. ? 8,000 volts - yawning and stretching with clothes on. ? 15-20,000 volts - shoving a plastic-coated box across the carpet with foot. ? 18,000 volts - getting up from a foam cushion on a nylon-covered couch. ? 35,000 volts - walking across a typical carpet.5
WHAT CAN ESD DO? While ESD won't kill you, it can definitely kill your computer components. While it takes an electrostatic discharge of 3,000 volts for you to feel a shock, much smaller charges, well below the threshold of human sensation, can and often do damage semiconductor devices. Many of the more sophisticated electronic components can be damaged by charges as low as 10 volts.
ESD damage occurs when a charge on a hand or tool finds a path of lesser resistance from itself to a drive. If the energy of that charge is larger than the amount of energy the drive can safely dissipate, damage may occur.
Especially sensitive to ESD are integrated circuits: processors, memory, cache chips and expansion cards. This damage can be immediate, resulting in melting, junction breakdown or oxidation. Even scarier, you could electrocute your drive and never even know it ? the effects of ESD are difficult to trace and often do not affect the drive until several days to several months after the ESD occurrence.
PREVENTION TIPS Luckily, a few simple steps can help you avoid ESD damage and promote long life for your disk drive.
? Keep your drive in an ESD bag until you handle it ? an ESD bag is specially designed to prevent ESD.
? Always wear an ESD wrist strap grounded to an unpainted surface on the chassis of your computer.
? If a wrist strap is unavailable, touch an unpainted surface on the chassis of your computer before handling your drive.
? Only touch the connector pins on your drive with the proper cabling ends or jumpers. Never use a bare finger or non-insulated tool.
? Protect your drive from sources of high voltage power such as fans or vacuum cleaners.
? Never try to plug a power or data cable into a drive unless power to the box is completely off.
Finally, by controlling the temperature, you can also help limit ESD. By increasing the relative humidity of the room where the computer is located, you can greatly reduce build-up of ESD. Static builds up more readily in dry environments than in moist ones; this is why you get zapped much more often in the winter time in northern climates than in summer.
So what happens if by some freak accident your hard drive experiences ESD and your data is lost? Don't panic, because your best solution is only a phone call away. Many ?Data Recovery? companies have experience dealing with hard drives damaged by ESD and will apply the most advanced technology in the industry to perform data recovery. Contacting these immediately upon discovering ESD damage is the best option to keep you and your clients working and productive.
Knowing that ESD exists is the first step in prevention. By following ESD handling procedures and understanding the dynamics behind ?static electricity,? you can ensure that working with a hard drive is never a shocking experience.
Static or Electrostatic shock occurs when two objects that are differently charged come into contact with one another. When a contact is established between two objects, the electrons from one of them move to the other resulting in charged particles. The like charges repel and the unlike charges attract leading to the transfer of energy from one object to the other. This results in an electrostatic shock.
Electrostatic shocks are more common in insulators since the electrons can move from one insulator to the other when rubbed against each other. Also, electrostatic shocks occur mostly during winter when the humidity is very low. Otherwise, the humidity in the air does not support building up of huge static charge.
Consequences of Electrostatic Shocks
Electrostatic shocks produce heat that can damage electronic items in its proximity. While it cannot cause fatal accidents to humans, it is capable of destroying computer circuitry, the hard drive being the most common victim. If you have critical data stored on your hard drive, you stand a risk of losing all the information. It can melt the sensitive parts on the circuit board and damage it completely. While the damage might occur instantly, in some cases, it might take several days before you realise the damage and it might be too late for you to trace the problem or even rectify it.
Tips for Preventing Hard Drive Damage
Hard drive has become an important and integral part of our lives. Be it your client's list or your personal information pertaining to your savings, you have all the information stored on your computer hard drive. People often lose data on the hard drive that eventually affects their business and personal lives. But the good news is that the damage due to electrostatic shock can be easily avoided. Here are a few tips that can help you avoid these unpleasant consequences of electrostatic shock and hard drive damage.
1.One of the major causes of electrostatic shock is you. Yes, when people are at their workstations, their hands rub across items present in the vicinity and can result in electrostatic discharges. When they come in contact with computer components, it might result in their damage. So use a grounding wrist strap that is available in the market that can avoid the problem.
2.While shipping your computer parts, make sure to pack them in ant-static bags that avoid building up of electrostatic field. However, placing the components just above these anti-static bags would not help.
3.While installing your computer components or opening your computer case, make sure to ground yourself, switch off the power supply, use screw drivers that would not cause electrostatic shock and, above all, discharge the static electricity from the components before installing them.
4.Flooring that dispels static electricity at workplace would also help to avoid electrostatic shock.
5.Avoid using materials that would cause static electricity such as plastic, polystyrene, etc.
6.Controlling the humidity at the workplace is also useful to avoid electrostatic shock.
7. Make sure the employees who work with sensitive computer parts are aware of electrostatic shocks and how to prevent them. Only trained personnel should be allowed to handle these parts.
8.Before plugging or unplugging the power or data cable to your computer drives, make sure the power to the drive is completely cut off.
In short, all these steps help you to avoid electrostatic buildup or assist in dissipating the static charge that is accumulated. In spite of all these precautionary measures, if you still have an accident that damages your hard drive, do not worry. There are a lot of data recovery companies in the market that help you to recover the data.
In addition to the hard drive, electrostatic shocks can also destroy the circuit board on your computer. Statistics show that businesses experiencing computer breakdown owing to electrostatic shocks constitute a higher percentage. To avoid any dire consequences, it is always a better idea that you play the game safe.
Both Ali Jamalan & James Walsh are contributors for EditorialToday. The above articles have been edited for relevancy and timeliness. All write-ups, reviews, tips and guides published by EditorialToday.com and its partners or affiliates are for informational purposes only. They should not be used for any legal or any other type of advice. We do not endorse any author, contributor, writer or article posted by our team.
Ali Jamalan has sinced written about articles on various topics from Data Recovery, Information Technology and Travel and Leisure. UK's cheapest logical data recovery service for all hard disk drives (IDE/SATA), diskettes, memory sticks and flash cards.. Ali Jamalan's top article generates over 5400 views. to your Favourites.
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