Movement: It ought to be remembered that hard drives are fragile storage devices. Slight movement may cause scratches, jars or even pushes ruining the drive's ability to save. Thus, to ensure faultless working of the drive including an extended life span, proper location and care become important. Usually, drives, whether inputted in the computer or archived in a storage library, ought to be kept stationary. In other words, there should be minimal movement of any kind. Movement causes the alignment of the drive to become fragmented.
Maintenance: Adequate maintenance by a user ensures a long life for a hard drive. Maintenance guidelines cover many areas.
Temperature: Hard drives do come with inbuilt fans and cooling systems, but it is wise to take precautions. Modern computers process data at high speeds raising the temperature in the hard drive to more than 70 degrees F. High temperatures succeed in melting the magnetic drive layers and, consequently, shifting the micro-electrical components of the drive. This could cause a hard drive to fail. Therefore, it becomes imperative to keep the drive or computer in a cool environment. It should be protected from extreme heat and light. In addition, overexposure to humidity may also tamper with the storage capacity of the drive. Always keep the drive in a dry environment away from any beverage and water. Further, it is essential not to use the drive as a mat or small pad. Keep it away from pets as pets might urinate on it or chew it. Always provide additional ventilation to your computer by setting it under the fan before prolonged usage. This additional ventilation allows hard drives to cool off ? constant spinning and overdrive could lead the interior of the hard drive to lose its magnetic attraction.
Personal Handling: Hard drives are delicate devices and ought to be handled with care. Avoid holidaying with your hard drive or throwing it around. This could cause cracks and lead to drive damage.
Always keep the hard drive dust-free by dusting it with a soft and dry tissue cloth.
Always run Scandisk and defrag computer applications periodically to clean the internal magnetic structure of the drive. In addition, the two applications allow for error checking ? logical and software errors.
Defragment your hard drive once a month to avoid hard drive failures. Defragmentation allows for data organisation for easy data access.
Installation of good virus protection programs such as McAfee or Norton to prevent hard drive failures from virus contamination
S.M.A.R.T. Hardware Monitoring S.M.A.R.T. i.e., Self Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology protects hard drives from crashes and guarantees long life span for hard disks for more than seven years. S.M.A.R.T. has the ability to analyse the health state of a hard disk warning the user of any potential malfunctions. It allows the user to run a series of self-evaluation tests on the hard drive i.e., its interface, the surface and the mechanics including every magnetic read head. S.M.A.R.T. technology has been upgraded to form the O&O DriveLED hard drive protection system. The O&O DriveLED system performs all the protection services of S.M.A.R.T. including error log checking.
Features:
Tracking and display of read/ write access for logical volumes
Tracking and display of current storage capacity for logical volumes
Automatic monitoring of all S.M.A.R.T. properties
Tracking and controlling current temperatures for all hard disk drives ? ensuring adequate heat, light and humidity levels
Display of total finite hard drive life span ? also telling the user the operational hard drive time left
Warning notification including correction of possible operational errors
Support of all Windows-compatible data volumes
Support of SCSI-disk drives
Norton Utilities for Macintosh 3.5 PC
Prevents hard drive crashes and potential data loss
Provides bootable CD-ROM and an automatic dust-free wiper to ensure the smooth functioning of the drive
Provides for backup and replication of data files allowing for faster data access without causing any harm to the magnetic attraction of drive
But there is no need to panic if your hard drive does crash. It is important to check your recycle bin and restore lost data files. One can also download data recovery softwares from the Internet. And, finally, it is imperative to back up data.
Last week end, I was in the science museum, London. One of the most fascinating cabinets that I saw was products from the last 50 years. Looking over a few household products it really shows how quickly technology is progressing. There was an absolutely massive VCR that was at least four times the size of a typical DVD recorder. At the time I'm sure everyone wanted one and was the coolest gadget around.
Following this trend, the computers that we drool over today will one day be the lumbering pieces of junk that people see at museums. It is slightly depressing to see all these redundant appliances ? but at the same time it is exiting to wonder what the future has in store for us. So what are computers going to be like in the next few decades? Most people would say smaller and more powerful. Sure ? a wise prediction, but how on earth can computers be any smaller than the minute scale they are already at?
In the summer of 2007, Custom PC magazine published a feature on solid state drives (SSDs). Also known as flash drives ? this technology has already reached the mainstream in the form of USB memory sticks and the iPod nano. However, according to the article these drives will one day replace the conventional hard drive.
A Current Application: The iPod To explain the difference, let's take the iPod for example. The 2007 version of the iPod nano uses flash memory to store up to 8 GB of songs and photos. Unlike the larger iPods available, it has no moving parts and therefore can withstand being dropped and will never wear out. To tell the difference, just put your ear to it. A larger iPod makes lots of whiz and clicking noises as the platters spin round ? whereas the nano makes no noise at all.
Having no moving parts is not just good news for reliability; it also means that drives can be lightning fast. As far as I can remember from the article, I think 50 ? 100 times faster was the ball park figure they were talking about. In real terms, a flash drive would be able to load windows, and any other program for that matter, almost instantly.
The analogy that I like to think of is the game console. A Sony Playstation uses a DVD to store the game, where as a Gameboy DS takes cartridges. The difference in loading time is very noticeable ? the DS is instance, the Playstation takes a few seconds.
The iPod nano has the ability to run for around 24 hours on a single charge which demonstrates another marvellous feature of SSDs ? they use hardly any power. For instance, laptop battery life could be extended by perhaps 50% if this technology were incorporated.
The benefits of these new hard drives are clear and they seem to beat the conventional drive in every single way. Well, not quite. The cost of these drives is so expensive that to date they have been full utilized in military and aerospace applications. A SSD of reasonable size would probably cost several times the cost of the laptop it was going to be inside.
The good news is that the prices are falling as mass production increases. I wouldn't be surprised if in just 5-10 years hard drives with spinning platters go the way of the VCR, audio cassettes, and gramophones. Still if you miss them there's always the science museum...
Both James Walsh & Zach Hope 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.
James Walsh has sinced written about articles on various topics from Small Business, Binding Machines and Divorce and Infidelity. James Walsh is a freelance writer and copy editor. For more information on computer crime and see http://www.fieldsassociates.co.uk. James Walsh's top article generates over 368000 views. to your Favourites.
Zach Hope has sinced written about articles on various topics from computers and the internet, Iphone Reviews and web development. Zach Hope is the author of Speed-Up-Windows-XP.com, a site that can teach anybody to to invigorate old computers.. Zach Hope's top article generates over 22200 views. to your Favourites.