hard drive

[Wicca]

i want to know how can i know if my hard drive will fail and how can i help my hard drive live for longer i had my computer for 3 years now

 

[Night Hawk]

Keeping hard drive temps low will help as well as a periodic defrag session as well as keeping one or two hard drive diagnostics programs onhand to run checks on the health of your drives.

Free programs like PC Wizard 2010 that shows the temps of Sata II and ide drives as well as HDTune that runs scans to check for bad sectors also can alert you to any problems. Eventually wear and tear or the need to upgrade into a larger capacity will see a need to replace a drive.

For older drives in not too bad a shape with a few bad sectors even there are some programs like Hard Drive Regenator that can also be a help in keeping some older drives running longer.

 

[kword88]

i guess your underlying question is. "how can i protect my data?". and the solution would be to make backups of your important files. either on another hard drive, DVD's, or online.

 

[GeneO]

Here is a link to a google study of their hard disk failures as a function of temperature. Note that statistically there appeared to be an optimal temperature and that keeping the drive too cool was as bad or worse than too hot as far as the life of the drive.

In particular look at figure 4 which shows significantly higher incidents of failure at cooler temperatures.

http://static.googleusercontent.com...abs.google.com/en/us/papers/disk_failures.pdf

Bottom line as mentioned - backup your data

- Gene

 

[mjf]

All drives will fail. You may hear the tell tale "click of death" sound or not.
You can check your drive till the cows come home but one day it will fail.

1) keep personal files copied/backed up very regularly
2) Make regular images of your disk say once a month(???)
* Don't use DVDs use an external HDD (cost less than $100)
* If you are not familiar with images read the tutorials on the forum and get used to it - REALLY easy. Check that the windows imaging works for you. I use it (but others prefer free programs like Macrium Reflect free edition.)
3) If your HDD is fine but your operating system gets corrupted beyond repair - reimage and your back in business in around 20 minutes (depending)
4) If your HDD dies.
*Buy a new HDD
*Take it out of the bag and connect into your computer (no need to prep)
*Boot from the System repair DVD (easy to make with Windows)
*Reimage and your back in business
I've done it and it is that easy!

 

[strollin]

The rule is that it's not a question of IF your drive will fail but WHEN, therefore keep it backed up as often as necessary to protect your data.

 

[Night Hawk]

You can still find some drives in working shape that are believe it or not are 15+yrs. old! At the same time you can see a brand new drive give out in much sooner then thought.

As far as drive temps you wouldn't need anything well below 30C while it wouldn't be advised to allow drive temps to continue over the low 40Cs either. Keeping an eye on the temps to make sure those stay within reason is a good idea as well as monitoring those for other hardwares(cpu, video cards).

Backing up the backups of the backups is a formula to keep in mind since even a storage drive can fail. Simply relying too heavily on any drive isn't a good idea whether internal or external since the drives generally used in the external enclosures are typically the larger capacity in the budget series models.

I think everybody is in agreement on the idea of regular backups and having a disaster recovery plan inplace just in the event of any hardware failure. Even if your drive never fails all the time you have that particular system running assume it will!

That's the best way to be prepared in case it does. There's never any 100% sure fire way to prevent any drive from eventual wear or loss of data.

 

[strollin]

You can still find some drives in working shape that are believe it or not are 15+yrs. ...

I have several working drives that are 25 years old. Would I trust any imortant data to them? NOPE!

 

[Night Hawk]

You can still find some drives in working shape that are believe it or not are 15+yrs. ...

I have several working drives that are 25 years old. Would I trust any imortant data to them? NOPE!

Would anyone? When considering any aged drive most are simply going to toss an OS on it being the small capacity OS boot drive and end up with a second larger drive for storage.

The winning formula is being prepared to simply go ahead and wipe a drive knowing you have regular backups and could start over fresh in case of... "my drive bit the dust!"

What happens when one of those packed with your favorites goes without warning?

Having a "Disaster Recovery Plan"! inplace means safe guarding things on removable media at times as well as considering multiple drives especially on custom builds where you have the space and the prices coming down to weigh in there.