Sunday, October 07, 2007
Hard Drives
Hard drives, the pit falls of such, edited and expanded upon from an original article called Wonderous Hard Drives by James Walsh
But the advance of technology over the years has forced the computer hard drive to change form and speed. Today, all consumers, be it a personal user or a commercial enterprise, use the hard drive in some form or the other. In 1989, Disklabs launched an initiative to educate the consumer about the hard drive.
Good hard drives should be:
• Physically robust
• Large storage space
• Reliable
• Lends itself to archiving
• Easily accessible – can be easily recycled and sold by vendors
• Equipped with inbuilt cooling systems of ventilation
The hard drive has the following disavantages:
• Has a finite lifespan of three—five years but can be stretched to six-eight years with proper maintenance and usage
• Prone to data loss as it is highly susceptible to temperature variations, movement and dust or bacteria
• Prone to virus attacks and man-made disasters of terrorism
• Lends itself to data loss through electrical spikes
The hard drive has the following physical characteristics
• Fragile disk interior with magnetic glass platters which are capable of spinning at high speeds
• Interior disk is composed of micro electron particles which are charged with electricity
The hard drive suffers from many disadvantages and require the user to undertake optimal care and maintenance of the drive. In Many cases the drive simply stops spinning or functioning due to an external natural or man-made disaster, or due to information overload. This usually happens in the case of old used hard drives which slow down after three years of prolonged use. It could also happen when the user uses recycled drives which already contain residual data and are often unable to save further data. Another reason could also be due to surface contamination. This could occur due to temperature variations including overexposure to light, heat and humidity. Research reveals that the drive’s magnetic layers simply dissolve in high level of heat or humidity. Sometimes, the drive stops spinning due to overheating. The user has to practice caution lest the tips of the magnetic platters collide causing a head disk crash.
Hard drives can also fail when there is a controller failure. This occurs when a hard drive experiences controller failure when an error message flashes across the computer screen during computer booting or in earlier versions of windows some times you get the BSOD or the blue screen of death.
Controller failures commonly occur when:
• CMOS battery fails
• Accidental user intervention leading to the saving of incorrect data in the CMOS setup
• Adaptor is not firmly plugged into electrical slot
• Hard drive or the motherboard corrupts or is damaged
• Due to non- connectivity or non-installation of the hard disk drive
• Hard disk drive cable wires have been twisted and broken
• Master Boot Record or the partition tables in the driver become distorted or bent out of shape
• Due to improper connection of the IDE drive
• When the IDE drives i.e. the twin master and slave drive, are incompatible with each other
The user has to commit themselves to undertake proper maintenance routines to guarantee the longevity and optimal functioning of the hard drive. With Laptop hard drives certainly radical movement could cause problems, this is including scratches, jars and pushes thatcould ruin a hard drive’s ability to save. This means that proper location care becomes extremely vital.
The look after your hard drive the user should:
• Avoid holidaying with your hard drive
• Try not to expose the drive to extreme heat, light and humidity
• Keep the drive away from pets to avoid urination and chewing
• Avoid prolonged usage of the drive
• Try to constantly cool the hard drive by keeping it below high-speed fans
• 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 check for errors – logical and software errors.
• Defragment your hard drive once a month to avoid hard drive failures and for easy data access.
• Installation of good virus protection programs to prevent hard drive failures from virus contamination
But the advance of technology over the years has forced the computer hard drive to change form and speed. Today, all consumers, be it a personal user or a commercial enterprise, use the hard drive in some form or the other. In 1989, Disklabs launched an initiative to educate the consumer about the hard drive.
Good hard drives should be:
• Physically robust
• Large storage space
• Reliable
• Lends itself to archiving
• Easily accessible – can be easily recycled and sold by vendors
• Equipped with inbuilt cooling systems of ventilation
The hard drive has the following disavantages:
• Has a finite lifespan of three—five years but can be stretched to six-eight years with proper maintenance and usage
• Prone to data loss as it is highly susceptible to temperature variations, movement and dust or bacteria
• Prone to virus attacks and man-made disasters of terrorism
• Lends itself to data loss through electrical spikes
The hard drive has the following physical characteristics
• Fragile disk interior with magnetic glass platters which are capable of spinning at high speeds
• Interior disk is composed of micro electron particles which are charged with electricity
The hard drive suffers from many disadvantages and require the user to undertake optimal care and maintenance of the drive. In Many cases the drive simply stops spinning or functioning due to an external natural or man-made disaster, or due to information overload. This usually happens in the case of old used hard drives which slow down after three years of prolonged use. It could also happen when the user uses recycled drives which already contain residual data and are often unable to save further data. Another reason could also be due to surface contamination. This could occur due to temperature variations including overexposure to light, heat and humidity. Research reveals that the drive’s magnetic layers simply dissolve in high level of heat or humidity. Sometimes, the drive stops spinning due to overheating. The user has to practice caution lest the tips of the magnetic platters collide causing a head disk crash.
Hard drives can also fail when there is a controller failure. This occurs when a hard drive experiences controller failure when an error message flashes across the computer screen during computer booting or in earlier versions of windows some times you get the BSOD or the blue screen of death.
Controller failures commonly occur when:
• CMOS battery fails
• Accidental user intervention leading to the saving of incorrect data in the CMOS setup
• Adaptor is not firmly plugged into electrical slot
• Hard drive or the motherboard corrupts or is damaged
• Due to non- connectivity or non-installation of the hard disk drive
• Hard disk drive cable wires have been twisted and broken
• Master Boot Record or the partition tables in the driver become distorted or bent out of shape
• Due to improper connection of the IDE drive
• When the IDE drives i.e. the twin master and slave drive, are incompatible with each other
The user has to commit themselves to undertake proper maintenance routines to guarantee the longevity and optimal functioning of the hard drive. With Laptop hard drives certainly radical movement could cause problems, this is including scratches, jars and pushes thatcould ruin a hard drive’s ability to save. This means that proper location care becomes extremely vital.
The look after your hard drive the user should:
• Avoid holidaying with your hard drive
• Try not to expose the drive to extreme heat, light and humidity
• Keep the drive away from pets to avoid urination and chewing
• Avoid prolonged usage of the drive
• Try to constantly cool the hard drive by keeping it below high-speed fans
• 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 check for errors – logical and software errors.
• Defragment your hard drive once a month to avoid hard drive failures and for easy data access.
• Installation of good virus protection programs to prevent hard drive failures from virus contamination
# posted by Peter Saville - IT Consultant @ 2:46 AM 
