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- rain9441, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Like above said, obvious. How about telling us why having our computers running 24/7 logging all IRC chat in various popular channels is not a good technique to maximize hard drive life?
- rolosworld, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2I would say, mantain low temperature for the HD and not let it take too much humidity if your not using it. Another tip would be use SMART monitoring stuff to know when your HD got f*cked and need to backup the data.
defrag and backup doesn't sound like maximizing the hard drive life lol . Defrag is for performance and backup to be responsible with your data. - sproutworks, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0The built in Windows defragmenter is almost useless. Even when you have plenty of free space it skips most of your files and the fragmentation percentage hardly goes down. Use Perfectdisk or Diskeeper instead, those actually work.
- smenkhare, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Perhaps the original article should have pointed out that both HDD Health and Diskeeper Lite (v7) are freeware, so there's no excuse not to get them and run them...
- jeromehorwitz, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Actually it's fairly well known fact that excessive defragmenting can cause premature drive failure.
My best tips as a professional with years of experience are:
1) Do not move a computer that is on. This means never. If you want to scoot your computer over an inch, turn it off. Yes, most drives are shock rated but all it takes is one slip up to cause a head crash. I'll garuntee many of you have caused drive failures this way, because you tinker with your computers while they are on. As for notebooks, well, you read the article.
2) Turn your computer off when not being used. Hopefully it's obvious that I'm not talking about leaving to make a sandwich, or going to the restroom. But at any point of probably 2 or 3 hours plus, you're better off turning your computer off than leaving it on 24/7/365. Overnight, definately. If you need to leave it on, do it. But if the computer is sitting there doing nothing turn it off. You read the article.
3) Perform computer maintenance such as defragging and CLEANING your PC. Depending on your environment, you may need to do this 2 or 3 times a year. At least inspect for dust build up every few months. My recommendation is to use an air compressor over canned air.
4) As tempting as it is, turn off projects like F@H, SETI, and file sharing. Yeah, these are for a good cause (if you actually think so that's your opinion), but the fact is any time your PC is on it's susceptible to many things including hacking and power problems. Just ask F@H to send you a new PC when that electrical storm took out your mobo, CPU, and memory. - TalonHawk, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I do believe defragging helps the life of your drives.
I use Perfect Disk to defrag.
Way I look at it..
Heads can seek all over the platter constantly in a system that isn't regularly defragged OR they can do all the work once in a while to get the data on the disk closer so they don't have to work as hard the rest of the time.
Net gain by defragging once a week in my case, depending on how much transient data you have on your drives, your needs may vary.
Also keep in mind that the more often you defrag, the less work it is for your drive each time, but you still have to find a happy medium. - cogent_bob, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2From the pages of Obvious Magazine.
But the patronizing tone is a plus. - timko, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0From the article -> "Incidentally, the hard drive is also one of only two moving components in your computer (the other being your optical drive)."
Here's some other moving components, if you have them, in your PC...
- CPU fan
- Case fan
- North/South bridge fan
- Graphics card fan
- Power supply fan
- floppy drive - way2slo, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Just this past week I had my first HD failure....ever. It was on a budget system that I put together back in '01. I chalk that one up to cheap parts as the whole system only cost $450 including the monitor. My SOP is to keep my computers (3) powered on and running with the monitors and drives in standby after being idle for about 30 min, have them all on surge protectors/UPS, keep them in a dry, cool @ a constant temp, & dust-free room, and only power them down when I know I'll not be using them for a while. I remember hearing back in the day, late '90's, that powering up your computer every morning can put extra wear 'n tear on the HD and it was better to let it run and only shutdown/re-boot when you needed. I'm convinced that is the way to go.
I know, what I described sounds a lot like a clean room, but it's just the spare bedroom we use as an office. I have an air filter in the room to help move the air and keep the dust down. I keep the fan running all the time on the central air conditioning that 1. keeps the air moving and 2. evenly distributes the heat/cool around the house so there are no large temp fluctuations. Plus, I have a good filter on my central air unit which cuts down the dust further. Lastly, I have some mid-range UPS systems to filter the power and allow me to gracefully power down the systems if I lose power.
I paid about $90 for the UPS after rebates and the air filter in the room was about $50. I'm not sure how much extra electricity I use to run the Central Air fan all the time, but I think it's worth it just to have both upstairs and downstairs at the same temperature for me, let alone my computers. - jumjum, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0My drives are automatically defragged every single day with Diskeeper, but it costs money.
http://www.executive.com/downloads/menu.aspx - nonchallant0819, on 03/28/2008, -0/+0This is a great story... found this one through http://www.google.com
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http://www.TopNotchCarpentry.com - Jetfire, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Keep you HDD Cool is the most important thing you can do. Get some air moving across them. I had on of the first Maxtor External Drives didn't last long. I put a new drive in and it didn't even last as long as the on it replaced. When I touch it it was super hot. I then bought a different enclosure and made sure it had a fan. The drive is still going 4 years later. I now make sure that some fan is blowing or pulling air accross my HDDs. I have stopped loosing HDD after that.
- jobeats, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1cache
http://www.thetechzone.com.nyud.net:8090/?m=show&id=500 - error401, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Turning your computer off and on several times a day is going to help HD life? I don't think so. Power cycling any equipment with moving parts puts far more strain on them than leaving it running for a day or two does. Most HD failures happen at power-on time anyway.
And defrag?! Way to stress-test your hard drive!
This article is mostly idiocy, and the correct information it has is just plain common sense.
To add my own 'hated manufacturer' anecdote, Maxtor disks suck. I've had 3 fail over the past 6 months. - MasterDwarf, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0no brainer, pass it along to people like my brother-in-law who never remembers what I tell him when it comes to computers. You'll have to post this article and dups in order to refresh his memory.
No digg. - newtronic, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1Web pages are 90% adverts, 10% content. Lame.
- rolosworld, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0@g30ph
have you checked the temp? I have both IDE and SATA, SATA get's more hot then the IDE.. I have had some issues with the SATA drive, if I let my PC running for 2 days the SATA used to not been detected. I suspected it was heating too much, so I changed my PC chasi, now with 2 more fans and 2 fans directly below the SATA... just to test if it would get more stable.. results, it is sure more stable, I also make sure the power management puts to sleep the HD when idle. - g30ph, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0Personally I think the life of a hard drive has a lot to do with luck. I have a sata drive that is about a year old and all of a sudden failed SMART and keeps generating disk errors and crashing my system so I had to remove it. I have a 6 year old 40GB ata100 drive that just keeps going and going and going and going........It has 2 GB of free space and I use it as a back up drive. The only drives I've been having any problems with lately in various computers have been SATA drives.
- musicgenius, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1Common knowledge among geeks........no digg. Seriously what the hell is this doing on the front page. It has no place there.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1I have a 10GB Maxtor that's been in service for me since '98, hasn't died yet...it's hard to let 'em go
- supz, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0Can anyone recommend a good free/opensource SMART monitoring program, for Windows?
- chicken101, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0Weird, my hard drive of 1.5 years died just yesterday. Note to self: never buy a samsung hard drive again. POS.
- aquax, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0Knock on wood, but between two upgraded TiVos, two desktop computers, two laptops, and three external drives (over 1.6TB total), I've not had any failures of my own personal drives. I think I've been lucky.
- wpgbrownie, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0I wonder how Bit Torrents affect my HDs, cause I have one computer with 4 x 250GB HD's in it that is constantly downloading files. I always hear it chugging away making hard drive noises, and since BT is a new tech I wonder what perlonged long term use will result in consumer drives.
- DanaG, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0@supz:
DTemp ( http://private.peterlink.ru/tochinov/ ) is old, but shows my drive temp in the system tray, which I like.
HDD Health ( http://www.panterasoft.com/ ) is newer and more comprehensive, but has a few quirks. - teh_toaster, on 10/12/2007, -3/+2Ohhhh! A SURGE protector! Is that like a pocket protector?
Hmm, a pocket protector protects your pocket. So does a surge protector protect your surges? - mdvaldosta, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0Good stuff!
- wewa, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0satanmat has got it right. summary: defrag & backup.
That is the most lame article.
Good, only for maybe people who bought their first computer in 2006, or mac users... :D - tboneuls, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0@supz:
SpeedFan monitors SMART data.
I agree that heat is a major factor in drive failure. I've always kept my computer (and drives) well cooled and never have had a drive fail. I know a few people who didn't and have had many drives fail. - Jumangi, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0Hate web sites like that one. Read 3 sentences and click to another page...
- SatanMat, on 10/12/2007, -3/+2--short version-- Defrag and backup...
yeah.. know that...
no digg - tfaz1, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0@ chicken:
"Weird, my hard drive of 1.5 years died just yesterday. Note to self: never buy a samsung hard drive again. POS."
Shame, but that could happen with any manufacturer. Samsung has a 3 year warranty on that drive, so you'll get a new one for free. - acontorer, on 10/12/2007, -2/+0Why are people digging this? The article contains very little actual advice. To summarize:
- Use a drive health monitoring utility
- Use a surge protector
- Defrag (note: I don't think this is proven to increase drive life)
- It's gonna break anyway, so make backups - shreky, on 10/12/2007, -2/+0What is the best harddrive out there?
- ginty, on 10/12/2007, -2/+0digg pwns another web server.
dang it. - Skul, on 10/12/2007, -2/+0For new folks, good info. For the 95% of those using Digg, old stuff. No Digg.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -3/+1Easy tip: Buy a new one.... they're like 30 bucks these days after rebates.
http://www.onlyriddles.com
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