thetechzone.com— The following is a list of important maintenance and monitoring techniques you can use to maximize the life of your hard drive and prevent data loss.
Feb 9, 2006View in Crawl 4
I 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.
From 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
Actually 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.
chicken101Feb 10, 2006
Weird, my hard drive of 1.5 years died just yesterday. Note to self: never buy a samsung hard drive again. POS.
danagFeb 10, 2006
@supz:DTemp ( <a class="user" href="http://private.peterlink.ru/tochinov/">http://private.peterlink.ru/tochinov/</a> ) is old, but shows my drive temp in the system tray, which I like.HDD Health ( <a class="user" href="http://www.panterasoft.com/">http://www.panterasoft.com/</a> ) is newer and more comprehensive, but has a few quirks.
wpgbrownieFeb 11, 2006
I 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.
timkoFeb 11, 2006
From 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
jeromehorwitzFeb 11, 2006
Actually 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.