Tech Support Forum - View Single Post

**blah789** · 11-22-2008, 10:22 AM

There are things you can do to prevent your drive from prematurely dying.
First and foremost is avoid shocks and vibrations. Even tiny ones. That's because the head flies above the platters at a tenth of a micron (at 120 rotations per second), and moves at 60 mph... It's not supposed to touch the platter (head crash is worst case scenario, but even a scratch could render the surface at that spot unreadable). So yeah - keep that drive still when it's running.
Second is avoid heat. Ventilate well if it's an internal drive. Keep it in a cool, dry place. You can monitor drive temperature with a utility like HDTune. In the summertime I open my case and place a fan directly aimed at the case to keep my drives cool. Not the best solution, but a poor man's - I also have to be careful because the fan can cause vibrations, which is the other thing i don't want.
Last, is keep it away from magnetic fields. (Mostly applies to external drives.) No one would put a magnet on top of a drive, but be careful of metallic objects you place close by (those keychains for example).

And in general just keep an eye on the drive. From time to time, run chkdsk... maybe chkdsk /r to scan the disk surface, or scan the disk surface with the drive manufacturer's utilities. Check in your event viewer (system log) from time to time to see if there are any CRC, paging, ATAPI, or disk errors. And monitor the SMART (self-monitoring and reporting technology) status (also viewable on HDTune - under the drive health tab). That's probably as much as you can do. If you're really unlucky, you could always get that one bad drive in the batch, but hopefully before it gives out, you'll have backups, and by monitoring it, you'll have advance warning.

Like the above poster said, all drives will die eventually, so the best plan is keeping backups. Multiple copies of the data. Data migration from one drive to another has become a fact of life.

11-22-2008, 10:22 AM	#5 (permalink)
blah789 TSF Enthusiast Join Date: Aug 2008 Posts: 2,293 OS: Windows 2000 SP4 and Windows XP SP3	Re: Best Way to Preserve Hard Drive? There are things you can do to prevent your drive from prematurely dying. First and foremost is avoid shocks and vibrations. Even tiny ones. That's because the head flies above the platters at a tenth of a micron (at 120 rotations per second), and moves at 60 mph... It's not supposed to touch the platter (head crash is worst case scenario, but even a scratch could render the surface at that spot unreadable). So yeah - keep that drive still when it's running. Second is avoid heat. Ventilate well if it's an internal drive. Keep it in a cool, dry place. You can monitor drive temperature with a utility like HDTune. In the summertime I open my case and place a fan directly aimed at the case to keep my drives cool. Not the best solution, but a poor man's - I also have to be careful because the fan can cause vibrations, which is the other thing i don't want. Last, is keep it away from magnetic fields. (Mostly applies to external drives.) No one would put a magnet on top of a drive, but be careful of metallic objects you place close by (those keychains for example). And in general just keep an eye on the drive. From time to time, run chkdsk... maybe chkdsk /r to scan the disk surface, or scan the disk surface with the drive manufacturer's utilities. Check in your event viewer (system log) from time to time to see if there are any CRC, paging, ATAPI, or disk errors. And monitor the SMART (self-monitoring and reporting technology) status (also viewable on HDTune - under the drive health tab). That's probably as much as you can do. If you're really unlucky, you could always get that one bad drive in the batch, but hopefully before it gives out, you'll have backups, and by monitoring it, you'll have advance warning. Like the above poster said, all drives will die eventually, so the best plan is keeping backups. Multiple copies of the data. Data migration from one drive to another has become a fact of life.