Maximising Your Hard-Drives Lifespan

[Guest bigdady]

Its a heavy-downloaders worst nightmare - what happens if i wake up one morning and all my data is gone? In the modern age you can easily lose several terabytes of data if you dont take precautions.

Steps

1. Download Defragger and defragment your hard-drive once a month.

- Defragger is a free software from the makers of CCleaner, it provies a powerful solution to keep your data all in check and make any loose ends are quickly and safety solved. What it does is keep all your data organised.

Tidy eh? If you dont use a software such as Defragger you can hard-drives can cause disk fragmentation, which makes it slower and puts alot more strain the components.

Get it at - http://www.piriform.com/defraggler

2. Get a decent cooling system.

- This is a huge mistake many people make. Make sure you have plenty of airflow for your computer, and also make sure that you have at least a 500W PSU, if you have alot of hard-drives go for the 750W or if you want plain overkill - go for 1000W. Also, a good case can make a bit of difference as well for temperature.

A good example of this is a - http://www.dabs.com/products/best-va...KV.html?q=500W

3. Backup, Backup, Backup!!

- This is the main bit, if you backup your data you instantly have a recovery system in place incase your data does decide to die on you. I would reccomend getting a external hard-drive for this, and 1.5TB ones are merely £90 nowadays.

If your really paranoid you could go for a RAID backup system - which is splitting a hard-drive into 2 parts, each holding the same data - so if one goes down the other remains fine. Note - this half's the space you will have, for example - 1.5TB into RAID = 2x750GB hard-drives.

I use a - http://www.amazon.co.uk/Seagate-Expa...1599680&sr=8-3

4. Monitor your Drives.

- S.M.A.R.T technology is built into most hard-drives these days, therefore i would highly reccomend you take advantage of this situation and get a piece of software to monitor your drives and tell you when something isnt running as it should.

Softwares such as DiskView and Stellar SMART can be used to look at your hard-drive for possible disk failures and more. Its like private medical insurance!

DiskView - http://www.diskview.com/

Stellar SMART - http://www.stellarinfo.com/hard-drive-monitor.htm

5. Get a UPS to stop power surges.

- Alot of hard-drives are caused by power-surges, and this can kill your hard-drive in a instant. Using a UPS helps you prevent such events and keep your voltage amounts in check. Also, if your REALLY paranoid checking your house for wiring issues to have further defence against power-surges.

So, in conclusion there isnt a way to make sure 100% that your hard-drives wont die overnight - but you can help ward it off using a few steps. Hey, i wouldnt want to lose my 2TB of data and i suppose you guys wouldnt either! Get a UPS matching your Watt amount on your PSU!

[Guest Anngel]

thanks alot mate

[Guest nypdz]

Thanks bro.

[Guest Mekanik]

Thanks for these valuable tips on ensuring a healthy hard drive. :)

[pradeepl]

Already lost once....cannot risk again will follw guidelines

[Guest nigelcarlisle]

Thanks for the reminders. Cannot reiterate enough the importance of cooling. RIP WD Raptor :(.

[Guest markieboy]

Very sound advice. Thank you very much.

[Guest le_us]

Some decent tips mate. But I don't have the money for HDDs to back-up all my content.

And you should add that you SHOULD NOT DEFRAG a SSD! (Just HDDs)

[Guest uftguy001]

thanks! Could have used some of these tricks hehe - one of my HD was having issues. It was sent to WD for repair. I think i been abusing it too much with format after format.

[Guest kpegduf]

thanks :D

[Guest moomoops2]

i will give this one a try

[Guest Mr.Ogre]

Nice post. RAID backup sounds like something worth looking into.

[altair666]

Indeed HDD is one of the most Vital Devices !! Many Thanks