Why do hard drives die and what can you do to prolong their life

 

Enemy #1 is mechanical shock. When people are moving computers around while they are on, or kick them accidentally under the table, there is a high risk what the tiny heads in the drive will crash on the disk surface which is spinning with a very high speed, often with disastrous results. Hard disk is also set for trouble when the "technicians" who assembled the computer were saving screws and fixed the disk on one side only, or not fixed it at all (unfortunately, computers assembled like this are common in Phuket).

Enemy #2 is heat. Tight or unventilated external HDD enclosures or mobile racks are the worst places for the disks. Low quality sleeve bearing fans attached to the bottom of the hard drives often become stuck after a few months, obstructing the airflow around the hard drive electronics board. If your computer is functioning in the room without air-conditioning, effective case cooling (proper case design and well-working and well-placed fans) is extemely important for your computer' health. Good quality ball-bearing fans available on Phuket are Cooler Master fans.

Enemy #3 is low quality power supply unit (PSU). HDDs are probably the most sensitive components of the PC regarding power. Cheap 500-900 Baht power supplies, which can be found in almost every PC sold on Phuket, often are not capable of providing stable voltage and current, especially if you have more then one HDD or CD-ROM in your computer. The solution is to use the higher quality power supply. We use Enermax power supply units in our computers.

Enemy #4 is electrical shock. The system lacking UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply) with good protection circuit, and the installation without grounding are the main reasons why the surge on the power lines 2 kilometers away still occasionally make it to the disk. Mishaps while temporarily connecting the drive to another computer or the faulty adapter of the external enclosure are also common causes of failure. Usually electric shock damages only electronics board of the drive.

How to know if something is wrong with your drive

When your computer suddenly won't start up properly, the cause is not always obvious to the ordinary user. Following symptoms may indicate the hard drive failure:

1. Drive is not shown in the drive table at a boot time
2. You hear repeating scratching noises from the computer case
3. Disk starts its motor and stops after a few seconds
4. Computer sometimes freezes for a minute or more
5. At boot, you have messages about "Missing operating system" or "The disk is not bootable", "Hard Disk failure", "SMART failure predicted" or similar
6. high-pitched continuous whistling from the computer case may indicate failing spindle motor bearing. This kind of failure is very common on Toshiba notebook drives.
7. Windows Event Viewer / System shows disk errors