Common Causes of Hard Drive Failure
The Big Dangers to Hard Drives, and How to Avoid Them
Hard drives are good for two things; storing data and crashing.
Since the technology's existed, hard drive users have been frustrated by the inevitability of drive failure. And, sadly, there's no way to stop your drive from eventually hitting a wall and breaking down.
However, you can slow the process down. There are a few major causes of hard drive damage, and if you know what they are and how to avoid them, you can make sure that your drive lasts as long as it's supposed to.
Vibration
The construction of a hard drive is incredibly sensitive; the drive's heads (which read the information) float a micron above the platters (which hold the data), and when a drive is subjected to a large amount of vibration, the heads can be offset, causing the most literal version of a crash. To avoid this, you'll want to make sure that your computer's on the ground, away from unnecessary vibration. Avoid using computer desks that suspend the tower in a way that can take on any sort of vibration from bumping into the desk.
Heat
Heat problems can cause the delicate electronics of a hard drive to fail, causing a head crash or further problems. Make sure that your computer has adequate ventilation and that it's not located in an enclosed space where heat may build up. Make sure all of your computer's fans are working at all times, as well. Many motherboards will also let you view the internal temperature of your computer from the BIOS or Windows.Heat is a very big problem for office hard drives, as management often prefers to put towers in aesthetically pleasing cabinets that can cause heat to build up.
Static Electricity
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11 Comments
Post a Commenthad laptop 32 days and hard drive failed/ crashed,, tried rebooting up and all got was error, any1 no why i got this and why failed,, is it posible that face book games like cafe world or yoville do anything like this?
last week I had an "NTLDR Missing" - after trying to figure it out for ages - I eventually went to th eBIOS and discovered the system was trying to boot from my second drive I use for backup, Solved! this week it happened again - I went to the BIOs expecting the samethig - cept this time my primary "C" drive want even listed!!!
it had dropped off the system!! I left things for a day - and tried again, went sraight into the BIOS and checked - it was There!!! I reset th eBIOS to bot from correct drive and booted up - all ok !! :-) I tested the drive, and it came back clean as can be.. not an error sector in sight!.... so what could have caused the drive to vanish from the system? as if it had been powered off or removed?!?!
oh second part to this - when you boot up, and the correct drive in a two disk drive system, is not "seen" am I right in saying it will auto look at whatever drive is there. and atempt to boot from it. and the BIOS will change itself to later try booting from t
amn im at odds end i just had 2 pcs hard drive fail and dont know what caused the problem one took a month to crash the other one only took 2 days what am i doing can some one help me to at least understand why?
BTW, please remember the old saying of "It's not IF your hard drive will fail - it's WHEN"
Yes! It could be the case that your cable may either be incorrectly inserted, or may have gone "bad". Cable failiure is uncommon, but not unknown. This applies to both SATA and IDE ribbon cables. I have had two SATA cables from two different machines fail on me this year already. A lot of SATA cables are very cheap far eastern rubbish. You also might have plugged the ribbon cable into the wrong IDE slot on the mainboard.
I cleaned my computer yesterday. I removed the Hard Drive, and thne put it back in it's place. when I turned it back on, and it started yto boot up, the system did not recognize the hard drive. I was told that the "IDE Belt or Cable" m,ay have gone bad.
Is this true?
ok so i want to know why my hard drive failed, so it dont happen again. . . so i didnt get anything from this either.
Exceptions don't disprove rules. Western Digital and Seagate rate hard drive life at around 3-7 years, depending greatly on the model. These are scientifically established failure periods, and your 10-15 year old hard drives don't change that.
And Linda, you're an asshole.
Nice. I came here hoping for solid factual advice. What I found is that the 2 experts above so totally disagree that I am farther behind than when I started. GREAT!
"Timothy Scheiman: Another thing to note hard drives have a life of about 3 to 5 years if used properly."
3 to 5 years??? That's all? I think you may want to look into that a little further. I have hard drives that are every bit of 15 to 20 years old and still work just as good as a brand new one. This is incorrect information.