Faster processors, retina displays, portability, and battery life have all become popular buzz words for what’s new in computers. However, nothing matters unless you have the ability to store and retrieve information, which in most cases is via an HDD or an SSD.
Computer hard drives in the 1980s and 1990s were stunningly rough pieces of machinery. They failed early, and sometimes often, which ensured that it was a real heyday for data recovery companies like Hard Drive Recovery Associates.
Since then, hard drives have come a long way in terms of performance and construction. However, if your HDD is not given proper care and maintenance, it will continue to crash, causing both newcomers to the computer age and seasoned veterans to scream in horror when they realize they have lost access to their critical data. In an effort to permanently eliminate that panic that comes with a physically failed hard drive, here are some suggestions for maintaining the health of your hard drive and data.
Be Careful With Your Hard Drives
When it comes to hard drives, complacency or a false sense of security is usually a most formidable adversary for most folks. If you are serious about protecting your data, you must take good care of your hard drive. If your data isn’t that important to you, the fact that you experience a hard drive failure won’t make much of a difference. Most hard drives these days cost less than a hundred dollars to replace, and after that you will be back in business. However, if you are like the majority of people, your computer’s hard drives serve as digital archives of your life, your business, and everything else that is important to you in your digital world. So back the thing up now and again, and you’ll save yourself big problems.
Be Smart With Your Hard Drive
The first step in taking good care of your hard drive is to become familiar with the rules. There are some fundamental concepts you should probably understand about any hard drive. They are as follows:
Maintain the temperature of your hard drive: Heat is the nemesis of anything electronic.
- Keep safe by doing the following: These programs, along with disk utility and virus protection software, are critical to the long-term health of your data and hard drives. Consult with your computer professional to determine the most effective programs and protection regimens for your computer and hard disks.
- Ensure that your computer is kept in a well-ventilated area; don’t try to squeeze it into a slot in your rolltop desk or hide your tower somewhere beneath your desk. Your computer requires fresh, cool air to function properly, and heat can destroy drives
- Maintain a clean environment: Dust and dirt are extremely detrimental to your hard drive and, in fact, your entire computer system, whether it’s portable or a desktop. Dirt and dust can wreak havoc on your hard drive and cause a buildup of static electricity to accumulate on your computer. Additionally, keeep your hard drive and computer free of any magnetic contamination, while we’re on the subject of electrical safety.
- Maintain the stability of the system: Moving, bumping, or dropping a hard drive is not a good thing for the drive, especially while it is in operation. Solid-state drives are advantageous in this situation. However, a general rule of thumb is to keep all hard drives on a level surface and to treat them as if they were a carton of eggs – don’t get aggressive!
- Maintain A Library of Key Software: Important software you should have access to at all times include virus and malware protection programs, disk utility programs, and monitoring programs that keep a constant eye on your hard drive and computer systems. A computer monitoring program will keep track of the temperature of your computer as well as the overall health of your hard drive, among other things.
Accept That Hard Disk Drives Are Mechanical, And Do Fail
Whatever operating system you are using, hard drives are similar to automobiles in that they wear out and and break down over time. Backing up your data will become less of a chore once you accept this fact of life. The software on some computers can be programmed to automatically backup data to an external hard drive or to the cloud. Even with these precautions, a hard drive failure at an inconvenient time can result in the loss of some of your most important data. If this happens, you should probably contact Hard Drive Recovery Associates.