Hard Drive Failures

A hard drive is the most important piece of hardware in your computer. Sure, without all the other pieces your computer would not work. However, I feel that it is the most important because of the valuable data we store on them. Without hard drives, you cannot store the hundreds of family photos, the hours of homework, or the deal-making presentation on your computer. You may argue that we could store these things on removable media, but this is far less cost effective and convenient. Hard drives will continue to be the #1 choice for storage for many years.

Companies spend tens of thousands of dollars each year to employ competent technical personnel who ensure that their data is not in danger of being destroyed. Why? Because it is not a question of if a hard drive will fail. It is a question of when a hard drive will fail!

Hard drives have come a long way over the years. My first computer had a 1GB hard drive. At the time this was considered to be so large that one would never find any way to fill it. Today, most of us have mp3 collections that would fill my first hard drive many times over. As of the date of this writing, $100 would fetch you a hard drive at least one hundred times larger. Also, modern drives read and write data much more quickly and offer better methods of transmitting data.

Regardless of the advances in hard drive technologies, hard drives continue to be vulnerable to failure. The largest contributor to this problem is the many moving parts inside a hard drive. A hard drive consists of a motor, several magnetic platters (disks), and a read/write head. The motor spins the platters at 5400 – 7200rpm (and faster on high performance models). A set of read/write heads that float just above and below the platters move from side to side reading and writing data from the spinning disks. I am sure you can imagine what would happen if the motor burns out, or if the platters become damaged, or if the read/write heads do not function. Any of these things result in hard drive failure.[ad name=”468×60″]

It is important to recognize the signs of impending hard drive failure. The following lists a few of the more common symptoms:

• Accessing folders and files takes an extremely long time.
• Your computer freezes or crashes frequently, often when booting up.
• The names or content of files becomes jumbled for no apparent reason.
• Odd errors occur when copying or moving files.
• Your hear a clicking or grinding noise (or both).

If you begin to experience these symptoms frequently, you should begin to plan on hard drive failure (ideally, you would have planned on hard drive failure all along). You need to backup the contents of your hard drive(s) immediately.

There are many ways to backup your hard drive; the end result being that one or more copies of your important files exist on some other form of data storage. Don’t place a copy of your files onto the same hard drive and consider it backed up. Copy your files to an external hard drive, CD, DVD, USB flash drive, or another computer.

The subject of data backup is worthy of its own article. However, I will get you started here just in case you’re searching for a solution.

1. If you have about $100 to spend, buy an external hard drive. If you have a CD or DVD burner, also buy a stack of CD’s or DVD’s (preferably DVD’s since they hold more) if you can. If you’re strapped for cash, just buy the CD’s or DVD’s.
2. If you fear that your hard drive may crash at any moment, begin copying your files to the external hard drive or CD’s/DVD’s immediately. Try to reproduce the directory structure exactly. If all you’re doing in copying and pasting, you should be fine.
3. Purchase or download a program that allows you to schedule automatic backups. An excellent free program called SyncBack is made available by 2BrightSparks.

I have one final suggestion for backups: make several copies. Ideally, you will have one copy on your external hard drive, another copy on DVD filed away in a closet, and another copy at a trustworthy neighbor’s or family member’s house. You may think I’m going overboard in this respect, but you’ll thank me if your house is ever destroyed. Another method is to sign up with a remote backup service like Mozy. They offer 2GB of storage for free and unlimited storage for only $4.95 (current price shown, may change in the future.) The plans offered are Mozy Home, Mozy Pro, and Mozy for Macs.

I hope you now have a greater appreciation for hard drives and the consequences of their failure. I also hope I’ve made you paranoid enough to take action. Remember, hard drive failures are unavoidable. Data loss, however, can be avoided with only a small amount of planning and additional hardware.