Maintaining a Hard Disk

Hard disk , usually called as Hard Disk Drive (HDD). The name is quite a controversy. Hard disk is not a hard component. A single shake in the reading head or a single drop of water is enough to make your hard disk to break down. Being a magnetic material, it has got many enemies around to spoil its health. 80% of hard disks fail due to improper power supply, especially in India where none of the houses have proper earthing. If your computer is receiving a bad power supply, then first thing that has a highest chance to get affected is your hard disk.So perform this check, before you connect your hard disk.

• Connect your CPU without Hard disk.
• Turn it on
• Take a tester and touch each and every spot in the cabinet.
• The tester light should never turn on.If the tester light glows, there is some problem with the power supply.

Remember ,cabinet has nothing to do with you computer. You can make a computer run in a flat table. The cabinet just holds all your components in position.Connect the hard disk , only if you have cleared all your connection problems.


Frequently reported problems:

1. Disk boot failed - You cannot expect your system to tolerated every time you cold boot it. Some motherboards still struggle to detect the hard disk and other peripherals after a cool boot or an abrupt shutdown. So always try to shut down the computer properly.

2. Disk read error - This is really a critical problem in deed. Read errors are common if you encounter them after you the operating system is loaded successfully.But , if your computer cannot boot, then there must be some kind of problem in the boot sector itself. Sometimes , this situation can be handled by just connecting the device to an alien system and scanning it inside the operating system. If you believe in third party software, you can try this recovering your hard disk with them.History says, loosely connected or corrupted bus can also be a cause for this problem.

3. Disk not detected: The common problem, when either the motherboard switches a new hard disk or the hard disk switches to a new motherboard . Again i can divide it into two types.
Simple and Critical.

• The problem is simple, if you are connecting the device the very first time.The remedy is, open BIOS settings, and under standard setting, manually change the Primary and Secondary device. Your device should be listed under one of them. Save your settings and reboot.If you have an older motherboard say GIGABYTE ss-61, it wont support hard disks of higher capacity. So you need to do this process every time you start your system (not reboot).

• The problem is critical, when the head breaks down. This can happen due to rough handling. Rough handling does not point to physical damage alone. You can spoil the device even by overloading it. Turning off your PC while installing some critical software. Cold booting the PC due to lack of patience when the system hangs.

These are some major problem reported very frequently.

DOs:

• Scan your hard disk twice a month. It may fix some unrecognizable errors.
• Keep at least 20% of free space in each partition.
• Create optimal number of partitions.
• Protect your hard disk from moisture and shock.
• Keep you hard disk well placed inside the cabinet and ensure that the screws are fastened.
• Have a airy cabinet. Now a days the size of graphics cards are a bit large. So it might run across the length of the cabinet. So the hard disk wires might touch the graphics card which in turn causes unnecessary heat.

DONTs:

• Never carry the disk in your shirt or pant pocket, where it is vulnerable to dusts.
• Do not keep on creating partitions from C to Z.
• Never leave the hard disk unscrewed, inside a cabinet. Disturbance might cause the hard disk to fall.
• Do not touch or punch the hard disk with strong materials like screw driver. Not only HDD but also the motherboard. It may cause some severe damage ,may be unrecoverable sometimes.
  

This is it for now. More on the way on the Course of my life


Infected with Harish Syndrome