How to Increase the Life of Hard Disk

Taking care of your hard disk is important because this is the place where all the data is stored and once the hard disk crashes, data in most cases is not recoverable. There are data recovery softwares and programs which recover data from crashed hard disks but that is not for normal computer users.

But why do hard disks crash and what can be done to prevent them from crashing?. At the same time how can a hard disk be made more efficient? Here are the answers.

Hard disks crash due to many reasons. Voltage fluctuations, physical impact, improper alignment and of course mechanical failure due to wear and tear of internal parts. Let us start one by one and get the answers to the above problems.

1. Voltage fluctuations or spikes as they are called can be prevented by using voltage stabilizers or spike guards. This will limit the damage to the hard disk to a great extent.

2. Physical impact can be prevented by handling the hard disk carefully when installing/ re-installing. When installing the hard disk care should be taken to see that it sits perfectly horizontal and that it does not vibrate or shake once the computer is started.

3. The natural wear and tear of parts can be limited by defragmenting your hard disk from time to time.But what is defragmentation? All newly created files are stored in various places on the hard disk in a single cluster ( contiguous file ). But, as the number of files and programs increase, these files are not stored as one contiguous file but broken down and scattered in various places on the hard disk. In short files get fragmented. When these files are accessed by the user, the head on the hard disk moves to and fro to locate these fragments. These fragmented files puts lot of mechanical pressure on the internal parts of the hard disk. This leads to crashes. To start disk defragmenter from the start menu, click the start button and follow this path (All Programs / Accessories / System Tools / Disk Defragmenter). A minimum of 15 percent free space on your disk is needed for disk defragmenter to run. The disk can also be defragmented automatically by using schedule task. This program can can be accessed via system tools.

4. Power management tool can also be used to enhance the life of hard disk. To access this program go to start / control panel / power options and set the parameters for various hardware devices.

5. Disk cleanup increases the efficiency of the hard disk. So delete unwanted files and programs regularly.

Follow the above rules to increase the life of you hard disk.