Over the last several years electronic gadgets have gotten cheaper and, for the most part more reliable ... well, until now. An increasing number of off-the-shelf hard drives are failing – making them unreadable, unbootable and unusable.

This year Google released a paper called, "Failure Trends in a Large Disk Drive Population." This was a study of 100,000 hard drives. The paper concludes that newer drives are failing more frequently than older drives. The paper also finds a correlation between heat and drive failure. 

Hard drive failures in laptops are also increasing. One could argue that the bumps and bangs that laptops endure throughout the day could contribute to this. You're right. During the lunch rush at Panera Bread it is not uncommon to see laptops yanked out of bags and plopped on tables to take advantage of their free wireless connection. Surprisingly, you will see people picking up and carrying laptops around while they are turned on and operational. This is very risky and can cause damage to hard drives.

And we can't forget the heat factor. In previous articles I have mentioned that laptops usually run much hotter than desktops. Some makes and models are worse than others. But if the bottom of your laptop gets hot after an hour or so of operation, you can be certain that the inside where the hard drive lives, is even hotter. 

What Can You Do?

  >  Consider a laptop "Cool Pad" or other "undercarriage" cooling system for your laptop to keep it running cooler. And if you use a desktop PC, keep your desktop PC well ventilated.

  >  If you use a laptop, never move the laptop with the power on. And always use a cushioned travel bag to transport your laptop back and forth.

  >  If you are on a network, be sure your data and documents are stored on your server and backed up daily. If you're using a stand-alone desktop PC or laptop, be sure to backup your documents regularly to thumb drives, CDs, or DVDs.

 >  Keep your hard drive defragmented regularly. Although the Windows Defragmenter gets the job done (eventually), Diskeeper available from http://www.diskeeper.com/ has a great product to keep your Windows PC defragmented regularly.

  >  Add more RAM. What? How can adding more RAM help my hard drive? Computers that do not have enough RAM typically cause the hard drive to read/write more frequently. This can cause more wear and tear on the hard drive mechanisms.

 >  If you hear any out of the ordinary noises coming from your hard drive, consider doing a drive image backup of your entire hard drive using a software product such as Symantec Ghost. That way if you have to replace your hard drive, you will be able to get back up and running much, much quicker.

Useful software of the week:
TreeSize Free V2.1 available from http://www.jam-software.com/freeware/index.shtml.

For technical questions, please contact SN Business Solutions at 717-757-6999 or 800-745-8233, or send  an email by using the form below.  For other technical tidbits be sure to check out Ken's daily technology blog at http://www.kensaxe.com/.

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