Tip # 5


Prevent bad sectors? This will read like "How To Take Good Care Of Your Hard Disks" it will prevent bad sectors (if at all possible). Sometimes bad sectors just happen...

1.Never Bump or Drop your hard disk . The HDD may be mostly made of metal but you have to handle them like eggs;

2. If you don't want bad sectors, never move your PC while it is on. Never Shutdown. Shutoff. Move the PC. Then turn it on.

3. Do not put HDD, on top of each other. Make sure they are in proper packaging (anti-static bags and clamshells or styro boxes) if you have to store them;

4. Only hold or handle your HDDs by their edges, never touch the printed circuit boards or electronic parts;

5. If you have to put the HDD down on, lay it down on an anti-static bag

6. When mounting HDDs use the proper screws (coarse thread and shorter screw) as opposed to the screws for CDROM drives and Floppy Drives which are fine thread, and the case screws which are coarse thread but longer;

7. Use as many screws to mount your HDD as possible, usually 4. Some techs will use only 3, I have seen HDDs mounted using only 1 (@&$%) screw. Why? the 4 screws will ensure proper heat transfer from the HDD to the case;

8. Tighten but not overtighten the screws. Your screws are steel, the HDD case is aluminum, you are in danger or damaging the thread in your HDD if you overtighten;

9. You may mount the HDD in any way (level, un-level, upwards, downwards, vertical) whatever it takes to make it fit your casing. There will be no problem performance-wise.

But, mind you, if in the future say 2 years, you have to unmount and reinstall the HDD in a configuration different to what it has been accustomed to, the HDD might die on you just like that. Example ? vertically mounted for 2 years, then i-reinstall i horizontally. the hard disk don't work anymore, It happened to me 3X already. Perfectly working HDD, then remounted in a different attitude, deads! Most probably the bearings have gotten used to the old mounting and seize up when mounted differently.

10. Keep your HDDs cool. Blow fans on them, use coolers. At the very least make sure your casing is properly ventilated. Heat shortens the life of HDDs.

11. Cables? Make sure your cables are good and connected correctly.

12. Power Supply? Make sure your power supply is up to snuff This is where most HDDs fail after serving you for a long time. Low 12-volt rails kill HDD motors. Bad 5V kill HDD electronics.

13. Power connectors. Make sure your power connectors (those white plugs with yellow, black and red wires) fit well. Loose connectors provide bad power. After running your PC for a while, say 15-30 minutes, touch your connectors, if they are hot, then there's something loose, replace with a spare connector and label the bad connector. If you do system checkups, it is good to take note of heat discoloration on power connectors and replace those bad ones;

14. Brown outs do not just kill lights, they kill HDDs. Brown outs are sometimes accompanied by bad power spikes and deadly voltage fluctuations. If you can afford a good UPS, buy one.

15. When transferring HDDs between systems don't just take one and install into another and fire it up just like that. Please make sure you get into BIOS first and make sure that your new system is set to ?auto?. If your old system detected the HDD using manual or non-standard parameters, then duplicate the parameters first in BIOS in the new system before booting up. You might scramble all your data if your new system tries to read the HDD using wrong parameters.

16. If you use your PC a lot, defrag your partitions once a month. If not, a defrag once every 3 months will be fine. For those of you who think that defragmention speeds up your HDDs death, may I give a small explanation. If your partition is quite defragmented, your HDD will be doing a lot of unnecessary work by default, its head going back and forth trying to get to the different parts of your files scattered all over your disk. Besides with a defragmented disk, you will have a more responsive PC.

17. Install enough RAM. You don't want your HDD swapping files back and forth from system RAM and the swap file. Lot's of work for the HDD, slows PC!

18, Partition your HDD. At least 2 partitions. One partition for your Operating System. The other one for your data. This way if your OS gets corrupted (and it happens) you don?t have to perform PC acrobatics to get your data back. You can reformat your OS partition and be assured that your data is safe in a separate partition.

This is all I can think of for now, I've spent an hour on it, feel free to comment or add. Hope it helps.