Hard Drive Protection

How can you protect your hard drive? To answer this question we need to talk about how a hard drive works in the first place. Then maybe just from understanding how they work we can figure out the best way to protect them. Time to get my geek on, wohooo!

There are two types of hard drives you are likely to run into. Solid state (SSD) and traditional hard drives (HDD). Both of them have their pros and cons as well as different ways to protect them. 

The traditional hard drive or HDD (Hard Disk Drive) is not really all that complicated in the basic overall function. There are really only three basic parts of the hard drive we need to worry about. First, there are the platters that store the data through magnetic markings. This is very similar to a vinyl record storing analog audio in the bumps and dips in the groves. For the younger people in the crowd. It's also similar to a CD storing digital music data. Second is a read/write head that either detects or causes the magnetic markings on the platter. This is very similar to the arm and needle of the old vinyl record players. Once again for the younger crowd, this is similar to the laser on the CD player. Third is the motor that spins the disk. This as you can probably imagine is similar to the turntable of an old record player or the motor turning the CD spindle.

CD's the smaller, better quality, and newer version of the good old fashioned vinyl.

How can we protect our HDD's from getting damaged. There are four things you can do really. Most of them are pretty simple if you think about it at the time.

First off, do not ever move or bump the drive while it's spinning. HDD's platters are spinning while there is power to them, with a few exceptions. Think of it this way. When you are playing an old record or a CD and you bump or try and move the player. What happens? Sure, it's skips. What happens when you bump it harder or drop it? You can permanently scratch it and it may never play the right way again. Same idea for a HDD. You should always shut down, suspend, or hibernate your computer before moving it. Yes, that is for laptops as well. Kinda kills the idea of a laptop to be used on the goes doesn't it? No worries, there is always SSD's.

Second, stop the platters from spinning when not being used. Almost every computer sold in the last 10-15 years has had the capabilities to turn off the hard drive when not being used. To use this feature check in your power settings of your operating system. Turning off the hard drive when not in use will for one save the motor from being worn out to quickly and for two save you a little (I mean very little) on your power bill. On laptops it can save the battery a good amount of power though. 

Third, keep them cool. HDD's can overheat just like anything else. However, when a HDD overheats it can melt the little bits of plastic covering the wires in the motor causing a short. Interestingly enough this is also the main cause of failures in a car's alternator as well. When these shorts happen the motor will stop spinning and your data stored in the drive is lost to you for good. To prevent overheating make sure the computer has plenty of ventilation. When using a laptop on the couch, bed, or anything soft put a book or something hard underneath it. There are vents on the bottom that need that little bit of air space the little legs provide. Use a can of compressed air to keep the vents and fans clean. Be careful not to break the blades off the fans though.

Fourth, use check disk (chkdsk). Every operating system has a way to check the file system and look for bad sectors (sections) and can mark them not to be used. While this does not prevent the drive from getting damaged, it does make the drive useful again. Can really increase the speed of your computer if there are any bad sectors. 

SSD's are freaking awesome! In general they are faster, more durable, and sadly about twice the price. As the name suggest there are no moving parts and that is what makes them so durable. Bumping a SSD wont cause the damage it would in a HDD. SSD's work on the same basic principle as a flash drive. I don't know about you, but I drop my flash drive all the time. Probably more than my phone. Now that's saying something. I'm such a klutz. The question is how can we protect them? Oh, we have another four things we can do to make them last longer. 

First, if it can be avoided to not put the pagefile or swap on the SSD. SSD's have a more limited write capacity then HDD's. I know, that sucks, but it's true. The pagefile in windows or swap as it's known in every other operating system is a location of the hard drive the system uses when the RAM gets full. Which also means that if you have to use the SSD for the pagefile like in laptops be sure to have way more RAM then you will ever need so it won't get uses as much.

Second, Do not defrag a SSD! As I stated just a moment ago SSD's have a limited write capacity. Using the disk defragmenter will use this up almost as fast as the swap. Plus, you don't get any speed improvement from degraging a SSD.

Third, keep them cool. Yup, no matter what kind of drive you have keeping them cool will prevent damage to the system. Not just your hard drive but your entire system will benefit and last longer if it's able to breath without obstruction. 

Forth, running check disk is not a bad idea on the SSD once in a while either. However, I wouldn't use the check for bad sectors option. That could also make you reach the write limit faster. 

So how would I use SSD's and HDD's to get the best performance and longest life of the drives? That depends on the type of computer. For a desktop I would have one SSD and one HDD. I would install the operating system on the SSD and move the swap to the HDD. I would also put all my data and profile on the HDD. Therefore, the only thing on the SSD would be the operating system. This would increase the response times of the computer dramatically. For a laptop I would only use a SSD, gut I would max out the amount of RAM possible and keep most of my data on another device. I would also make backups of all my data at least once a week. This way, even if a drive fails I haven't lost much. 

I normally don't make product recommendations and I wouldn't unless I believed in them. I have not been paid nor asked to do promote this product. I have seen the effectiveness of Spin Right first had for recovering data on damaged drives and keeping drives at their peak performance. So if you wish take a look at grc.com to see uber geek Steve Gibson's work. Do the research yourself. Don't just take my word for it. Because I'm just a guy name rug, and that's what I think.