Crash and Burn | Hard Drive Maintenance

Jan 1, 2009 12:00 PM, By Steve Oppenheimer

           
 

WHY HARD DRIVES FAIL AND WHAT TO DO ABOUT IT

BONUS MATERIAL
More on Care and Feeding for Your Hard Drive

A disk utility reveals bad disk sectors

Disk utility software might be able to fix the bad sectors, but as noted earlier, if the problem reappears and increases, your drive is dying.

The drive is hot to the touch

All drives get warm, but if a drive is noticeably hot, it is working way too hard and is about to die.

The “click of death.”

Any odd sound made by your drive — such as clicking, knocking, whistling, or grinding — is a bad sign. A clicking sound (the so-called click of death) often indicates a read/write error during a seek. The sound is usually due to a mechanical failure that causes the head actuator to click as the drive attempts to recalibrate. If the drive hasn't crashed, it's about to.

Cyclic redundancy errors

Computers have an error-checking procedure to validate that a file has been copied correctly. A cyclic redundancy error indicates that the computer cannot make an accurate copy. This could indicate a bad disk sector or something worse: damaged read/write heads, a bad RAM cache, or dust that is damaging the platter.

Preventive Medicine

Because there is usually no cure for a crashed drive, keeping your data safe is all about prevention to the greatest extent possible and preparation for the inevitable. Here are some tips:

Save often and do backups faithfully

You never know when your drive will fail, so take no chances. Save open files whenever you have a moment. Back up at least daily or be prepared to lose your work. (For more about backup, see the online bonus material “Get Back” and the feature “Better Safe Than Sorry” in the May 2006 issue, available at emusician.com.)

Leave free space

As your drive fills up, the OS will have a harder time finding large contiguous blocks, so fragmentation is increased. In addition, defragmentation software needs free space to move file fragments, and optimization requires more free space.

Complete defragmentation with the Windows XP Disk Defragmenter requires that at least 15 percent of the drive be available, and that's a good, if generous, guideline. Some utility programs can defragment drives with less free space, but it's wiser not to push your drive to the limit. You can check available space in Windows by right-clicking on a drive and choosing Properties. For Mac OS X, use the Activity Monitor application (in the Applications folder) and choose Disk Usage.

Keep cool

You know those pictures of happy people using laptop computers in full sun on a hot beach? They won't be so happy when their internal drives fry. Keep drives away from heat sources and make sure that they're well ventilated. If needed, you can buy additional cooling fans (see Fig. 3). You can also monitor the temperature of your hard drive with SMART-savvy software (more on this in a moment).

Feed clean power

FIG. 4: The APC Back-UPS LS 700 is a quality uninterruptible power supply with surge, spike, and sag protection; automatic voltage regulation; and an assortment of bells and whistles.

Power surges, spikes, and sags endanger your drive's health, so use a quality power conditioner that includes filtering and surge/spike protection. I recommend getting an uninterruptible power supply (UPS) like those in the APC (apcc.com) Back-UPS LS or RS series (see Fig. 4). A UPS gives you temporary power in the event of a power failure, and the Back-UPS LS and RS models feature automatic voltage regulation (AVR), which delivers 120 VAC regardless of the incoming voltage. (For more, see the article “Power Hitters” at home.comcast.net/~soppenheimer/sound/articles/features/power_hitters.html.)

Give it a rest

Some pros recommend keeping a hard drive running all the time because powering up and down is more stressful than continuous operation. Others say that if you're not using the drive, you should turn it off to avoid wear and tear. I generally prefer to leave my computer running when I'm home, but I power down when I'm leaving for several hours.

If you are going out for a few hours and want to leave your computer running, you can give your drives a chance to cool by letting them sleep. Windows users can enable Hard Disk Power Off under Power Management, or they can just hibernate the computer, which will power down the boot disk. Mac users can select System Preferences→Energy Saver, click on Show Details, and then check Put The Hard Disk(s) To Sleep When Possible. If, having returned from a short break, you try to access your drive and get a spinning beach ball, make sure that you unchecked the sleep option.