Computer hard drive is easily damaged, but most of the damage is due to improper operation by users. In fact, if you can do the following seven things, you can reduce the possibility of a hard disk failure, thus reduce the possibility of data loss.
1. Do not cut off the power when hard disk is in action
The regular hard drive spins at 7200 rpm. When reading and writing, the entire disc is in a high-speed spinning state. If the power was cut all of a sudden, the drive will vibrate. The friction between the disc head and disc will result in damage, appearing as Bad Track in Windows. You should shut down the computer after the drive has completed the read and write operations.
2. Prevent vibration.
In the hard drive installation process, be careful to prevent excessive shaking or violent collision with the chassis plate. When the drive is spinning, do not move the hard disk. Otherwise, the collision between the disc head and the disc plate will scratch the surface of the magnetosphere, resulting in damage of the disk.
3. Keep it away from the magnetic field
Keep the drive away from strong magnetic field, such as speakers, phone, radio, etc. Since the data was stored in the form of magnetization in the disk, magnetic field is the killer for hard drive.
4. Reduce intense operation
After prolonged use of an operating system, where the hard disk sector where the system files are stored, will be used intensively, thus increase the likelihood of damage to that sector. You’d better have two or more hard drives in order to avoid the intensive use of a particular sector.
5. Give it time to rest
You work for eight hours a day, so should your drive. It is best not to let the hard drive on for 24 x 7. It is bad for your drive and bad for the environment too.
6. Defragment the hard drive regularly
Frequent read and write operations will result a large number of non-contiguous drive space and drive fragmentations. When drive space is not continuous, the performance of hard drive will be affected. Use the built-in Windows system tools Drive Defragmenter to defragment the drive, and keep it in good shape.
7. Increase the memory size for the computer.
If you use memory intensive software frequently (such as image and video processing), you should increase the memory size to reduce using virtual memory, meaning writing and reading large amount of data to your disk from the memory. If you reach the limit for your memory size, considering buying a new cheap laptop, laptop deals are easy to find nowadays.
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