Thread: Maximising Your Hard-Drives Lifespan

Its a heavy-downloaders worst nightmare - what happens if i wakeup one morning and all my data is gone? In the modern age you can easily lose several terabytes of data if you dont take precautions.

Steps -

1. Download Defragger and defragment your hard-drive once a month.
- Defragger is a free software from the makers of CCleaner, it provies a powerful solution to keep your data all in check and make any loose ends are quickly and safety solved. What it does is keep all your data organised.

Tidy eh? If you dont use a software such as Defragger you can hard-drives can cause disk fragmentation, which makes it slower and puts alot more strain the components.

Get it at - Defraggler - File and Disk Defragmentation - Free Download

2. Get a decent cooling system.
i- This is a huge mistake many people make. Make sure you have plenty of airflow for your computer, and also make sure that you have at least a 500W PSU, if you have alot of hard-drives go for the 750W or if you want plain overkill - go for 1000W. Also, a good case can make a bit of difference as well for temperature.

A good example of this is a - Best Value 500W Micro Atx PSU M-500U (PSUCIT500MICRO) - dabs.com

3. Backup, Backup, Backup!!
- This is the main bit, if you backup your data you instantly have a recovery system in place incase your data does decide to die on you. I would reccomend getting a external hard-drive for this, and 1.5TB ones are merely �90 nowadays.

If your really paranoid you could go for a RAID backup system - which is splitting a hard-drive into 2 parts, each holding the same data - so if one goes down the other remains fine. Note - this half's the space you will have, for example - 1.5TB into RAID = 2x750GB hard-drives.

I use a - Seagate Expansions ST3320418AS 1.5TB External Desktop USB 2.0 Hard Drive, 7200RPM 16MB Cache: Amazon.co.uk: Electronics

4. Monitor your Drives.
- S.M.A.R.T technology is built into most hard-drives these days, therefore i would highly reccomend you take advantage of this situation and get a piece of software to monitor your drives and tell you when something isnt running as it should.

Softwares such as DiskView and Stellar SMART can be used to look at your hard-drive for possible disk failures and more. Its like private medical insurance!

DiskView - DiskView - Disk Space Usage Manager
Stellar SMART - Hard Drive Monitoring Software & Tools, Hard Drive Parameters

5. Get a UPS to stop power surges.
- Alot of hard-drives are caused by power-surges, and this can kill your hard-drive in a instant. Using a UPS helps you prevent such events and keep your voltage amounts in check. Also, if your REALLY paranoid checking your house for wiring issues to have further defence against power-surges.

So, in conclusion there isnt a way to make sure 100% that your hard-drives wont die overnight - but you can help ward it off using a few steps. Hey, i wouldnt want to lose my 2TB of data and i suppose you guys wouldnt either! Get a UPS matching your Watt amount on your PSU!



I would reccomend a - Trust UPS PW-4055T - AC 230V - 240W - 550VA - 3.. | Ebuyer.com

Nice post. Wish I had seen this the other week. Just recently had my hard drive die on me. Total bummer when it happens. Serves me right for not backing up like i should have though. =(

Good post mate I totally agree to the larger PSU I've got through a few of those
3 HD's you need a 750w or 850w PSU
I use Hard Disk Sentinel to monitor my drives - it supports Solid State too
Western Digital Hard Drives - lost to much using Samsung and the other makes

Suprb post reall impressive....

Nice post mate, pretty basic stuff, but it's something most (nearly all) people don't do anything about until something calamitous happens to them. And then it's a matter of how bad it is that defines what they actually do about it . Doh!! You can take a horse to water , but you can't make him drink it . Who said that!?

Also, they are supposed to last longer if left spinning all the time.

Back up is a kind of hard when you have 5+ TB
eventhough great topic and useful tools specially DiskView and Stellar SMART

thanks for the tips, I use Hard Disk Sentinel as well, and it's worked great for me too.

All great information, would really like to put in a good work for MyDefrag as well. Best defragging program out there.