All mechanical hard drives, regardless of manufacturer, are prone for failure. That is the sad fact to realize. As long as they are using a spinning platter to store data, the integrity of these drives will be at risk for failure.
These drives use two motors: one to spin the disc platters and one to maneuver the read/write heads back and forth across the disc surfaces. These can fail by either heat, the coils of wire having a sudden short created and the ball bearings wearing out.
There's also a known problem on older drives that we call "stiction" (pronounced "stick-shun"). Some drive manufacturers placed a layer of material on top of the platters that acted as a lubricant. This allowed the heads to gently be riding above the disc along with a cushion of air, instead of coming in contact with the platters and gouging the surfaces. If the read/write heads are "parked" on a spot of the disk where data isn't stored for long periods of time, this lubricant can fuse to the heads and get stuck together like glue. The best way to temporarily fix this is to hold the drive in your hand (not connected to the computer) and twist with your wrist to break up the stiction. The permanent solution is to replace the drive. By the late 1990s, most hard drive manufacturers used a different material that was less prone to stiction.
The drives, in addition, can be damaged by a head crash. This is where the read/write heads are jolted enough to come in contact with the surface of the platters, gouging them and damaging to the point of drive failure. The chances of getting data back due to head crash are 50-50.
Heat is another common problem with mechanical hard drives. Too much heat can burn out the controller card underneath the drive and also cause metal parts to expand and shift out of alignment. So you'll need to make sure you have adequate ventilation around the drive to get heat away from it.
And finally, you have data image corruption as probably the most common problem. This happens at random, but more often when you are writing new data on top of old data on the drive. Your boot tracks and sectors on the drive could be at risk of being recorded over. Sometimes if you are changing system settings or the like, any changes you make can pose a risk. Sometimes the drive just dumps too much information in one spot, that it gets confused and loses track of what data is where.
Luckily the new solid state drives don't suffer most of the problems that mechanical drives do. You'll risk data corruption as possible problems, but not head crashes, motor failures or stiction for that matter. Once the prices start dropping and these drives are featured more often, then I think the reliability of them will be much better. We can only wait and see what holds for the future.
73s de Phreakout. :rambo:
These drives use two motors: one to spin the disc platters and one to maneuver the read/write heads back and forth across the disc surfaces. These can fail by either heat, the coils of wire having a sudden short created and the ball bearings wearing out.
There's also a known problem on older drives that we call "stiction" (pronounced "stick-shun"). Some drive manufacturers placed a layer of material on top of the platters that acted as a lubricant. This allowed the heads to gently be riding above the disc along with a cushion of air, instead of coming in contact with the platters and gouging the surfaces. If the read/write heads are "parked" on a spot of the disk where data isn't stored for long periods of time, this lubricant can fuse to the heads and get stuck together like glue. The best way to temporarily fix this is to hold the drive in your hand (not connected to the computer) and twist with your wrist to break up the stiction. The permanent solution is to replace the drive. By the late 1990s, most hard drive manufacturers used a different material that was less prone to stiction.
The drives, in addition, can be damaged by a head crash. This is where the read/write heads are jolted enough to come in contact with the surface of the platters, gouging them and damaging to the point of drive failure. The chances of getting data back due to head crash are 50-50.
Heat is another common problem with mechanical hard drives. Too much heat can burn out the controller card underneath the drive and also cause metal parts to expand and shift out of alignment. So you'll need to make sure you have adequate ventilation around the drive to get heat away from it.
And finally, you have data image corruption as probably the most common problem. This happens at random, but more often when you are writing new data on top of old data on the drive. Your boot tracks and sectors on the drive could be at risk of being recorded over. Sometimes if you are changing system settings or the like, any changes you make can pose a risk. Sometimes the drive just dumps too much information in one spot, that it gets confused and loses track of what data is where.
Luckily the new solid state drives don't suffer most of the problems that mechanical drives do. You'll risk data corruption as possible problems, but not head crashes, motor failures or stiction for that matter. Once the prices start dropping and these drives are featured more often, then I think the reliability of them will be much better. We can only wait and see what holds for the future.
73s de Phreakout. :rambo: