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If I asked you the question: which part of your computer is the most fragile, what would you say? What if I asked: which part is most important to you?

Often, the answer to both of these questions is your Hard Drive.

Your hard drive is likely one the most important things you own. It contains work data, school data, emails, photos, music, movies, tax information, etc Incidentally, the hard drive is also one of only two moving components in your computer (the other being your optical drive). The following is a list of important maintenance and monitoring techniques you can use to maximize the life of your hard drive and prevent data loss.

Hard drives are physically fragile - handle with care
Statistics show that 25% of lost data is due to a failure of a portable drive. (Source: 2001 Cost of Downtime Survey Results)
Contrary to its seemingly rugged appearance, your hard disk is a very delicate device that writes and reads data using microscopic magnetic particles. Any vibration, shock, and other careless operation may damage your drive and cause or contribute to the possibility of a failure. This is especially relevant for notebook users, as they are most at risk of drive failure due to physical damage, theft, and other causes beyond their control. That’s why we recommend regular backup of notebook hard drives, as often as possible.
Possible solutions include external USB or Firewire drives (although these are prone to the same risks), desktop synchronization, or backup at a data center through the web.

Hard drives write data in a non-linear way forcing it to become fragmented.

When files accumulate on your hard drive, they do not just get written in a linear fashion. A hard drive writes files in small pieces and scatters them over the surface. The fuller your hard drive becomes and the more files you save and delete the worse file fragmentation can be. Hard drive access times increase with fragmentation since your drive must work harder to find all the pieces of the files. The more fragmented your data is, the harder the actuator arm has to work to find each piece of a file.

A case in point:
Disk fragmentation is a common problem for users of Outlook Express and database software. Each time outlook saves new mail, it does so in a different physical location from the previous time. This results in extreme fragmentation, causing longer hard drive access times and forcing more strain on the heads. This strain can eventually lead to a head crash, and often that means a virtually unrecoverable drive.Finally, in the event of a total crash, a fragmented drive is much more difficult to recover then a healthy defragged drive.

Luckily, Windows makes it remarkably easy to defrag your hard drive, simply launch the Disk Defragmenter utility (Start > Programs > Accessories > System Tools), choose which disk or partition you’d like to defragment and set it to work overnight or while you are not actively using your computer. Defragmentation will speed up your computer and ensure a longer life for your hard drive.

A very small power surge can fry a hard drive - use a UPS and turn off your computer when you can

Another little-known fact about the fragility of your hard drive is its susceptibility to electrical failure. An electrical failure can be caused by a power surge, lightening strikes, power brown-outs, incorrect wiring, a faulty or old power supply, and many other factors. If a power surge enters your computer, it may do an unpredictable amount of damage, including destroying your hard drive’s electronics or crashing the heads and possibly resulting in total data loss.

The best way to protect your computer from such dangers is to use a highly rated protected power bar or an Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS). Although these devices won’t eliminate the chances of a crash, they will serve as effective protection in most cases. Also, you can minimize the danger of an electrical problem and reduce wear of your hard drive by turning off your computer or using power-save modes whenever possible. It’s a known fact that 100% of drives fail, the question is when will it happen and will you be prepared? Make sure to check out the knowledgebase section of our website for more detailed information on how electrical power affects your computer.

Be SMART, monitor the health of your drive to prevent unexpected crashes

All modern hard drives have a self-monitoring technology called SMART (Self Monitoring Analysis & Reporting Technology). What most people don’t realize is that the majority of hard drive failures do not have to be unexpected. Most failures occur as a result of long-term problems which can be predicted. By regularly monitoring disk health and performance, you can know about potential hard drive problems before you lose any of your data.

Several excellent utilities are available, including DiskView and Stellar SMART for standard IDE and SATA desktop drives. Also available are tools that monitor the health of SCSI drives and full RAID Array systems. Ariolic Software offers a great utility called ActiveSMART.

The only fool-proof way to prevent data loss is… Backup!
If you only take one of the suggestions here to heart, let it be this one: always back up your important data. After all the monitoring and all the prevention measures are in place, one fact still remains: all hard drives fail. Backing up regularly will ensure that you’re never caught without your critical data. For individuals, the simplest solutions include external portable hard drives, dvd’s, and online storage. For businesses, we recommend renting space at a secure data centre and implementing a disaster recovery plan, regardless of the size of your business.
I hope that the above techniques give you some idea of the importance of hard drive maintenance and provide some insights in how you can protect yourself from data loss.

Alex Bezborodov is the technical writer for Accurate Data Recovery, specializing in data recovery for end users, academia and small businesses. Check out the ADR Resource Center for more useful information.
Let ADR bring your data back to life!

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Nothing could be more traumatic that losing all the files that you accumulated for years in a computer crash down. For people who work at home and earn money from their personal computer, this could mean losing not just their files but a few clients as well especially if recovery of important data is impossible. In order to avoid such incidents and getting yourself into more troubles than you would care to handle, it would be best to create some back files for the things you are doing on your computer. In fact, it would be wise to create not just one but two back up files just to make sure that if ever you have a hard drive failure, you will still have other files which you can use.

There are many ways to create back up for your files. You can buy one of those USB drives which could store large quantity of data, you can add another hard disk into your computer or you can opt for the simple CD Rom back up.

If you are on a budget, if would be a good idea to go for the CD Rom since it is a lot cheaper than the USB and the extra hard drive. Furthermore, with the CD Rom, you can easily create multiple back up by simply burning more CDs if you want. You need not worry about the cost since CDs nowadays are mass produced and the prices are very cheap.

Compare to the extra hard drive, storing and transporting files in the CD format is more convenient. A single disk could accommodate as much as 700MB of files, which is really quite a lot if you are just using the simple word or excel format. If want to save pictures and other graphic files, the CD can also accommodate a good deal of files too.

When using CD Rom for back up, you may use the writeable disc or the rewriteable disk, depending on your need. If you simply want to back up your files and create something, which you don’t want to willfully or accidentally altered, you better use the writeable format. The good thing about this writeable CD format is that you file is relatively safer than in the rewriteable one since once the CD had been burned, the content thereof will in the read only format.

No one can really tamper your files if they are in the read only format so that would be best if you only want to create back ups. On the other hand, if you want to update your files every now and then, you may use the rewriteable format that allows more flexibility in terms of storing data. Unlike the writeable format which will only allow you to burn files at one time, the rewriteable format can be used several times.

Gregg Hall is an author living in Navarre Beach, Florida. Find more about this as well as a data back up at www.how-to-do-it-right.com

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Everyone does maintenance on their computer in one form or another. You have the surge protector, you have the antivirus installed and you may even have a registry cleaner or ad protecting program. You may even be as bold as defragmenting your hard drive on occasion. But do you have a data backup system or plan? Do you have any of your important data on backup?

Everyone with a computer has lost data at one time or another. A sudden system crash or mistakenly deleting something can wreak havoc on your nerves or business. A thunderstorm and power surge to you power supply can fry your data. Sometimes it can be saved by taking the entire hard drive into a technician for recovery and it can be a long, tedious, and expensive process.

If you have information on your computer that you want to make sure you keep, then you need to back it up in some way. Depending on how important the data is to you, you may want to consider two types of backup. Depending on the data you want to protect you may need to create a backup on a daily or even hourly basis.

There are many types of backups and many ways to do it. You can use DVDs or CDs, external hard drives, online servers, or a “thumb drive”. Burning data to a CD or DVD is very simple. Select the files you want to save and save them. Online servers can be set to just a simple click of the mouse and it will synchronize with your computer and do all the work automatically. Thumb drives have replaced the CD and DVD with ease of use. Plug the thumb drive into the USB port and save your work and take it out when you’re done. Put the thumb drive into your pocket or purse and you can retrieve your data from any other computer you use no matter where you are. The thumb drives can have as little or as much memory as you need and can be password protected or even use thumbprint scans to protect your data if anyone else ever gets their hands on it.

A full backup may be a bit of overkill if you are backing up your personal computer. A full backup creates a mirror of your entire hard drive, including every file and folder that is on your computer. But this option can be used in conjunction with a differential backup. This type of backup creates the backup of only files that have been changed or upgraded. You could create a full backup and then weekly or monthly depending on the importance of your data, complete a differential backup which will keep your backup up to date.

You computer probably already has a snapshot backup in it’s programming. It creates a mirror of your hard drive and backs up the images of your files. You can also choose disk imaging. This will allow you to back up your entire hard drive or just certain files of your choosing. However the programs that are already installed on your computer for this job may not be the most user friendly.

Most people find that the unattended backup is the easiest to use. There are multitudes of software on the market that will automatically backup your system to your specifications without you doing much of anything else. Always choose the program you want to use carefully. While consumer friendly use is a major point, you’ll want to make sure that you can set it up and make changes to it when needed.

These programs are usually very easy to use and all you have to do is follow the prompts on the screen and it will complete all the work for you. And you don’t want to spend hundreds of dollars on a program meant to backup data for NASA when you just want to protect the data on your home computer. There are plenty of reasonably price software packages that will do the work you specifically need done without breaking the bank.

You can research different companies and programs on the internet. There are forums that people that have tried the products will tell if it was good or bad or easy or hard to use. Be an educated consumer. Go ahead and pick the brains of your computer savvy friends. Many times your friends will be eager to show off their knowledge of computers.

Software backup is the best way to save your work, your correspondence, even your family pictures. Anything can happen to a computer at any given time. Just a simple power surge can destroy years of memories. So data backup is an important part of any computer maintenance. And it may just save your sanity later.

Gregg Hall is an author living in Navarre Beach, Florida. Find more about this as well as a
computer backup at http://www.webcomputerrepair.com

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