A hard drive is definitely one of the important components of your computer. After all, it is here that all information is stored - documents and photos, installed programs and video files, games and text files. From here it is important to know the service life of the hard drive, so that at the right time to worry about replacing the component with a new one. But the runtime of the device can also be significantly extended by its correct operation, simple measures. How to do this, we will tell you further.
Hard Drive Life
It should be noted that different time values are set for different types of data drives. Imagine the average life of a hard drive:
- Interior. The service life of the hard drive is from 5 to 10 years. Time depends on the size of the drive, as well as the conditions for its use. The most important indicator is heat. Excessive heating of the device significantly reduces its service life. Hence the conclusion: it is necessary to properly organize the removal of warm air from the drive, to prevent its high temperatures. In order for all components of the system to work properly, it is necessary to pay due attention to the choice of the system unit.
- External. How long is an external hard drive? This is an average of 10 years. Excessive environmental humidity, external influences (shocks, shaking, impacts, falls, etc.), the presence of strong magnets in the immediate vicinity of the object have the most negative impact on the rapid wear and operability of this device.
- Solid state. The service life of this type of hard drive is also 10 years. However, the "life" of an SSD (unlike a traditional HDD) is also limited by rewriting cycles. Therefore, theoretically, an innovative solid-state drive can fail much earlier than a slower HDD.
The eternal keeper of information
Is there a drive with a lifetime that is unlimited? Yes, today the alternative is cloud storage. Your information in this case is stored on the server of the selected provider. Most often for a fee. But in this case, your data is at risk of other risks: hacker attack, provider bankruptcy, and so on.
At the beginning of the article, we mentioned that the service life of the hard drive of a laptop and PC can be extended independently. Below we will tell you how to do it.
Shop purchase
The expiration date of a hard disk drive also largely depends on the model of hard drive you have chosen. Therefore, when buying a component in the cabin, it is important to pay attention to the following characteristics of the device:
- Score. Read reviews on independent portals about this outlet. A large number of negative ones is a significant reason to turn to another seller, even if this market offers favorable conditions. It is also desirable that the store is not universal, but specializes in computers and components.
- Weight. Yes, such an unexpected characteristic. As practice shows, low-quality hard drives are usually suspiciously light. Perhaps the cunning manufacturer saved on installing the necessary components. Even such cases when the device was not even equipped with a cooling system are frequent! We advise you to take two discs of different price categories, manufacturers in your hands and thus determine their severity.
- Guarantee. Surprisingly, sometimes the manufacturer establishes a short warranty period on high-quality hard drives . On average, it is 6 months, less often - 12. What is the reason? A hard drive is one of the most “unreliable” components of a PC. It's all about the elements of the power supply: they quickly overheat, which is why they fail. And this immediately causes interference in the hard drive, contributes to its breakdown. In most cases, an extended warranty period is just an advertising gimmick to quickly sell out stale goods. Think about whether you need it: wait until the warranty component is replaced, without which it is impossible to use a computer.
Power Supply
The life of the hard drive in hours, of course, is difficult to determine. Even in years, this value can be represented only approximately.
Experts have long noticed: the speed of work, the life of the internal hard drive directly depends on the quality of the energy supplied to it. Accordingly, a trusted power supply must be installed in your computer.
Of course, many of us want to save money, especially on the market you can find a greater number of budget BP. But, as they say, avaricious pays twice. It has already been established that cheap power supplies fail after about a year of operation. According to the assurances of experienced users, the most poor-quality PSUs are NONAME. Remember that not only the operation of the hard drive, but also all other components of the system will depend on the power supply.
UPS use
How to increase the life of the hard drive? Experienced users are advised to use UPS - uninterruptible power supply. It helps to function not only the hard drive and power supply, but also to all components of the system as a whole.
Many users are confident in the wiring of their apartment, consider that they are insured against differences. But, as practice shows, in any case, you can’t completely get rid of power surges.
The cost of the UPS is relatively low - about 2000 rubles. However, such a waste will help you save important data on your hard drive, save other components of the PC from overheating.
Carrying out defragmentation of the hard drive
Working on a computer, we periodically have to delete, move, overwrite various elements. As a result, fragmented files remain on the hard drive. The fact is that the hard drive does not rewrite the information on its own, but uses the free space for part of the document, writes the rest further.
All this leads to the fact that in the future the magnetic head of the device has to work a couple of times more intensively to read the necessary information. And this leads to an early failure of the hard drive. How to avoid? By timely defragmentation of disk space.
You don’t need to “wise” for this - the corresponding Windows operating system already contains the corresponding utility. Using the program is easy:
- Go to "My Computer", find the necessary local (hard internal) drive.
- Right-click on its name.
- Go to the "Properties" section.
- Click on the "Service" tab.
- Now just click on the "Defragment" button. That's all. Try to repeat this procedure periodically.
If for some reason the standard program is not suitable for you, then you can pay attention to similar third-party products: Defraggler, Smart Defrag, O&O Defrag, Auslogics Disk Defrag, and so on.
Hard drive formatting
How to extend the life of your Seagate hard drives? Experienced "users" share another trick:
- Copy all the information stored on the internal hard drive to an external hard drive or other suitable drive in volume.
- Download and install Victoria on your computer.
- Use this application to perform low-level formatting.
- Download the data back to the cleaned hard drive.
This procedure is recommended to be repeated periodically in order to extend the life of the device. By the way, Victoria is also good at helping you diagnose the status of your internal hard drive.
Mechanical protection
Winchester, like other components of the computer, reacts rather painfully to all physical influences - tapping, shaking, shock, vibration and so on. The fact is that during operation certain parts spin in it, and such mechanical influences impede their functioning.
Simple advice from experts: try not to move the system unit of the PC, laptop while the device is functioning. Naturally, such a technique should be carefully protected from shock.
overheat protection
And the most serious recommendation: do not allow high temperatures of the hard drive! It is overheating that negatively affects both the performance of the device and its service life. Here, the wear of read heads and component mechanics will increase many times, which leads to failures and malfunctions.
The optimum temperature for the internal hard drive: 30-40 ° C. Maximum allowable heating for modern types of devices: 65 ° C.
You can control the temperature using a mass of utilities, paid and free, which are presented in virtual space. The most common - from HDDlife, AIDA.
Hard drive mechanical cleaning
How to extend the life of the device yet? Finally, we will share a method that is especially good for hard drives older than 3 years. This is an independent cleaning component. The method is suitable only for confident PC users. If you are new to this business, then the risk is high that you will disable the device.
We recommend sticking to the following algorithm:
- Open the system unit cover. Among other components, find the hard drive and carefully remove the hard drive from the connectors. It is best to carry out the procedure in thin gloves made of cotton fabric.
- Gently unscrew the back cover.
- The device board will appear before your eyes. Carefully inspect it for oxide and other minor contaminants.
- Take a regular stationery eraser (it is best to use a thin and small one on the tip of a pencil). Using these tools, carefully clean the oxide.
- Now you need a regular brush (for drawing or a special one for technology). She should brush away dust and traces from the eraser from the board.
- Next, it’s small: screw the lid, insert the component back, close the system unit. Preventative cleaning completed!
The service life of the hard drive (external, internal, solid state) is limited. On average, it is 5-10 years. However, today effective methods have been identified that can increase the life of this device. Many of them are available to inexperienced users.