Is My Hard Drive About to Go Bad?

Tech Geek — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 01:57:58 +0000

There is almost no task that is as stressful or anxiety producing as going through a hard drive crash recovery. A hard drive malfunction is stressful because years’ worth of work or thousands of pictures could vanish in an instant. A loss of data could also represent a significant financial loss or a difficult legal situation if you happen to lose documents that are required for some future court case. Fortunately, there are some simple things that you can do to prevent having the need to recover lost data in the first place.

One of the major components of most hard drives is one or more flat metal discs which are referred to as platters. These platters rotate on a spindle that spins at a very high rate, as high as 15,000 RPMs. The spindle motor relies on ball bearings to minimize the friction that occurs when the platters rotate. Although these ball bearings are designed to endure considerable wear and tear, they will eventually wear out and fail. Once one or more ball bearings have failed the increased amount of friction will heat up the spindle shaft. If the spindle shaft is exposed to enough heat, it will cause the spindle motor to seize and fail. Generally, ball bearings that are beginning to fail will give you audible clues about what is going on inside your drive. The sound could be a grinding or clicking noise.

If your drive has just started to make some unusual noises, you should transfer your data to a new hard drive as soon as possible. In fact, it makes sense to shut down your computer until you are ready to do the transfer. This will minimize any additional wear that would otherwise take place. If all goes well and you noticed the problem in time, you just saved yourself a major headache.

How to use USB Data Recovery Software

Tech Geek — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 17:42:23 +0000

As the years continue to go by, stuff that use to be large, bulky, and expensive in technology has become much smaller, much cheaper, and able to hold a lot more. This is exemplified by the USB flash drive or thumb drive. Whereas just over a decade ago, people had 2GB, 4GB, and 8GB hard drives in their computer, you can now carry a small little USB drive of the same size or even larger on your key chain or in your pocket. This has allowed people to be able to transfer large bits of information and files without having to sue floppy disks or even burned CD. While this portability is definitely nice, USB drives can be susceptible to corruption or damage. If you have important files on there, then you don’t want to lose those files for good, and hopefully you can recover them.

This is where data recovery software comes in. Each different type of software is different depending on the company who made it, but they are all fairly similar, but this is how usb data recovery software works. Depending on what operating system you are using Mac or PC, the software will look generally like your system’s file browsing software. You’ll load up your USB drive, and it will scan your USB drive to see what it is able to recovery. Then, it will show you a list of files that it is fairly certain that it can recover. Most companies offer their software for free, so that you can scan your USB drive and see what you can recover before paying for the program. But, to actually do any recovering of files, you’ll have to pay.

Then, it will ask you to choose a place on your computer to recover the files, and it will begin to recover those files. Once it is done, you’ll be able to reformat your USB drive, and then move those recovered files back onto the USB drive (or a new one if it is too damaged).

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Is My Hard Drive About to Go Bad?

How to use USB Data Recovery Software