Hard Disk Failure

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Hard Disk failure is one big factor in loss of important data stored inside your computer. We lose at an average, 44 percent, of our data stored due to our hard disk’s malfunction. It is important to know that hard drives are mechanical equipments or hardwares. It is prone to wear and tear. It has a specified life cycle. If you use them correctly and with its normal operating conditions, you can fully utilize it. But if you abuse its use, usage can further be shortened. Here are some reasons why hard disk failure occurs;

Head Crash accounts for the majority of the percentage if hard disk failure.
Sudden Temperature can influence directly the occurrence of data loss
Electro Static Discharge during installation can lead to electrical failure

Adtron Hard Disks

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Solid state hard disks can now replace the rotating drives and parts that have comprised the hard disk market for the last decade. The latest technology in hard disk production is currently being used in a number of industrial and defense applications. Solid state provides the highest possible degree of performance and reliability. The moving parts of the ordinary IDE hard disks are virtually the weakest link of the entire medium because it is prone to tremendous strain and friction. The solid state hard disk is basically lightweight, it needs less power to run than the common 2.5″ and 3.5″ hard drives, and it has no acoustic signature. While the latest technology is enjoying great support from the market, it is not without its weak points too. The only major flaw that needs to be taken care of a solid state hard disk when used into the everyday stresses of computing, is its durability. Thats why, Adtron Hard Disks came up with their latest product release. The latest in solid state hard disk technology. It is capable of withstanding the strain of pressure. It offers exceptional write durability in I/O applications, it can sustain the best read and write rates without using up precious cache memory as a buffer of the host and media.

How Hard Disk Works

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Your hard drive has a number of magnetized platters. The spindle spins the platters at a very fast speed while a read/write head scans over them both looking for reading and writing information. The effectiveness of your hard drive depends on how much of its capacity remains unused, fragmentation and its data transfer rate, which in turn is dependent on its connection type and the drive’s spin rate. In buying a hard drive, you may want to compare the prices of say a 160GB drive against two 80 GB drives. The thing with 2 hard drives is that, If one drive fails all is not lost. Although today’s hard disks are durable pieces of hardware, so long as you do not abuse them, it can provide you a long time of hassle free data storage.

The IDE Hardisk

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Integrated Drive Electronics (IDE) hard disks have been around for quite a few years.  Prior to these drives, hard disks were interfaced to a PC motherboard via an extension board known as a hard disk controller.  The drive did most of the mechanical stuff and performed essential electronic/servo functions; the controller told it in detail what to do.  The development of the IDE hard moved most of the electronics and firmware (low-level software on a chip) from the controller to a printed circuit board on the drive itself.  In the process, a buffer/cache’ memory was added to the electronics to speed-up the process of reading and writing hard disk drive data.  The drive got “smarter.”  Overall costs went down and performance went up.
A much simpler board, usually identified as an IDE Controller, interfaced the IDE hard disk to the motherboard bus.  The term IDE Controller is a misnomer.  It is really nothing more than a bus interface and an interface and connector for the IDE cable going to the drive.  The actual controller is on the drive.  

A hard drive and media player in one?

Have you ever thought of bringing a portable video player on the road? Of course, you may think I might be talking about portable DVDs, but no. If you have a wide collection of movies at home, will you bring your CDs with you to your destination? Of course not! That would be too much of a hassle.

To the movie buffs, here’s a treat for you. Chinavasion is again trying to catch up with the big names in the hard drive industry as they have come up with a portable external hard drive that can be used a media player. The player has a 120GB capacity and a 2.5 inches wide screen for viewing. It also has an earphone jack, so you can basically bring it everywhere you go—even in places that value silence.

Photo taken from http://chinavasion.manufacturer.globalsources.com

Hard drive dock and more.

Look at your workplace. Have you ever wondered how you can get rid of all those wires hanging around? No, I am not saying that you must go wireless with all your things as you might spend a lot of money on buying new gadgets when in fact the old ones are still working. You just have to be a little organized about your home wiring system as this may cause a lot of accidents. But believe me, even if you decided not to go wireless, your workplace can still be as organized as you can imagine.

How about getting some of those docks made by Unitek? They are currently selling in the market a dock wherein a lot of computer gadgets can be connected. Aside from the 4 card reader slots and the 2 USB ports available, you can even insert an external hard drive in it.

Photo taken from http://usb.brando.com.hk

Going all the way in protecting your files.

If you have very important documents or files in your current hard drive, have you ever wondered how you can really “protect” your files from being destroyed? Of course, there are a lot of ways on how you can protect the files inside such as encrypting the drive with a password or buying one of those hard drives with fingerprint recognition. However, having these can only protect what’s on the inside. Have you ever thought of protecting the outside?

Sentry(R)Safe cared so much about protecting your precious files that they made a gadget that is both water and fire proof. The hard drive has a 160GB capacity and was given a lot of awards by some of the most known companies and critics in the world of technology.

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Fusion F2 is now 1TB.

Those who are in the media industry should definitely invest on hard drives since they store their creations in them. Hard drives with large capacities are also needed to store full length movie masterpieces or numerous video clips for later viewing or editing. Sonnet has hit the hearts of the media gurus, manufacturing a high quality, high capacity piece of gadget: their Fusion F2 portable RAID solution. It is light weight, weighing only about 1.22 pounds, and since the hard drive has a RAID capable, you won’t be needing a drive C, D, E, or F on your computer anymore; the Fusion F2 can pretty much store as much data as you can imagine.

Photo taken from http://www.pclaunches.com

Feeling a little unsecure?

If your business or job calls for secrecy, then you might want to store your documents in a safe place. Of course, our generation has already given up on manual storage and we let have let computers do this tedious task for us. However, there are some security risks when we store soft copies of our documents in a hard drive. First off, you must create backup copies of your documents. We will never know when your hard drive will fail you. Second, you might want to invest on hard drive security. Chinavasion has made a step towards this kind of security. They made a hard drive that can only be accessed with fingerprint recognition. The hard drive can recognize as much as 10 fingerprints, and so you can actually limit the access of your files. Fingerprint recognition can in fact be more secure than password encryption because hackers nowadays are becoming more ingenious.

Photo taken from http://www.portablegadget.com

How fast can your hard drive go?

Seagate, one of the pioneers in computer parts manufacturing, has again unleashed a monster hard drive that claims to be the fastest hard drive in the whole world. With a 15,000 rpm capability, consumes only about two thirds the power a typical hard drive consumes, and has a seek time of about 12% faster than the other hard drives in the market. No wonder Seagate claims that it’s the fastest—with all the features this gadget boasts of, indeed, no other hard drive can topple it. The Savvio 15K are available in two capacities, 36GB and 73GB. Though the storage capacity is smaller than the rest of the available hard drives, there seems to be a balance here since, well, it’s the fastest.

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