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.

Photo taken from http://img.tomshardware.com

An external hard drive that can fit your pocket.

For all the Mac users (and also those who use PC), good news! Western Digital has indeed resurfaced again with their new product: the Western Digital My Passport Studio. It is an external hard drive and has the capacity of 320 GB. Those who are in the media business, this gadget’s for you. It is bus powered, Mac OSX ready, and is quiet during operation. Unlike the more common external hard drives that click or whine during operation, you can be assured that the Western Digital My Passport Studio isn’t one of them. It’s lightweight and measures only up to 2.5 inches, is can surely fit in your pocket as you travel on the road.

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

Deviating from the traditional act.

Have you ever downloaded movies off the internet? Or perhaps buy DVDs so that you can keep copies of the movies that made you laugh? Well, from now on, according to PortoMedia, a local media company from Ireland, you won’t be buying CDs with bulky cases or download a 600 – 700 MB movie, so that you can watch that hilarious movie again and again. PortoMedia made a stall or kiosk that can hold up to 5,000 movies in it. All you have to do is to insert your flash drive into the machine, enter the password you have acquired from the kiosk owner and voila! You can now download the video you’ve always wanted.

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

Formatting Hard Drive Myths part 5

It is true that formatting will eliminate the bad sectors and will be replace with good sector on the spare section that part of every hard disk. But the performance will suffer because the heads will seek on the spare section in replacements of bad sectors. Bad sectors are signs of bad hard disk. Basically, it means that there something wrong with the hard disk. Bad sectors create debris on the platter and can cause to damage the hard drive.

Additionally, spare sectors are limited on any hard drive. Then once the hard disk runs out of spare sectors, formatting can not replace those bad sectors.

Formatting Hard Drive Myths part 4

There is a myth that bad sectors can be repaired once it was reformatted. A bad sector is an area where the hard disk cannot be written nor read properly. It may due to program-related problems that result in a logical bad sector. Bad sectors that are software related can be restores by formatting using any logical repair utility.

But in case the problem is due to eroded media or the hardware is directly damaged. Such physical bad sectors can no longer be repaired using any logical repair utility and formatting it will not restore them. Formatting them, however, can replace those bad sectors with spare sectors.

Hard Drive Myths part 3

The truth is current design of hard disk’s head actuators are not power-driven by any motor. Previous design of the head actuators are actually powered by a stepper motor. But currently head actuators use the voice coil instrument that uses electromagnetic power to stir the heads. In short, head actuators don’t have a motor to fail and not powered by any mechanical motor.

In addition, take note that head actuators’ automatically when there are power cuts meaning it is not an active process. Head actuator uses spring to park itself. The spring retracts the actuators when the power is cut while it moved against the spring tension when active.

Hard Drive Myths part 2

Bad sectors of the hard disk will not cause by insufficient power of power cuts. The head actuators automatically park the heads on every occasion there is power cuts so that the platters won’t crashed to head actuators. There is no way that power cuts will cause your hard disk bad sectors but having a bad power supply can fail your hard drive because it will surge the circuit board of it and may fry the motor.

A cheap power supplies do not kill hard drive even slowly killing it. That is a myth. Like any other power supply, when it send and surge the hard disk the disk will be instantly kill.

Hard Drive Myths part 1

One sign of the hard disk’s calibration process is the spin-up and spin –down events. The hard disk recalibrates itself to balance the changes in temperature which is also adjusting the position of data on the platter surface and when the hard disk can not scan the data properly. As a result, if the hard disk recalibrates a lot it might be a symptom of a failing hard disk.

However, take note that there is hard disk that programmed to saves power. In order to saves power the hard disk spin down and when there’s work to be done that’s the time to spin-up again.

Formatting Hard Drive Myths part 3

Anytime bad sectors of the hard drive will suddenly appear whether you just plain using the hard drive or formatting it. The number of bad sectors is definitely will increase as the time goes by.

This myth has some truth in it though. After formatting bad sectors are probably noticeable. This happen because in formatting in formatting the hard drive utility looks for the “new”You will probably notice more bad sectors after formatting. Consequently bad sectors are already there and what happen was revealing them.

So, in a failing hard disk the number of the bad sectors will not increase when you format it. Bad sectors are being revealed in doing so.