Computer maintenance: the health status of your hard drive.

Maintaining the good condition of your hard drive is important not to lose the data stored in it, and we have already talked about the hard records in the post called " recommendations for computer maintenance and extend your life ." But this time we are going to focus more on hard drives or Hard Disk Drive (HDD).

Types of hard drives

First of all, to know how to perform computer maintenance on our hard drive, we must know what type of hard drive we have installed on our personal computer. Guys:

· Parallel Advanced Technology Attachment (Pata)

Being the first hard drives installed in old domestic computers you will recognize them because you must connect the IDE or EIDE data interface on the one hand and the electricity interface on the other. In addition to the fact that the data interface has a maximum of 40 holes to introduce it in the hard drive and 4 legs for power supply.

The transmission speed varies from its first version that reaches 8MB/s speeds to its latest version that arrives 166 mb/s.

· Serial at (SATA)

They are the ones that are currently installed in our laptops or computers. These hard drives will recognize them because their connection of both data and power supply is smaller and in the same way, although it varies in width. The smallest is for the power and the widest is for the data. We can see these hard drives in two sizes, 2.5 '' and 3.5 '' Normally the former are for laptops or mini computers and the second for towers, servers or NAS devices (storage connected in network). The speeds we can find are 1.5 GB/s, 3 GB/Sy 6 GB/s.

· Small computer system interface (SCSI)

These types of hard drives may not have seen it if you are a domestic user, but if you have worked on a large company that has servers in your basement and you are a computer scientist you may have seen this type of hard drives.

You will distinguish them because they need the SCSI interface, although they currently use the ATTECHED SCSI (SAS) serial interface the new server hard drives.

· Solid state units (SSD)

With SATA interface and carrying inside a flash unit instead of magnetic dishes or discs such as the previous ones, it is the best selling by domestic users.

The great advantage of these hard drives is their speed of both reading and writing. For example, a SAMSUNG 860 EVO BASIC 250GB reaches reading speeds of 550 MB/Sy Writing 520 Mb/s with 6 GBIT/S data transfer speed

Before continuing with computer maintenance, we must explain the types of SSDs that are currently being demanded more for gamers and graphic designers. The previous SSD are SATA, while the ones we are going to call now is the PCIE SDD, and depending on the factor of M.2 2242, m.2 2260, m.2 2280 and m.2 22110 and according to connection B Key, M Key, B+M Key.

The first thing you should know is that these SDDs are like a RAM card, but connects on the shortest side.

We have talked before the form factor, but it is not so complicated to understand. We take as an example the M.2 2242. If we put the eyelashes looking towards us the first two numbers is wide while the next two is the height.

Regarding the connection form is also simple. In the same provision, you will see, depending on the type of PCIE SSD, two or a hole. If you have a hole you will have two rows, where the smallest has 6 contacts (B Key) or you may have 5 contacts (M Key). However, you may have 2 hollows, in this case it is the combination of the two.

If you have passed through here to know what type of hard drive buy or what is the best SDD , first of all, read the manual of your motherboard to know what type of SSD allows your computer.

Health status of your hard drive

To perform computer maintenance of your hard drive and being clear what type of hard drive we will see the types of errors and solutions you can obtain.

Surely you are many times the “examine and repair” window and that is that this type of message is normal when Windows has found an error in the unimportant album. With just doing the process, that window will not come out anymore.

Defragment the hard drive: sometimes if we work with a lot of information, it is necessary to perform this process, since the information stored on the hard drive is not correlatively recorded on the disc. Therefore, defragmentation makes the information become as together as possible so that the reading speed is more agile. Attentive, because on the SSD discs it is not necessary to defragment the hard drive.

The information is saved in sectors and these sectors may be defective and your information has been lost, therefore, it is necessary to perform a hard disk analysis in search of defective sectors in case the thing goes to adults. These tools to analyze your hard drive are Crystaldiskinfo, Hard Disk Validator, HDDSCAN, Easis Drive Check, HD Tune, Diskcheckup, Acronis Drive Monitor, HDD Health ...

What happens if you don't start the hard drive? If it is of SATA, Pata or IDE you must be attentive to the noise it makes. If you listen like a lazy blow and go out and listen to the blow again, as much as possible the hard disk head is broken. If your hard drive works correctly, it can be for many causes, in these cases you can call Gowtech and we will answer you.

If your operating system does not start at all, you may have a virus, malware or ransomware on your hard disk, in these cases a computer expert should be seen to know the gravity grade, but if you want to fix it on your own, you must create Windows starting disk or other operating system to analyze the hard drive data in search of virus.

Another possibility is that the data of the operating system or the partitions of your hard disk are damaged, in these cases it is sure that you have to format, but if you want to try, you can create a USB or CD/DVD with a distribution of your operating system and give it to repair from the menu that offers you that distribution.

If you work in an environment with high temperatures or with high voltage peaks and your hard drive does not respond, you have a problem, it is sure that the printed circuit of the hard drive has been spoiled.

If you need help with computer maintenance of your hard drive or have a problem with him, do not hesitate to call Gowtech, our computer systems team can help you format your computer or solve hard disk problems.