How many hours of life does a hard drive have, and what is its average life? Here are some tips on how to extend the life of a hard drive and your PC.
La average life of a hard disk it is not easily calculated. There are many parameters and different factors that can increase or decrease the hours of operation of a hard disk. There is no exact duration, but it also depends on how the storage medium is used and how it is maintained over the years.
The number of starts, the operating temperature, an unstabilized voltage and abrupt shutdowns are just some of the parameters that can compromise the health of a hard disk and files.
The hard disk is made up of mechanical parts and electronic parts, so over time different types of more or less serious failures can occur. Here are some tips that can help you improve life span of the hard disk, extending the hours of operation.
1. Use a UPS
Among the first causes of failure of a hard disk, or other parts of the computer, there are certainly power surges. The electrical network can have sudden variations, which can irreversibly damage some computer components, such as the motherboard, RAM and even the hard disk. In order to better stabilize the power supply of the PC, it is good to use an uninterruptible power supply which helps to avoid abrupt computer shutdowns caused by a sudden power failure.
With this device you can increase the hours of life of a hard disk, because you avoid any problems that the disk can suffer whenever there is a power failure.
2. Hours of work
If a hard drive is used for many hours a day with numerous cycles of writing and reading data, it is clear that it is the average life decreases of the support. Problems often arise in the first year of life or after several years of use. In the first case, that is, when damage is found in the first year, it is usually a factory problem. In the second case, however, there may be damage caused by the wear of the internal components.
3. Power on and off
One of the moments of greatest wear on the disc is when it starts up. For decrease wear it is recommended to avoid turning the support on and off several times.
4. Operating temperature
Another fundamental factor is the temperature of the hard disk. To increase the working hours and extend the life of the drive, it is important controllare even the temperatures reached inside the PC case. In case of too high temperatures, it is good to use more fans to dissipate the heat emitted.
5. Age of the device
If the hard drive is several years old, some problems may occur internal disc wear. For example, the disc can become demagnetized over time, bearings can lose their original fluidity and the remaining components can degrade.
So if you have been using a hard drive for many years, it is advisable to check its health and evaluate whether to replace it with a new drive.
Extend the hours of hard disk life: conclusions
Regardless of hard disk wear, it is always recommended make a backup data to prevent file loss. It is also possible to save data on the cloud, to always have them available online and to be able to access them from any PC.
If you have lost any important data that you want to recover, you can contact us for advice. Thanks to our skills we can attempt data recovery with the best technologies currently available in the data recovery sector.
