What actually spoils a HARD DRIVE of a PC,CD-DRIVE.

hi ,
is it true that by formating a hard drive weekly or monthly will create bad sectors in it,or by copying .mpg files and deleting it once in a week .
also when a CD drive stops reading a CD people say its LENSE has got weak, does this happen actually .
thanking u for ur time and consideration.

Hello snabilat,

I've been playing with PC HD's since 10MB sizes were top of the range. I've even manually (with a hex editor) formatted such HD's years ago to increase their capacity...

Modern HD problems come about by:

1. Mechanical abuse (knocks) causing heads to hit surface (damages head and surface)
2. Overheating causing mechanical stress and electronics damage
3. Poor/faulty electrical/mechanical construction
4. Poor disk surface coating (might flake off, made worse by overheating)
5. Mechanical wear due to normal use/life expectancy of coatings etc

Formatting, copying and deleting files, any ordinary use of a HD will not in itself cause bad sectors.

The more a HD is used, the more quickly it will just wear out (bearings go sloppy or sticky and out of tolerance etc). This includes repeatedly formatting, reading, writing etc.

Bad sectors are nearly always caused by mechanical shocks to the HD while it is in use. Sometimes by a poor coating on the platters or severe overheating. Not by normal use.

The only way using a HD normally could cause bad sectors is if changing the magnetism of the surface particles causes some form of wear - I have never heard of this and very much doubt it.

There are programs that claim to recover bad sectors and make them usable - they have never recovered a single sector for me!

I have seen occasions where a filing system (NTFS) has made such a corrupted mess of the HD that the drive is not recognizable to Windows, and won't even let the PC boot from it! A full wipe and format with a data recovery program fixes this - it's not a physical error - just a data one - but an error that probably puts a lot of HD's in the rubbish bin needlessly.


As to CD-ROM's, the only thing that may happen to the lens is dirt/age/heat may cause it to become a little opaque, especially if it is plastic. Careful cleaning (with a cotton bud and isopropanol, NOT an abrasive scrubbing CD!) helps here.

Dust gets sucked in through the front of a CD drawer, pulled by the PSU fan. This dust gets lodged all over the mechanics - a good, careful clean with IPA and compressed air often helps a struggling CD-ROM.

You may also hear about lasers getting weak. Maybe, but they have a feedback mechanism to control their power, so this is only a problem with *really* old units or ones with sub-standard lasers/faulty electronics. There is often a potentiometer to adjust laser drive, but increasing this is a last resort and will likely shorten the life of a unit - if it gives an otherwise dying unit a few more months though, why not?

The focus mechanism can also cause problems due to component aging and dirt. There is often a potentiometer to adjust focus/tracking.

Hope this helps.

FoxyRick.

Sometimes, and only sometimes, try to use ISOBuster do SAVAGE files from a unreadable CD ! UNLESS THAT'S THE DRIVE THAT CAUSE PROBLEM.

I have found that the number one cause of Hard Drive Failures are Disk errors caused by power drops...
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Did you know that a surge suppressor will only protect your computer from 20% of the power related problems?
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The power grid may spike to 200V or 600V only once per 2-hours, but power momentarily drops out over twelve times an hour. Really, those slight flikers in your incandescent lights may well be power drop outs.
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How to you really protect your hard drives and computer? With a cheap and simple UPS. A UPS will smooth out the power drops and absorb the even less frequent power surges. Every time there is a 1ooms or even a 20ms power drop durring a hard drive read/write cycle you may be injecting a bad sector or other permanent damage to your drive.
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We have five networked servers that have been up and running with a UPS for over 10-years. Granted, three of the servers have been taken down and upgraded (not because they had problems - the clients asked for the upgrades) - but they have been running trouble free for over ten years!!!
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We are talking about servers that are interconnected with Fiber Networking and connected Directly to the Metro SONNET Fiber Network (a network that was installed over 30-years ago in the Streets). The network that the phone company uses to interconnect their central offices.
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So take my advice. Go out and buy a $99.00 small UPS and get rid of that snake oil power surge suppressor.
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Dave

Dont you see the thread date before you post your reply to thread. If not make it a habit not to open very old threads.