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Hard Disk
What is a Hard Disk?
A Hard Disk is the place where all the personal files, folders and operating system files are stored in; it consists of several physical cylinders (called Platters) with heads pointing on them (as shown in the picture below), the cylinders spins and the hears moving over them to perform the read/write operations, it’s life time around 3-4 years.
Note: The heads are not touching the surface of the cylinders hence there is a very small distance between the heads tips and the cylinders surfaces which called floating height or flying height of around micro millimeters and all those physical pieces are located inside a very clean environmental box. |
How to take care of my Hard Disks to extend their life time?
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The more time of usage the less life time, so in case if you don’t use the computer for a long time don’t leave it on but instead shut it down.
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(In case you have a PC) Don’t turn off the power from the main socket or take the main power cable out from the computer box (in case of a computer hang), instead keep on pressing the main power button (in front of the computer case) for 5 seconds then the computer will shut down automatically and safely.
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Prevent vibration and always handle your PC case or Laptop so smoothly.
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Don’t perform normal format but instead use the fast format always.
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Be sure to connect the power cable to a wall face plate socket that has a grounding connection port.
How can I know if my Hard Disk Drive is or about to be expired?
Whenever you’re sensing the symptoms described below where these points should be happening at the same period of time:
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Slow computer performance (not as usual and cannot be better even after formatting or after performing the 26 points on how to speed up your PC FREE e-book)
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You hear banging/scrapping sounds from your Hard Drive.
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Sometimes if you get messages from the System telling you that a bad sector found (for more important notes about bad sectors click here).
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Sometimes your computer start to hang (after checking your hardware performance and Windows files/drivers and after you solve all the problems it keeps on hanging)
| Note: If you are facing the same issues as mentioned above, be sure your Hard Disk Drive might stop working forever at any moment, so stop using the computer immediately and click here to read how to deal with Hard disk crash and how to retrieve back your important files from a crashed Hard Disk. |
Why my Hard Disk Storage size shows 74.48 GB while it supposed to be 80 GB?
Every body have the same question specially when someone purchase a new Hard Disk and after installing a new Microsoft Windows on it or perform the repartitioning, the Hard Disk total size will show less size than the one supposed to be.
Don’t panic its normal and no one has cheated you however to describe this for you I have to go through some technical details and mathematics:
As you know that the smallest storage size unit is 1 Bit, and 1 Byte consists of 8 Bits, so in computer world when we talk about storage sizes we cannot say for instance the 1 MB consists of 1000 KB because this is a common mistake, the correct thing is that the 1 MB consist of 1024 KB, and 1 GB consist of 1024 MB, and 1 TB consists of 1024 GB.
So to show you the reason why it seems less size that what it should be, see the below example:
My Hard Disk is 80 GB but when I add the partitions sizes it shows me 74.48 GB, so to prove that it’s the same size but represented in different way we have to follow the below steps:
- Divide 80GB by 1024 to get the size in KB:
| Note: 80 GB is 80’000’000’000 Bit |
80’000’000’000 Bit / 1024 = 78’125.000 KB
- Divide the result by 1024 again to get the result in MB:
78’125.000 KB / 1024 = 76’293.9453125 MB
- Divide the result by 1024 again to get it in GB:
76’293.9453125 MB / 1024 = 74.5 GB
This is ≈ 74.48 GB
| Note: The result is 74.5 GB while the mathematical result is 74.48 GB that because the practical results never match the mathematical ones, hence while the result of the division is the same that means the physical size on Disk which is 74.5 GB is correct and it represent the same size of 80GB. |
