Expand Life Span of your External HDD

External hard drives are notorious for being delicate. Even dropping hard drive once could obliterate a user’s data. Users need to protect their hard drives and understand how to minimize the toll these devices take.

Some Instructions to protect and prolong External Hard Disk:

• Defragment regularly – Once a month is good practice, especially if there are frequent downloads from the internet, or files are always being archived in it. This allows the data to retain its integrity and the drive to remove fragmented pieces that could potentially corrupt other data.

• Keep the drive in a cool, stable environment – If the hard drive is not a portable passport drive, then it is better off resting in a location where it cannot be jostled, moved, or dropped for whatever reason. Keeping the area cool also prevents overheating and doing further damage to the hard drive. Investing in a solid hard-drive case that can protect it is also a good idea.

• Keep anything magnetized away – This is especially important if you have kids around. Magnets can do serious havoc on computers, even more on delicate hard drives, so do not risk the possibility of it falling onto your drive.

• Use a surge protector – Surge protectors are used to extend computer lifespan, so it’s only logical that it protects hard drives too. While some drives now only need to be plugged into the compute (plug-and-play, using power via USB), many external data vaults still need their own power source, and that means being plugged into a power socket. Any electric surge could damage the drive and end its life prematurely.

• Do not play with or manipulate files on your hard drive – Repeated access and modification to the data on the drive can shorten the lifespan of the drive owing to the repeated stress on the hardware and software when it indexes and accesses everything in the large drive. This can only be okay if your drive has the new Intel ThunderBolt option, which is a very high rate I/O option that will lessen the stress it would take to go through the files in a large drive.  Otherwise, don’t do it.

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