Is it important to mount a harddrive?

  • Thread starter Thread starter george41407
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george41407

After my recent (temporary) hard drive failure, I was reading some
data recovery websites. One site mentioned extending a drives life by
defragging often, running scandisk and other utilities to check the
drive, etc. They also said that hard drives should always be screwed
to the case to dissipate heat, saying that the case absorbs the heat.
This makes some sense, but I have NEVER mounted a hard drive. They
always sit loose in my case because I am always swapping drives. I
never put the cover on the computer either. Is this mounting really
important? Would an external fan pointed at the drives help keep them
cool?

The article is from:
http://www.harddiskhome.com/quantum-hard-disk.html
Click on the link where it says something about the life of a drive.

(By the way, this is a useful and good site).

One other thing. I do defrag and run other utilities fairly
regularly, but dont programs like scandisk, (where it does a FULL
SCAN) just wear the drive out faster? It seems that running any
program that makes the heads keep moving for extended time would wear
out the drive faster than just normal use?????
Maybe I am wrong, but it just seems to make sense????

George
 
Would an external fan pointed at the drives help keep them cool?
Click to expand...

Yes. Some tower cases come with a hard drive rack in front of the
bottom intake fan. Makes perfect sense don't it?
 
John said:
Yes. Some tower cases come with a hard drive rack in front of the
bottom intake fan. Makes perfect sense don't it?
Click to expand...

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Weight: 160
 
In said:
After my recent (temporary) hard drive failure, I was reading some
data recovery websites. One site mentioned extending a drives life by
defragging often, running scandisk and other utilities to check the
drive, etc.
Click to expand...

Far better for that sort of thing would be getting a copy of Spinrite.
It's *designed* to run, check, and fix such problems.

Run it at least in quick scan mode every month or so; and in deep fix
mode about once or twice a year.

Spinrite though, is a *stand alone* program.
It doesn't work when Windows is running.
You have to load it separately (Usually from a boot-disk when you have
Win-XP or later) and let it run. Then you reboot to windows afterwards.

A GREAT program; but:
A. It's not free.
B. You can't run anything ELSE while it's going.
They also said that hard drives should always be screwed
to the case to dissipate heat, saying that the case absorbs the heat.
This makes some sense, but I have NEVER mounted a hard drive. They
always sit loose in my case because I am always swapping drives. I
never put the cover on the computer either. Is this mounting really
important? Would an external fan pointed at the drives help keep them
cool?
Click to expand...
If you're really swapping drives all the time, then far better would be
to get mounts designed for swapping drives. Costs a bit more; but would
save you considerable headache in the future.

Sadly, looking through Google, most drive-swap hardware these days is
made for SATA drives, not ATA. They *used* to have them all the time;
but I can't find any now with a quick search.

Still, even if you *don't* mount the drives properly, at the very
*least* you should put them in their bays (without using screws) so they
sit right, cables don't come loose, they get better air-circulation, and
aren't susceptible to being bumped or stuff like that.
The article is from:
http://www.harddiskhome.com/quantum-hard-disk.html
Click on the link where it says something about the life of a drive.

(By the way, this is a useful and good site).

One other thing. I do defrag and run other utilities fairly
regularly, but dont programs like scandisk, (where it does a FULL
SCAN) just wear the drive out faster?
Click to expand...

No. They actually improve the lifespan of the drive.
Spinrite does it better; but that's not freeware.
It seems that running any
program that makes the heads keep moving for extended time would wear
out the drive faster than just normal use?????
Maybe I am wrong, but it just seems to make sense????
Click to expand...
You're looking at it from the wrong viewpoint.
The drive is *always* running anyway.
Always spinning; and the heads are always flying over the surface.

What's *hard* on a drive is having the head sit spinning in the same
spot, never moving from a particular track for a long period of time.

Worse-yet is spinning the drive down and leaving the hot head sitting,
cooling in one spot on the platter ... but that's another problem.

It's a good idea to do long seeks clear across the drive every so often;
or after a while the drive might find it more difficult to reach the
normally unused parts of the drive. (Not normally a problem; but it
*does* happen sometimes.)

What's BEST for a drive's longevity is to do random seeks every so often
to various parts of the drive ... Not often enough to heat up the
seek-coils; but often enough so that all sections of the drive will have
the heads flying over them about every day or so.

AFAIK, I haven't heard of a program doing that, other than test programs
I wrote when working in the PA department at Seagate about 10 years ago.

*Some* drives actually have (or at least had) internal software to make
them do that if not accessed for a period of time. Of course, with
Windows poking around and looking at the drive every few seconds, such
an internal program would be pretty much defeated. You'd do better with
an external program.

One good idea would be to have Windows' Schedule set up SCANDISK to do a
full scan about every week or so on ALL of your drives, sometime at
night when you're not running stuff. More often would be better.
 
In message <[email protected]>
After my recent (temporary) hard drive failure, I was reading some
data recovery websites. One site mentioned extending a drives life by
defragging often, running scandisk and other utilities to check the
drive, etc. They also said that hard drives should always be screwed
to the case to dissipate heat, saying that the case absorbs the heat.
This makes some sense, but I have NEVER mounted a hard drive. They
always sit loose in my case because I am always swapping drives. I
never put the cover on the computer either. Is this mounting really
important? Would an external fan pointed at the drives help keep them
cool?
Click to expand...

As with all things, there is some debate. A mounted drive can
potentially heat the case, using the entire case as a heatsink. That
being said, none of my cases conduct heat that well, and the higher end
cases I have here all use silicone or rubber padding between the drive
and the case (Which dampens noise, but would prevent heat transfer)

With that in mind, I'd suggest not bothering mounting the drive for heat
purposes. If it runs hot, a fan isn't a bad idea, but most drives don't
run THAT hot.

As far as leaving the case off, that really depends on the case. With a
Antec P180 the measurable temperature within the case drops pretty
substantially with the case on (since this gets you proper airflow), but
for an average case, I don't think it makes much difference.
The article is from:
http://www.harddiskhome.com/quantum-hard-disk.html
Click on the link where it says something about the life of a drive.

(By the way, this is a useful and good site).

One other thing. I do defrag and run other utilities fairly
regularly, but dont programs like scandisk, (where it does a FULL
SCAN) just wear the drive out faster? It seems that running any
program that makes the heads keep moving for extended time would wear
out the drive faster than just normal use?????
Maybe I am wrong, but it just seems to make sense????
Click to expand...

As far as defragmenting, there is some debate -- The defragmenting
itself obviously causes some heavy load on the drive. However, longer
term it reduces seeking, so it may end up reducing overall drive load if
you defragment infrequently.
 
[email protected] said:
After my recent (temporary) hard drive failure, I was reading some
data recovery websites. One site mentioned extending a drives life by
defragging often, running scandisk and other utilities to check the
drive, etc. They also said that hard drives should always be screwed
to the case to dissipate heat, saying that the case absorbs the heat.
This makes some sense, but I have NEVER mounted a hard drive. They
always sit loose in my case because I am always swapping drives. I
never put the cover on the computer either. Is this mounting really
important? Would an external fan pointed at the drives help keep them
cool?
Click to expand...

Always bolt in the drive to its bay and allow for air space on top and
bottom for cooling. A fan blowing over the entire drive will help
cool it, but the case won't conduct any significant amount of heat,
not even if it's aluminum, because the contact area is too small to
matter.

I doubt defragmentation will help drive life, and it's better to test
a drive with its manufacturer's free diagnostics instead of Scandisk
or Chkdsk.
 
In message <[email protected]>
[email protected] said:
I doubt defragmentation will help drive life, and it's better to test
a drive with its manufacturer's free diagnostics instead of Scandisk
or Chkdsk.
Click to expand...

That depends on what you're testing, of course... For the drive, the
manufacturer is the way to go, obviously.

For the data, you won't beat chkdsk (on NT based OSes)
 
After my recent (temporary) hard drive failure, I was reading some
data recovery websites. One site mentioned extending a drives life by
defragging often, running scandisk and other utilities to check the
drive, etc. They also said that hard drives should always be screwed
to the case to dissipate heat, saying that the case absorbs the heat.
This makes some sense, but I have NEVER mounted a hard drive. They
always sit loose in my case because I am always swapping drives. I
never put the cover on the computer either. Is this mounting really
important? Would an external fan pointed at the drives help keep them
cool?

The article is from:
http://www.harddiskhome.com/quantum-hard-disk.html
Click on the link where it says something about the life of a drive.

(By the way, this is a useful and good site).

One other thing. I do defrag and run other utilities fairly
regularly, but dont programs like scandisk, (where it does a FULL
SCAN) just wear the drive out faster? It seems that running any
program that makes the heads keep moving for extended time would wear
out the drive faster than just normal use?????
Maybe I am wrong, but it just seems to make sense????

George
Click to expand...

My thoughts would tend towards vibration reduction during drive
operation from secure mounting, thus prolonging drive life.

Ari

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If you're really swapping drives all the time, then far better would be
to get mounts designed for swapping drives. Costs a bit more; but would
save you considerable headache in the future.
Click to expand...

I'd like that, but as you say next, where does one get them?????
Sadly, looking through Google, most drive-swap hardware these days is
made for SATA drives, not ATA. They *used* to have them all the time;
but I can't find any now with a quick search.
Click to expand...
Same here. It would probably be faster to make something than try to
buy them. Besides, I'd need a new case. I dont believe these
standard cases will fit those adaptors (if they can be found).
Still, even if you *don't* mount the drives properly, at the very
*least* you should put them in their bays (without using screws) so they
sit right, cables don't come loose, they get better air-circulation, and
aren't susceptible to being bumped or stuff like that.
Click to expand...

Once again, I need a new case. I only have 2 bays and generally run 3
or 4 drives at once. My CD drive is rarely plugged in because I need
all 4 drives as hard drives. Since my master HD crashed, I am keeping
a 3rd drive installed all the time, so I can backup everything on that
drive every few hours. Until the end of the month I can not afford
another HD so I just keep doing backups of important stuff and my
email. Worse yet, my case is so lousy I have to remove the CPU to use
the upper drive bay. I have only used that bay once. I just stack
the harddrives and place a piece of cardboard between them to
eliminate any possible shorts to their circuit boards.

I suppose thats not the best for cooling, but they have been this way
for months.
 
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