The physical drives in your PC need to be maintained and cleaned. Most people don’t ever worry about it and get
along fine. Usually, though, this is because these drives are not used too often.
Hard Drive
The hard drive is a self-contained unit that you will never open up, so the thing to ensure is the external
environment. Make sure the hard drive is dust free. Make sure it has plenty of breathing room and is not wedged
in between two other drives in the case. Hard drives produce heat as platters spin and that heat needs to be
dissipated. Check the screws that hold the drive in. Sometimes, drive vibration can, over time, cause these
screws to become loose. Just re-tighten them.
Floppy Drive
Hard drives are sealed to the outside environment, so you do not have to worry about the innards. But, the
floppy drive is open to the world and thus the read/write heads and other components can become dirty. Dust can
make its way inside, but also residue from the disk media can, over time, become built up on the heads. A good
way to clean the heads is to use alcohol to clean the read/write heads. You can also take a vaccum with an
attachment and gently vaccum out the inside of the drive. This can be done right through the slot so you do not
have to take the drive apart. An easier way to clean the heads is to get yourself a floppy drive cleaner kit.
Following the directions, you can clean the heads by simply inserting the cleaning disk.
I should alo mention drive alignment. Over time, the alignment of the floppy drive internals can drift and thus
make it difficult to read disk media. The first thing you would notice is that reading disks from other PC’s
will be rough. It could eventually lose the ability to read its own disks. While back in the day it was worth
it to align drives and pay the labor to do it, floppy drive today are very cheap and it is thus easier to just
toss the drive and replace it with a new one.
CD-ROM
CD-ROMS are, by design, not as sensitive to dust as floppies. In floppy drives, the heads actually contact the
disk media. In a CD-ROM, a light laser is used to read the CD, so no actual contact takes place. Most of the
time, a CD-ROM can go quite awhile without ever cleaning the lens inside. But, if you wish to do it, the best
thing to do is purchase a lens cleaning kit and follow the instructions.
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