HH Failure

[Magicb6076]

Hey,
Just a quick question....and probably a dumb one, but I was real curious to know something. I usually run my spyware and virus scanners once a week and do some computer maintenance. Are running these scans hard on the hard drives? Does running them on a weekly basis decrease the life of the HDD? Just a simple question that I wanted an answer to. Thanks everyone!

[FLG]

Nope, heres a good thread with a pretty good article about HDD failure.

http://forum.pcmech.com/showthread.p...ghlight=google

[john ranger]

They are working on a hard drive that has no moving parts. Will be out soon. It's like a flash memory card only huge. Will be good for ten years at least

http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,12...e.html?RSS=RSS


Flash based SSDs have several unique advantages:

Faster startup - Since no spin-up required.
Faster read time – In some cases, twice or more than that of the fastest hard drives.
Low read and write latency (seek) time, hundreds of times faster than a mechanical disk.
Faster boot and application launch time - Result of the faster read and especially seek time. But only if application already resides in flash and is more dependant on read speed than other issues, eg. OS bootup that detects devices will not be significantly sped up even with faster seeks & reads.
Lower power consumption and heat production - no mechanical parts result in less power consumption.
No noise - Lack of mechanical parts makes the SSD completely silent.
Better mechanical reliability - Lack of mechanical parts result in less wear and tear. High level of ability to endure extreme shock, vibration and temperatures, which apply to laptops and other mobile devices, or when transported.
Lower but improving read-write lifetime - In the past, flash based SSDs were limited in the number of read/write cycles, but modern flash technology and error correction allow Flash SSDs to operate several years without fail (some manufacturers claim as many as 10 years).[1]
Security - allowing a very quick "wipe" of all data stored.
Deterministic performance - unlike mechanical hard drives, performance of SSDs is constant and deterministic across the entire storage. "Seek" time is constant, and performance does not deteriorate as the media fills up (See: Fragmentation).
Lower weight and (depending upon type) size
Faster than conventional disks on random I/O
Flash based SSDs also have several disadvantages:

Price - As of late 2006 flash memory prices are still considerably higher per gigabyte than those of comparable conventional hard drives - around $25 per GB compared to about $0.25 for mechanical drives.
Slower write time - Flash has a slower write time than high-end hard drives (around 18 MB/s compared to over 50 MB/s for hard drives), though this varies considerably based on the make and model.
Shorter reliable lifetime - Flash based SSDs have relatively limited read/write cycles compared to hard drives which can last over a decade without mechanical malfunction. This is significant since in many systems, certain hard drive locations may regularly be accessed tens of thousands of times within even short periods.
Lower recoverability - After mechanical failure the data is completely lost as the cell is destroyed, while if normal HDD suffers mechanical failure the data is often recoverable using expert help.
Vulnerability against certain types of effects, including abrupt powerloss (especially DRAM based SSDs), magnetic fields and electric/static charges compared to normal HDDs (which store the data inside a Faraday cage).
Slower than conventional disks on sequential I/O

[Cricket]

Originally Posted by Magicb6076 Hey, Just a quick question....and probably a dumb one, but I was real curious to know something. I usually run my spyware and virus scanners once a week and do some computer maintenance. Are running these scans hard on the hard drives? Does running them on a weekly basis decrease the life of the HDD? Just a simple question that I wanted an answer to. Thanks everyone!

Any time the hard drive is running you're decreasing it's life span, but that's just how it is. I wouldn't worry about running scans and such as much as you want...a hard drive is gonna last as long as it's gonna last. And worrying about it will decrease your life span.

Originally Posted by john ranger They are working on a hard drive that has no moving parts. Will be out soon. It's like a flash memory card only huge. Will be good for ten years at least

It's about time. Can't wait to see how much it improves PC performance. Having a computer boot up almost instantaneously would be great.

Cricket