Keeping hard drives healthy

[Buttman]

OK so I know I should run defrag and scandisk every now and then.

But what else can I do?
I have had a great deal of drives dying on me and want to start treating them better for a longer relationship.

Is there a good program that monitors disk health as well as has functions of defrag and scan?

[nervous systems]

replace the drives everynow and again and make sure they dont get too hot.

there a program called hdd health that monitors the hdd but its very limited

[Barely Human]

Ok, for one, buy good drives, this will really help big time. If you want to stop them from failing due to mechanical error, dont shut your computer down, spinning a cold drive up all the time causes more damage then any other time, just like starting your car, the most damage happens within the first 2 mins.

To keep your drives running fast, have 2. Have one for windows and programs, and the other for storage. This will keep your general system speed a lot faster. Keep your file sytem neat. Dont fill your drives, leave at least 10% - 15% free. Run a decent defragmenting program often, i reccomend Executive Softwares Diskeeper - You can also set this up to run itself at a certain time every day. Most importantly, back up, if you don't then its your own fault for loosing stuff, and make sure you have the lastest malware and virus protection, dont go trawling crack sites, this is the best way to corrupt your filetable. Oh, and if you smoke, dont do it round your computer.

[Buttman]

Thanks mates will do it!

[Siege]

Oh, and if you smoke, dont do it round your computer.[/QUOTE]

Shit....ive done a fair bit of that......no problems as of yet

[dan the acid man]

Oh, and if you smoke, dont do it round your computer.

Shit....ive done a fair bit of that......no problems as of yet[/QUOTE]

but you will have alot more dust and horrible residue building up on the components inside your pc

[Siege]

yeah,il be putting a stop to that