Why hard disks fail
Basic HDD malfunctions
"What has caused my drive to stop working and why?"
Main Reasons:
Normal HDD ageing malfunctions:
"Nothing is eternal" – that expression applies also to hard disk drives. No matter
how reliable a HDD is, it is still degraded with time by destructive processes. a
drive is a mechanical and electronic device but all mechanical parts gradually wear
out. with time connections between mechanical parts become slack.
Numerous ascensions and descents of magnetic heads which occur during each start
and stop of magnetic disk rotation destroy the protective layer coating the heads.
Malfunctions resulting from incorrect mode of operation:
The most frequent cause of HDD malfunctions has to do exactly with incorrect manner
of their operation, its main destructive factors include: overheating, mechanical
impacts and voltage jumps of HDD power supply. It is very dangerous for drive mechanics;
that phenomenon is called thermal shock.
Thus if you bring a HDD during winter time from a store or from a friend (where
you had to read some necessary data) and it is frosty outside and 200 С inside,
then if you power-up the drive immediately it causes sudden local heating of separate
mechanical HDA parts, which may cause micro deformations of precise drive mechanics.
Such a drastic temperature drop is very harmful for electronic components, too.
Construction-related malfunctions:
Quality of HDDs has decreased lately; that fact is confirmed by reduction of warranty
period by many manufacturers.
To some extent it is caused by stiff competition between them and the resulting
race for production of cheap drives. It is also connected with growing technological
standards, a sort of a race for density increase and achievement of higher capacity
per disk.
As a consequence vendors frequently use in their HDDs solutions, materials and technologies,
which have not been thoroughly tested and verified; thus imperfect products appear
in the market and then in possession of end users. After some time manufacturers
analyze malfunctions of drives returned during their warranty period and attempt
to eliminate drawbacks in their construction, but those attempts are not always
successful.
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