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It’s Cool To Be Cool, Especially If You Are A Hard Drive

July 23, 2013

Keeping cool can be an important skill in life. You can be working out or working at your computer, but either way you want to keep cool. Hard drives these days have gotten smaller and smaller while simultaneously going faster and faster with a larger data storage capacity. A computer’s hard drive is arguably the most core element in a computer. It is very important to keep it cool. Here’s why:

1. Drive Damage and Failure

There are a myriad of things that can cause a hard drive to overheat. If it doesn’t have proper ventilation or is clogged with dust and dirt, there’s a pretty high probability it will overheat. Reading or writing a large amount of data without having a break can also overheat it. Whatever the reason is, if the hard drive overheats it can greatly damage the mechanical and electrical components inside of it. Once your hard drive crashes, the only resurrection that it is likely to get is a brief one for data recovery. Failed drives must be replaced, not fixed. It can be a pain to find the right drive to match your computer, or one that you want to pay for. So, if you want to save the hassle of buying a new hard drive and securely disposing of another drive, keep your hard drive cool!

2. Drive Data Corruption

Bricking a hard drive is the last thing you want to happen, but it’s only slightly worse than data loss or corruption. There are a hundred different combinations of bad consequences when a hard disk overheats. Many of them involve the corruption of data, so that it is misplaced, inaccessible, or completely deleted. So, whether you have important company files to protect or you don’t want to see all your family photos disappear, keep your hard drive cool.

3. Damaging a Delicate CPU

When a hard disk overheats it can get as hot as 170°F. I think we can all agree that is way too hot. That is hot enough to burn a person, and it’s certainly hot enough to damage a computer. If the hard drive in a computer, more specifically a laptop, overheats it will also head up the rest of the electrical components, like the CPU. The hard drive and CPU are like the heart and brain of the computer. If one or both are down, it’s bad news for you. To save your CPU, keep your hard drive cool.

4. Drive Longevity

 Just like human health, computer health must be maintained. If you want your computer to last a long time, you must give it a lot of TLC. Part of that TLC is cleaning it and cooling it. That means cleaning the dust out of the interior, but it also means cleaning up your files. Organized drives run better. Graph out your hard drive to see how many things are out of place, and get a maintenance schedule going.  If you want your drive to survive to a ripe old age, keep it clean —keep it cool.