How to Understand and Maintain a Hard Drive

Hello! My name is Jason and today I am going to be teaching you all about what a hard drive is, how it works, and how to keep your hard drive functional for as long as possible.

Step 1: Understanding What a Hard Drive Is.

In order to begin you must fully understand what a hard drive is and how it works. A hard drive is a piece of technology that is used for storing information. Most computers today use hard drives as their primary storage bank. The reason that the hard drive is able to work is because of the mechanisms that are happening on the inside. Inside the hard drive there are several silver platters that that have the data written on them. The Spindle is in the center of the platters because it is what the platter uses to rotate. The Read/Write Head is the arm that slides across the platters to read and write new information. The Actuator Arm is the arm that is holding the read/write head. The Actuator Axis is the point where the Actuator Arm pivots. The Actuator is the motor that will actually move the Actuator Arm. There are several Ribbon Cables in the hard drive and they actually transfer the data from the platters to the rest of the PC and vice versa. The Main PCB is the printed circuit board that has all of the data and programs to run the hard drive. Without this the platters will not even spin.

Step 2: Understanding How to Take Care of a Hard Drive.

In order for your data to be safe you must make sure that you are taking care of your hard drive. Proper ways to make sure that your hard drive will last as long as possible is by making sure that your hard drive is screwed into your PC. This will help prevent unwanted movement and there will be a smaller chance of it breaking. You should also be extremely careful while transporting your hard drive. If you happen to drop it then there is a chance that you hard drive will no longer function and you will lose your data. To avoid this you should wrap the hard drive in the original packaging to help cushion the fall. Then you should always use two hands when handling you hard drive. In order to keep prevent data loss you should also have an antivirus program set up. The antivirus program will prevent viruses from making your Computer to slow to function or locking you out of your data entirely.

Step 3: Diagnosing, Troubleshooting, and Repairing.

If there happens to be a failure in you computer then you have to know what to do to help solve the problem. In order to know if there is a problem with your hard drive you must turn on your computer to see any symptoms. Depending on the systems you will use your background knowledge or use any knowledge provided to you by me to help solve the issue. If you turn on your computer and a message displays saying that you need to insert a proper boot device, that means that there is an issue with your hard drive. Some of the most common issues with your hard drive are unplugged sata cable, faulty sata cable faulty sata port on the motherboard, or faulty hard drive. You should always start with the most simple thing and check that your hard drive is actually plugged in. If it is plugged in then there may be an issue with the sata cable. Replace the sata cable. If replacing the sata cable does not work then you should use try plugging the sata cable into a different port on the motherboard. Last case scenario you should look into replacing the hard drive because it could have been damaged. Please follow along on my process in the provided video.