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If your computers are over six years old, the countdown has begun toward their demise, unless you or your IT support provider in Houston intervenes. But keep in mind that you’ll still need to think about acquiring new hardware. In the meantime, here are measures that your IT team can take to provide life support for your aging hardware.
Why Risk Increases the Older Hard Drives Get
Once your hard drives reach the six-year mark, you may start to notice inconsistencies in performance and slower response. If you don’t regularly back up your data, you run an even greater risk of losing all of it someday. Hard disk drives (HDDs), unlike solid-state drives (SSDs), operate with moving parts. These parts, especially the spinning disk, are more prone to wear and tear than an SSD. Both types of drives eventually wear out and become unreliable, then fail and die.
Endurance Ratings
One of the ways an IT support provider in Houston can analyze your drives for maximum durability is to check the endurance ratings of each drive. Endurance ratings give you the best indication as to how much longer your drives will last before they cease to function properly.
These values are measured in terabytes written (TBW) or drives written per day (DWPD). The TBW rating represents the maximum number of terabytes that can be written to a drive. Enterprise-level drives are more robust than consumer drives and have higher endurance ratings.
Steps to Extend Hard Drive Lifecycles
- Avoid turning your computer on and off every day
- Shut your computer down when it won’t be used for a few days
- Keep the computer stationary when in use
- Make sure the drives are free of vibrations
- Protect your computer from heat, sunlight, and dust
- Run fans near your drives and keep the room ventilated
- Use defragmentation sparingly
In the event it appears that your hard drive has died, it’s still possible to recover the data and even revive the drive. After a power surge, a drive may stop functioning properly from overheating, but your IT team may be able to save it by replacing the controller board or printed circuit board (PCB).
It’s always wise to back up all your files in case your hard drive fails. Working with skilled IT support technicians in Houston is a major key to staying on top of your infrastructure’s health. If you would like to know more about protecting, maintaining, or fixing your hardware, contact us now at ICS and we’ll answer your questions. We want to help your business survive and thrive by monitoring and managing your technology.
Further reading
ICS is a Texas-based 40-year-old technology company specializing in Managed IT, VoIP, Video Conferencing and Video Surveillance solutions for US and International businesses. ICS has over 4000 regional installations and specializes in multi-site businesses between 25 and 2500 employees. ICS’s customers enjoy the experience of ICS’s Total Care program which provides clients flat fee services with obsolescence and growth protection. Whether a customer elects to deploy their IT, Video Conferencing or VoIP in the cloud or on the customer’s premise, ICS can provide a full turn-key solution for our clients under one flat monthly fee.