A hard disk’s performance becomes even more crucial when you are handling large amounts of data at one point in time such as work that is graphical in nature, or while working with databases. Imagine establishing your company’s database and having to wait for eternity just because your computer’s speed is slow. Not only will you lose out on your valuable business time, but it will also affect your productivity.

Therefore, the speed of the hard disk can be directly related to the speed with which you can get your work done without facing any system performance issues. A hard disk is, indeed, a technological wonder with components that are fragile and yet capable enough to give a strong boost to your system. The data is stored on circular platters and these platters are well protected so that no air or dust contamination can affect them. Each of these platters has a thin layer of magnetic film on them and data is stored in the form of binary digits i.e. 1’s and 0’s.

These binary digits represent different characters and when these characters are read back by the disk head, the data is processed and retrieved. A hard disk has user-friendly features such as a disk defragmenter that can increase the performance of your computer system. Since our data needs are ever increasing, we keep writing and deleting files regularly.

This constant activity leaves the disk in no specific order for the new files. Therefore, when you write a new file on your system, this file will get written in the gaps on the disk. Since a single file will get written on different parts of a disk, the disk will have to read different parts of the same file from different parts of the disk rather than reading it as a streamlined data. This activity is called fragmentation.

Disk fragmentation can significantly decrease the performance of your disk. Therefore, you should defragment the disk on a regular basis to ensure that the files get sorted out in a specific order and to make the disk perform faster. Hard disks can hold more than 100GB of data and portable hard disks are increasingly being used as a backup option. Hard disk manufacturers are trying to increase the capacity of a hard disk by increasing the aerial density of the hard disk. Industry experts predict that this density will increase by 40% each year. A hard disk is very delicate, comprising of various very tiny components that need to be handled very carefully.

As we have discussed earlier, a hard disk consists of circular platters. These platters are read by the read-write heads that are located above the surface of the disk on a thin air platform that is created by the speed of the platter’s rotation. This assembly has other frameworks that are equally precise and fragile. In addition, the speed with which this assembly rotates is very fast. Any disruption can cause the disk to undergo severe damage.

Therefore, if there has been some physical damage to the disk, you should never attempt to rectify the error yourself. Since a hard disk is very prone to air and dust contamination, a hard disk error can be looked into only in a clean room environment. Hard disk errors can be very critical and it would be best to have a data recovery specialist look into these errors to assess the extent of damage.

Some people try to engage in trial and error methods such as hitting, freezing, or heating the hard disk. It is important to understand that trying any such methods will only damage your data further. In some cases, where the physical damage becomes severe, the data might get lost forever. Let us analyse the nature of hard drive failures to understand these errors in a better manner.

Different Types of Hard Drive Failures

Electronic failures can destroy the controller board of the hard disk. These types of failures occur when there are power spikes or surges.

• hanical failures occur when an internal component of the hard disk becomes defective. The data on the hard disk becomes inaccessible due to the faulty component.


• ical errors can cause the hard drive to fail. Logical errors do not cause the hard disk any physical damage but can be difficult to rectify, nonetheless.


• d drives can undergo a firmware corruption. When the firmware of a hard disk becomes corrupted, the computer is not able to interact with the hard disk appropriately.

James Walsh is a freelance writer and copy editor. For more information on computer crime and Computer Forensics seehttp://www.fieldsassociates.co.uk