Originally Posted by
Paqman
The drives themselves handle that automatically. For example, if a drive detects that a write has failed due to a bad block, that block is automatically marked as bad, and a one from a pool of spares is brought into use to replace it. As another example, if you're using an SSD it will automatically keep track of how many writes each block has done, and allocate writes in a way that ensure the wear is evenly spread across the drive.
These are just examples, but they show that there's a lot going on behind the scenes on a hard drive. As far as you're concerned you don't need to worry about any of it until the integrated drive electronic alert you to something that the drive thinks is an issue. If you're interested then taking a look at the SMART data once in a while will tell you how the drive is doing.
You can't actually prevent a drive from going bad, they do have a finite life span. About the only thing you can do to imrpove reliability is make sure they're not subjected to excessive heat, cold, humidity, dust, shock or vibration. If you're at sea you might want to think about an SSD instead of a magnetic drive.
5 Cups of Ubuntu
Eschew gratuitous obfuscation
Adv Reply
Bookmarks