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there are no excuses for this the dog ate my homework wasn't good enough 20

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years ago and my hard drive died isn't good enough now how does it make any

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sense that we still trust spinning metal discs to hold our vacation photos and

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videos our homework and our precious game saves this stuff's important and

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hard drives they die all the time can you even tell how close your hard drive

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is to kicking the can well what if i told you that there were several ways to

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know ahead of time i'll tell you where to look and how to interpret it right

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below it's an unfortunate inevitability that once a hard drive comes off the

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assembly line it'll never be as good again before you even open up the box it

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came in and regardless of how much you baby your system once it's installed

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your shiny new hard drive has already started down the path to failure

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especially if it showed off loosely packed or without any kind of padding

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and when they do eventually fail the sting is just a little bit sharper than

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any other component by far the easiest and cheapest way most of us can use to

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gauge the health of a hard drive is sound so let's start there it helps to

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have fans or any other source of noise unplugged but you can even do this

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without an operating system in fact it's easiest to do this in the BIOS where

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nothing is being used hit that power button mash the BIOS key and it's time

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to play doctor no stethoscope required

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you're listening for anything out of the ordinary after hitting the power button

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you'll hear the motor spin up and the drive perform a short self-test in the

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BIOS a gentle hum is typical but there's

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a range of acceptable noises you can expect if a drive has been sitting

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inactive as a cold spear for example being in close enough proximity to a

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source of vibration over a long period of time will alter the way it sounds

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when spinning anything a little higher pitched or whiny though and especially

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any clicking or grinding noise when the drive is sitting there doing nothing

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that is cause for concern the only acceptable time for a hard drive to make

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noise like that is if you are intentionally making them do it if you

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do hear something concerning and want to investigate further good news audio cues

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aren't the only free sign you might be dealing with a failing hard drive they

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can tell you themselves but only if you know how to ask smart is a feature

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that's been included in virtually every hard drive since the introduction of the

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ata 3 standard it longs a whole host of facts about the drive most crucially a

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simple good or no good status and the number of power on ours the one thing

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smart can't tell you is where to get the ShortCircuit hoodie only i can do that

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ltdstore.com there are a number of different ways you can check in on your

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smart data if you're in a situation where you don't have a connection to the

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internet the power of the command prompt has you covered you won't get the same

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level of detail as a dedicated program but this command will now put a simple

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one-word answer that you can use in a pinch to determine if you want to

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continue using that drive the other tool that you have access to within Windows

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and entirely offline is the event viewer as the drive ages read and write errors

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become more commonplace and Windows will keep along of each occurrence one or two

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of these warnings on their own is a fairly benign thing the big red flag

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that you really don't want to see in the event viewer will be reallocated sectors

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if you see any of these you might want to investigate further or monitor more

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frequently because if the count is increasing with any regularity that's a

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sign the drive is failing if you're looking for a little more detail about

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your drive you're going to need some software crystal disk info generally

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gets the spotlight for being free and user friendly but you can also consider

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victoria hard disk sentinel or hd tune most of these can run the integrated

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smart self tests but those last two also have a paid pro version that give access

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to benchmarking and detailed error scanning should you want to take a more

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in-depth look at the health of the drive speaking of in-depth looks if you want

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to take a peek behind the scenes at the LMG offices we've got an exclusive up on

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Floatplane right now these programs will show you the full depth of smart

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parameters and helpfully turn the one-word answer we saw on the command

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prompt into a percentage figure which you can sort of think of as a percentage

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of drive life remaining relevant stuff like power on count and hours are listed

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and so are the read and seek error rates and the reallocated sectors count we saw

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in the event viewers here too you could also generally use these tools on an SSD

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but the indicators of a failing SSD are very different to those of a failing

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hard drive so your mileage may vary there this is for hard drives today

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let's say you have a bit of a fascination with the more macabre side of life want to watch

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your hard drive dial a little bit inside in real time

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you can do that with hd tune the benchmark included in the free version

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is only for read bandwidth but it can still tell you a fair bit once the

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benchmark is underway any source of vibration on the drive under load will

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result in increased latency during read operations loud music a high RPM fan or

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even other nearby drives are all enough to cause read times to increase this is

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why dedicated nas drives exist the last programs i'll mention here are specific

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to each hard drive manufacturer unless you want to update the firmware though

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don't feel pressured to use only the program made by your drive manufacturer

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any of them will be capable of performing the basic maintenance tasks

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there is one thing that all the tools you have at your disposal for monitoring

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drive health have in common though you need to be paying attention just like

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how expecting a person to remember to perform backups manually is an

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unreliable solution at best so too is not checking in on your drives

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occasionally so configure those backups to run automatically and keep your

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monitoring program of choice installed maybe set a reminder to let you know

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that it's time to check in now that you've got a toolbox that you can use to check on the health of your hard drives

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let's talk about used drives like this

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20 terabyte exos enterprise x20 from seagate which you may have seen take a

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tumble recently we'll have a link to it and other similar drives down below new

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ones though never dropped unless people want that would people want that

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you've probably read the advice online recommending you to stay far away from

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used drives but in reality it's a much more gray area

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than you might think and there are plenty of reasons why you might want to

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consider picking one up sometimes you just need something anything it just

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works regardless of speed or capacity in that case where the heck are you gonna

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find a drive for five dollars or if you're just starting your voyage down

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the rabbit hole of data hoarding how about paying half the price per Gigabyte

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compared to new it's a pretty compelling offer as with any purchase of used

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products though you do owe it to yourself to insist on

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seeing it in action before handing over any cash in this case first check to see

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that the disk is detected in the BIOS and the operating system and then run

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your choice of software to check in on that smart data the comfort level for

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something like the reallocated sector count will vary from person to person

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and drive to drive for some even one is too much while others are happy with

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anything under 30. every hard drive comes from the factory with reserved

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blocks to handle reallocated sectors so it's a

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smart idea to check how many are remaining before proceeding if the

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seller is patient there's no harm in going as far as politely asking them to

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run an error scan too try to ask ahead of time so that the test is complete by

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the time you arrive though instead of you know awkwardly standing around in a

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stranger's home waiting for it to hit 100 lastly i keep referring to this because

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it is the right way to do things but frankly i would trust three used hard

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drives following a three two one backup plan much more than i would trust a

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single brand new hard drive you should have three copies of your data on two

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different media types and one of those should be off-site to be truly safe so

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let's say it's too late and the worst case scenario has already occurred

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complete drive failure press f

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to pay respects even with careful monitoring

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some drives will not at all say anything until they are

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moments from death thankfully recovery from an event like this has been made

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much simpler than it used to be until recently your only option would have

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been to take the drive to a data recovery specialist or if you were lucky

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and had a fridge nearby you might be able to do it yourself with

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a half working drive but now if your data is in the cloud then good news it

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hasn't gone anywhere once you log in again you'll find your cloud compatible

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game saves and all your settings will be untouched and any bookmarks you had will

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still be there too as long as you didn't have all your passwords saved on that

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same hard drive if you've gone through it once

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you probably know that you never want to do it again so keep your ears open and

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an eye on the drive monitoring software of your choice and you should be able to

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avoid that situation from repeating itself trust me guys

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hard drive failure sucks unlike our sponsor

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level of authenticity and details for their speed armor firepower and model

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are as close to real life as possible without compromising on gameplay it's

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still a game guys their damage models are realistic and dynamic at adding a

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huge amount of depth that's rarely matched by other free-to-play games so

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you're looking for something else to watch our tour of a professional data

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recovery center was really fascinating that was a lot of fun