There are certain things in America we take for granted. One of those paradigms is that usually we can fix a problem quickly and relatively inexpensively. But right now there is a unique problem in the world that has already impacted computer owners, Mac and PC, and is going to continue to impact computer users for months to come.
All of us depend on our computers. And the most vulnerable part of your computer is the hard drive. You DO protect it from virus infections and you DO keep it backed up frequently, RIGHT???
If you haven’t backed it up, do so NOW! if you don’t know how, get help.
The unique problem we face right now is that the recent floods in Thailand resulted in several feet of mud and sludge in the various plants that manufacture the precision parts for computer hard drives. 
So even though some hard drive manufacturers like Seagate didn’t have any of their plants underwater, their plants depend on parts from plants that were underwater.
Hard drive stepper motor
It is going to take months and in some cases up to a year to get back to full production, availability and low prices.
Because of the ensuing shortage, large corporations and wholesale resellers are buying up massive quantities of the limited hard drives that are available. Some companies are putting up hundreds of millions of dollars to lock in the purchase of existing drives and the limited production that will be manufactured in the coming months.
If your desk top hard drive fails, there should be something available that will replace it though you may have to settle for a couple of smaller drives or a much larger drive.
If your laptop drive fails it may be much harder to find a replacement and if you can find one, it may be very expensive.
Prices for replacement drives, where they are available, are 2-3 times higher than before the Thailand floods. Most vendors are also limiting purchases to one drive per order. In many cases smaller vendors are not selling replacement drives, because they make more money putting the limited drives into complete machines.
As a former IT manager for Fortune 100 companies, let me share some tips on how to avoid the nightmare of a hard drive crash:
# 1 Always make sure your computer has been off for at least 30 seconds before you move it. Then move it gently.
The two big enemies of a hard drive are excessive vibration and heat.
# 2 Try not to have your computer on your desk or work space. My computer sits on a separate table from my monitor, keyboard, etc. While my work table gets bumped and shaken, the table my desktop PC sits on is out of harms way and sits rock steady. Use cable extenders if needed.
# 3 Get your computer off the floor. Most people don’t realize how much a computer vibrates while on a floor. The other issue is how often something falls on the computer.
# 4 The other reason to get your computer off the floor is because it tends to run hot on the floor. Almost every computer on the floor is full of dust bunnies which heats up the computer. And rarely is there adequate airflow for cooling when a computer is on the floor.
# 5 Your hard drive gets very hot when you write a lot of data to it without giving it a chance to cool. If you have to copy or write a lot of data, do it in smaller batches and give the hard drive a couple of minutes to cool down between sessions. Don’t do multiple copy operations at the same time.
# 6 Make sure you have a good power supply with adequate capacity. A hard drive is only as good as the power you feed it.
If your power supply is old or noisy, or if your computer ever spontaneously re-boots, you may need a new power supply.
# 7 Be sure your computer is plugged into a fairly new uninterruptible power supply (UPS) with adequate capacity. I’m talking about the units made by companies like APC, which cost $75+ and have a battery back up. I’m not talking about little surge protection strips.
# 8 Hard drives have two types of failure.
A mechanical failure of the motor or read write heads. Short of spending hundreds if not thousands for a specialized forensic data recovery, this type of failure is fatal.
An electrical failure. This is where something goes wrong on the green (usually) printed circuit board. The motor and read / write heads are fine. You can buy just the green printed circuit board for many drives on ebay or from some computer repair stores.
Take off the old printed circuit board and put on the replacement. Chances are that some or all of your data is gone but it is a low cost way to get a hard drive up and running again. I’ve used this with great success to get laptop drives running again.
# 9 Hard drives have to work much harder and get hotter as they get more than ⅔ full. The read write heads are having to travel further back and forth to get data from one end of the drive to the other. The heads are changing tracks more often.
If your drive is over half full, are there some files you can archive onto a CD, DVD or flash drive?
# 10 Until hard drive prices and the full range of models are back in full supply, this is not the time to upgrade your operating system (overnight updates are ok), re-size your partitions or make any other major changes to your hard drive.
# 11 Turn off your computer or leave it on? How long has this debate gone on :-) Here is the answer to best protect your hard drive. If your computer is less than two years old and you use it at least every other day, you can turn it off if you want or leave it on.
If however your computer is over two years old or you may go a few days between uses (long weekend away?), leave it on. Here’s why. When your computer starts up it needs some information about your hard drive and other parts of your computer. It gets this information from a chip known as the BIOS.
The BIOS chip depends on a small battery to keep the stored information available when the computer asks for it.
If the battery is weak or run down (older than 2 years or not used for some period of time) your computer will be confused and won’t start up correctly. In some cases this can mess up your hard drive. (For all of you power users, I know that sometimes a CMOS battery lasts a long time, I have also seen them fail quickly. The advice here is based on worst case not the lucky exceptions)
# 12 Should you buy a solid state drive (SSD)?
The SSD drives are getting better but one maker had a recall, another had to do firmware upgrades to prevent BSOD’s (Blue screens of death) and yet another big companies' drives lost capacity after a power failure. I’m not trusting my data to an SSD quite yet.
Here are a couple of back up suggestions:
A. Flash drives (thumb drives, USB drives) are cheap. My core data for current clients is less than 8GB. Buy 2 USB drives and copy your core, current client data to each of them daily.
Back up all your music and family pictures to multiple CD’s or DVD’s. After you back up to a CD or DVD test it to be sure the back up works.
B. Highly rated, name brand DVD burners to back up your data run less than $30 for an internal drive and under $40 for an external drive. You should have one and use it.
There are going to be a lot of junk drives and odd ball drives sold in the months ahead so be careful. Only buy used drives from a vendor you have good reason to trust.
The spike in hard drive prices is also affecting the availability and prices of new computers. Unless you just have to buy, you may want to wait until sometime next year.
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