Hard Drive Temperature Thresholds, What You Need To Know

Hard drives, like other electronic devices, have temperature thresholds that they need to run in. Manufacturers like Western Digital or Seagate inform their customers about those thresholds. But how can the customers make sure that the temperature does not jump over those limits? And what are the possible consequences if a drive operates outside of the temperature threshold?

A hard drive’s spec sheet usually displays information about the operating and non-operating temperatures. Most manufacturers set the operating temperature threshold at 5° Celsius to 55° Celsius. Others may have a slightly different threshold going up to 60° Celsius.

A lot of things can happen if a hard drive reaches non-operating temperatures. This ranges from data corruption and data loss to crashes and even hardware failures.

While it is not likely that most computer users will ever experience they hard drives reaching critical temperatures, it can happen if they work in environments with unusually low or high temperatures. Other reasons can be bad or no cooling, or other hardware close to the hard drive that is emitting lots of heat.

How can you check a hard drive’s temperature level? Most modern hard drives support a technology called SMART, which stands for Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology. Programs can read and display SMART data.

One of my favorite programs for the job is Speedfan, a lightweight program that reads the majority of PC sensors.

Speedfan scans the hardware for sensors and displays its findings directly in the main interface.

The hard drives are listed on the right side. Normal, falling and critical temperatures are all indicated with icons which makes identification easier. You can alternatively click on the SMART tab, select one of the hard drives available and look at the SMART values for additional information. Very interesting in this regard is the temperature reading, as it lists the worst temperature the hard drive has ever reached on the system.

You can use the value to find out if the selected hard drive ever reached critical temperature levels on your computer.

If it did, you may want to start thinking about proper backup of data and replacement.

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© Martin Brinkmann for gHacks Technology News | Latest Tech News, Software And Tutorials, 2011. | Permalink |
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TDP x-Ray Lite Hard Drive Manager

There are many ways that Windows users can manage hard disk space. You can manage your hard drives with the Windows Disk Management utility, but it is somewhat difficult to navigate. Programs like WinDirStat are great for getting a good visual scheme. Tools with visual graphing for hard disk management are ideal. Everybody has their own style and preferences. TDP x-Ray Lite is a free hard disk management tool that uses a multi-layered pie chart scheme to represent usage of hard disk space.

Displayed in the middle of the window is a colorful chart showing memory information in different sizes and colors around the chart. Unused disk space is shown with no extensions, as that part of the drive is blank. On the left panel shows all connected drives. It will show USB drives, external hard drives, SD cards, partitions, etc. When you click on a particular field, you see what that area of the hard drive contains and another pie chart will be presented to represent that space and the different files and folders contained therein. This is quite handy when you need to clean your hard drive space or find specific files and folders.

In the screenshot above, you can see all of the sectors in Drive C: and by placing the mouse over a certain area, a small box provides the information for the occupancy of that sector. In this example, VirtualBox is highlighted. Click on the selected field and you will get the specifics.

When you get the pie chart for the selected sector, X – Ray Lite allows you to go deeper. For example, the VirtualBox chart has 4 sectors representing virtual machines stored on the hard drive. In this demonstration, the area for Debian Linux is found when the mouse is hovered over an area. When this is clicked, a chart that isolates Debian is displayed.

You follow the same process to isolate any file or folder from the original chart for any given drive highlighted in the left pane. By right-clicking a sector of the chart, you are presented with a context menu with options to Zoom, Recycle or Delete and also view Properties. From there, you can do what you want. To clear any area of the hard drive, select delete and then empty the recycle bin. Alternatively, you can choose the Zoom option to get even more detailed specifics of the drive memory occupation or open the Properties.

There is also an option to access the application from the Windows Explorer context menu. From Windows Explorer, select a folder and right-click to open the context menu. Right-click the selected folder and select “x-Ray it!” and this will show a pie chart for that file.

TDP x-Ray Lite is incredibly easy to use and versatile. For users who work well with pie chart schemes, it is ideal. When you download the application, a desktop icon is generally not created. You will have to open the start menu and use the search box to find it then drag and drop to the desktop if you want an icon there.

Download TDP x-Ray Lite from this link:
http://www.tdp.cz/downloads/en/xray-lite

TDP x-Ray Lite works on all versions of Windows.

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© Melanie Gross for gHacks Technology News | Latest Tech News, Software And Tutorials, 2011. | Permalink |
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Post tags: hard disk space, hard drive manager, hard-drive, storage space, windows software

Apacer AC430 External Hard Drive

A few years back, buying an external hard drive meant buying an overpriced, loud, clunky housing, and then having to spring for a hard drive separately. It was, essentially, a pain. Even carrying it around was an annoyance, to some degree.

These days, things have changed. Now the purchase of an external hard drive is a simple affair. Pick the one you want, with the capacity you want, and take it to the check-out point. This is probably largely due to the popularity of external hard drives these days. Shifting data around is always needed, whether it be important work documents or a bunch of illicit video files nicked off of the Internet. And, with long download times via email (aside from email size restrictions) and the generally smaller storage capacity of other data transfer devices, the external hard drive makes a lot of sense. And among those sensible devices are some that make even more sense, for various reason.

Apacer’s AC430 external hard drive is one of those. First of all, it makes use of a 2.5” drive. That means that it’s small. It’s not quite what one could consider pocketsized, but it comes close. That means easy transportation, facilitated by a stylish protective slip-case included in the box. Further portability is implied by the unit’s sturdy design.

The casing is mostly finished in brushed metal, with sturdy plastic caps covering the ends. An internal anti-shock system will help protect against accidental bumps and bruises, although heavy blows may still have an effect on the device’s performance. So don’t throw it at people who annoy you.

The 2.5” drive in the model we tested offers a fairly generous 500GB of storage space, which can be transferred to and from the device via a USB cable. Power is also supplied to the unit via the same cable, so the need for lugging an extra power adapter around is removed. On the downside, though, it uses a very specific USB cable… the plug on the unit itself is an odd one, so you’ll want to treat the included cable like gold. The carry-case has an elasticised strap to hold it in place, but you may want to consider a slightly sturdier option than that.

Best of all: it’s USB 3.0. We haven’t seen too many devices using this new speed standard yet, so the very fast data transfer rates that the AC430 offers are something of a treat. Naturally this can be used with all other iterations of USB technology, but that speed is sublime.

The device also has a smart power management system, so leaving it plugged into your PC or laptop for extended periods of time will not put too much strain on the system.
The drive’s power status is indicated by an LED light housed behind one of the plastic end-caps.

OK, maybe the USB 3.0 isn’t the best aspect here… we really like the price. Considering the reliability and performance of the unit, as well as its sleek, sturdy design, the recommended retail price is really rather sweet. All in all, a winner.

PROS:

• Good value
• Fast
• Well-built

CONS:

• Proprietary USB plug
• “Only” 500 Gigabytes

Verdict:

Sturdy, stylish and fast… it’s like an external HDD version of a sports car.

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© Brian Welsh for gHacks Technology News | Latest Tech News, Software And Tutorials, 2011. | Permalink |
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Post tags: apacer, apacer ac430, external hard drive, hard-drive