Re: Storage

["Dave Emmerson" <dave@xitroneurope.com>]

> The trouble is, unless you run some manufacturer-specific DOS program
(from
a floppy, if you're running Win2K/NTFS), you never get to find out if the
hard disk has been finding and correcting errors, until it finally finds one
that it can't correct. That's a function that really needs to be built into
the low-level disk driver, and hooked up to some Win2K/WinXP background
service.

That's what the S.M.A.R.T. option in some BIOSs is supposed to monitor, but
I found it imposed too much overhead on the disk accesses. Luckily (?) for
me, I have to start over with a clean or updated OS once or twice a year,
and will sometimes swap in a new (usually bigger or faster) drive on one of
those occasions. Preventive maintenence :-)

FWIW, defragmenting will often 'refresh' much of your disk's contents simply
by virtue of moving it physically, and may improve the system performance a
little, but to be honest, I'd expect a mechanical failure long before the
magnetic recording itself deteriorates.

D.


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