Each medium has its own particular weaknesses and hazards to avoid. Be careful or suffer the consequences - lost data, which means, at best, lots of lost time and effort! This section is about floppy disks and hard disks only. Other storage media are discussed later.

Care of Hard Disks

There are fewer precautions for hard disks since they are more protected by being sealed in air-tight cases. But when damage does occur, it is a more serious matter. Larger amounts of data can be lost and hard disks are much, much more expensive that floppy disks.
 
Hard disks can have problems from magnetic fields and heat like floppies do, but these are very rare.
 
Most problems occur when the read/write head (looks like a pointer in the photo) damages the metal disk by hitting or even just touching it. This is called a head crash.
 
When the computer is on, the hard disk is spinning extremely fast. Any contact at all can cause pits or scratches. Every scratch or pit is lost data. Damage in the root directory turns the whole hard disk into a lovely doorstop! It's completely dead.
 
So the goal here is to keep that read/write head where it belongs, just barely above the hard disk, but never, ever touching it.

Don't

Jar the computer while the disk is spinning.

Turn the computer off and quickly back on before spinning has stopped.

Drop it - ever.

~~  1 Cor. 10:31 ...whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God.  ~~

Last updated: 11 Aug 2010