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 Floppy Disks

Common sense would say not to do anything that would physically damage the disk or that would erase the data. The following admonitions apply to all types of floppy disks.

Avoid
	Heat	Magnetism	Smoke, dust, dirt, salt air
Don't
	Touch the Mylar	Bend	Put weight on disks.	Spill on it

Using Floppy Disks

Improper preparation or use of a floppy disk can ruin your day, and even your floppy drive. A few pointers are in order.
 
Use standard computer disk labels. Note that some labels wrap across the top as pictured at the right. Others fit entirely on the front of the disk.
 
Write on the label!! If your disks are not kept strictly at home, every label should include your name and something about what's on the disk. (On 5¼" disks, use a felt-tip marker only. A pen or pencil can damage the disk inside.)
 
Seal all edges down firmly. A loose corner might stick to the inside of the floppy drive, creating a major mess in there.
 
Put the label in the right spot. Don't cover the holes in the corners of 3½" floppies. Don't stick to the metal slide .
 
Most important, insert the floppy right side up! The label goes on top, the round metal part is on the bottom. The edge with the metal slide goes in first.

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: 22 Jan 2008