Year by year
notebook computers are replacing usual desktop PCs at work and at home.
Notebooks are small and handy, but they are also much more fragile than desktops. For a number of reasons
notebook hard drives are even less reliable than those of desktops. These reasons are:
Shaking. Various jolts and shakings happen frequently during
notebook transportation and active work. This expedites deterioration of the mechanical parts of a hard drive.
Insufficient power supply. When powered by the
battery, the
notebook hard drive might not get sufficient power because of excessive
battery load. In this case the hard drive will not be able to maintain constant rotation speed which increases the probability of information loss.
High temperature. Heat emission of components of modern
notebooks may reach 100 watts. And all those components are located in a small area with weak cooling. In such a harsh environment hard drive temperature is often close to or even exceeds the maximum allowed value (55C (131F) for most hard drives). This negatively affects both mechanical (thermal expansion of the platters) and electronic (overheating and possible failure of the controller) parts of a hard drive.
Thats why
notebook hard drives need constant health monitoring to prevent data loss. Such monitoring can be performed with Hard Drive Inspector Professional (HDIP). But the Professional version is intended mostly for desktop computers and doesnt take into account some peculiar features of
notebooks. For example, HDIP periodically reads S.M.A.R.T. data from a hard drive to control its health. Reading this data when the hard drive is in sleep mode activates the disk which in turn causes an unnecessary increase in power consumption and reduces
battery life. In addition, the average working temperature of a
notebook's hard drives is usually higher than the temperature of a desktops disks. So, when used in
notebooks, HDIP may show false overheating alerts.