Instructor: In this lesson
we are going to talk about storage device issues.
Now when I talk about a storage device
I'm really focused here
on hard disc drives and solid state devices.
Remember, hard disc drives are these older storage devices
that are going to spin and move the read right head
across the platter to be able to get data
from those devices.
When you're using a solid state device,
this is a form of non-volatile memory
that will allow you to be able to store data
on this relatively fast device
that can almost instantly access data
from any part of the device
because we're dealing with circuits here
instead of a physical platter
when we're trying to get data from those devices.
Now both of these types of devices
have their benefits and their disadvantages.
When you're dealing with a hard disc drive
you have a very low cost device, but it is much slower,
and it's subject to mechanical failures.
On the other hand,
when you're dealing with a solid state device
you have a much higher cost,
so you're going to get a lot less storage
in comparison to a hard dis drive for the same price,
but you are going to have much faster speeds.
Now solid state devices also have another limitation,
and this is the maximum amount of times
that you can actually read or write data from those devices.
That's right, these devices actually have a limit
to the amount of times you can read and write data to them
because those circuits will wear down over time.
Now for most of us this isn't a real big deal
because that number is pretty high,
but if you're doing a lot of read wright operations
you can actually wear out your solid state devices
much faster than you would a traditional hard drive.
And this can cause premature failure over time,
so it is something you need to keep in mind
when you're choosing one of these devices.
If you're going to be using one of these storage devices
in a high read wright environment
you may want to work with a hard drive
instead of a solid state device for this reason.
Now as we start looking at some of these different problems
that you're going to experience
with these different storage devices,
I first want to focus on ones that affect
only hard dish drives.
Then we'll talk about more general problems
that affect both hard disc drives and solid state devices.
Now when you're dealing with a hard disc drive
it is a mechanical device.
And so we have this platter that is spinning
at very high speeds of either
5,400 RPM's, 7,200 RPM's, 10,000 RPM's, or 15,000 RPM's.
And because of these high speeds
this device will wear down over time.
Now when you're listening to a healthy hard drive
you should hear a low level noise
when it's accessing and spinning up those platters.
This is because there's a mechanical piece
that is being moved around at very high speeds.
But if you start hearing some unusual noises,
things like clicking sounds or grinding noises,
this is a sign that there's a mechanical problem
in that hard disc drive.
At this point you want to make sure
you back up that hard drive immediately
because eminent failure is probably going to happen
with this drive.
If you're hearing a clicking sound on a hard drive
this normally indicates a problem with the read wright head
that's moving across the platter,
and this is usually where the click will come from.
If you hear more of a grinding sound,
this can be that the read wright head
is actually pushing down too far into the platter
and it's scraping across the platter.
Or it could be the platter itself
and the bearings that are allowing it to spin
are starting to fail
and that can cause a grinding noise as well.
In either of these cases,
that hard drive is nearing the end of its life
and it's going to fail soon.
So you want to make sure you get a good backup
or you could lose your data.
Now the next thing we want to talk about
is when you're looking at the activity light
for the storage device on the front of your case.
If that light is not blinking when you're trying to read
or write from that device,
whether it's a hard disc drive or a solid state device,
this could indicate a problem with that device.
Now in this case,
it could be that the device is not receiving
the proper amount of power or it could be a faulty cable
going from the motherboard to the storage device,
and that means the storage device
is not actually getting the signal from the motherboard
to read information from that storage device.
Now another issue you can have
when you're looking at the LED activity light
is the fact that that light is constantly blinking.
Now if it's constantly blinking
this means there's a lot of reading and writing
that's going on.
Generally this is going to occur
when there's not enough RAM in your system.
If you don't have enough physical memory in your system
it's going to start using a temporary file
on that storage device as a page file inside of Windows
or a swap partition inside of Linux.
And this will actually write information
to and from the hard drive
to simulate that it has more memory.
The easiest way to solve this type of an issue
is to add more memory or RAM into your system.
By adding more physical memory,
this will stop the disc from being used
as this swap file or page file,
and this will reduce the load
on that particular storage drive.
Remember, solid state devices only have a limited number
of read and wright operations for their entire life cycle.
And so if you're constantly swapping things
in and out of this swap file or page file,
this can actually reduce the entire life
of your solid state device for the entire system.
So it's a better idea to increase
the physical amount of memory
to give you better performance and extend the life
of your solid state devices.
Now another issue you may come across
is from within the operating system itself.
Once you've booted up the system
and you've loaded the operating system
you should be able to go
and look at the different storage devices
that are connected to your system.
For example if you're using the Windows operating system
you can look under my computer or the File Explorer
and see your different storage devices.
By default you're going to need at least one storage device
which is going to hold the operating system.
But in some systems
you have multiple partitions or multiple devices.
For example, my system has two storage devices.
I have a solid state device that is two terabytes in size
that's my primary storage device.
And then I also have an internal hard disc drive
that's four terabytes in size that I use for larger files
that I want to store for a longer period of time
and I don't access as frequently.
So if I boot up into Windows and I only see the one disc,
that would be my solid state device that my operating
system is installed on,
and I don't see that secondary hard disc drive,
that means there's a missing drive
inside of my operating system.
To troubleshoot this issue
you can first use the disc management tools
inside of Windows if you're in the Windows operating system
to see if that device is being detected.
If it's not, you're going to want to reboot your computer
into the UFI or BIOS and see if that drive
is being detected by the UFI your BIOS.
If it is, that means this is an operating system issue
that we're going to have to troubleshoot later.
If it isn't, that means it's a hardware issue
and it could be that there's no power to the drive,
or the data cable is not properly connected,
in which case the UFI or the BIOS
will not be able to read and write from that drive.
And so it's important to be able to understand
how these things work holistically
so you can troubleshoot and identify the particular issue
based on the scenario you're experiencing.
Now another issue you might have with storage
is when you have a read or write failure.
Now as you're trying to get data
onto or off of a particular storage device
you are going to either read or write to it.
Now when you're trying
to do these read and write operations
you may get a failure or error message
that says you cannot read from the source disc
or cannot write to that source disc.
Now in this case usually this is because
you have bad sectors on a hard dish drive
or you have bad blocks on a solid state device.
When we talk about a hard disc drive
we split the round platter into what are called sectors.
And each one is essentially a small sliver
or slice of the pie of that hard drive.
This allows us to read and write
to particular areas of that hard drive
by identifying the sector and the track within that sector
that we want to write the information to.
But if we have a bad sector
that means it's unusable and we can't write to it.
If we've already stored data there
that means we may not be able to read from it again either.
And in this case
you can have data loss or corruption that occurs.
When this type of thing occurs
you're going to have to use a disc utility
within your operating system
to be able to identify which sectors are bad
and then try to recover those bad sectors
or at least be able to get the information off
and move it to a different sector.
If you're using Windows or Linux
you may use a utility like check disc
that can perform this for you.
Now if you're using a solid state device
they don't use sectors,
and we don't have this physical mechanical thing
that we have to read and write from.
So instead, we have what are known as blocks.
Now when we look at a solid state device
we break it up into small portions called blocks
that we can read and write to.
Now, luckily for us these solid state devices
are very highly adaptable,
and if they identify they have a bad block
they will start compensating for that
by using spare blocks at the end of that solid state device
and be able to move that information over
so you'll still be able to read and write from it
unless that data has already been lost or corrupted
because of the initial read wight failure.
Now as the solid state device starts
using up all of its spare blocks,
eventually it's going to run out of those.
And once it does, the solid state devices firmware
will no longer be able to allocate
or compensate into these spare blocks
because there are no more.
So this is something that will work for a while,
but eventually, if you're finding
that you're using up all these spare blocks
and you start getting a lot of these read wright errors
it will be time for you to replace that solid state device
by backing up your data and restoring it to a new drive
that you're going to place into your system.
So as you can see,
there are lots of different problems that you can experience
when you're dealing with storage devices.
Keep in mind it is always the best practice
to have a good backup of your drive at all times
because you never know when the catastrophic failure
is going to occur.
At a minimum you should do at least a full backup
of your storage device every single week.
So if your drive does fail
you'll still have all of your data at least up to last week.
Remember, the storage device itself is not that valuable,
it's the data that's contained
on that storage device that's valuable.
So you always want to make sure you have a good data backup,
and anytime you hear a clicking noise or a grinding noise
or you're getting lots of read write errors
on your storage devices,
you want to make sure that you do a full backup right then.
So if that drive fails you already have a good full backup
that you can restore from.