Be S.M.A.R.T. About Your Hard Drive

A hard drive failure is a nuisance at best and a tragedy at worst. You might have to reinstall your operating system and all your software, or get a new computer, or live with the loss of your important data - including years of photos! What if I said there's a way to predict this kind of failure?

Before we get any further, please: BACK UP YOUR DATA!! It's the most important thing a computer user can do.

The simplest way to check the health of your hard drive is to look at its S.M.A.R.T. information. S.M.A.R.T. stands for Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology. It's tech in computer hard drives that attempts to alert users to potential hard drive failure. It monitors dozens of details about a hard drive's performance in an effort to determine whether that hard drive may fail at some point soon.

Unfortunately, this information is a little buried. My favorite way of finding it is to use a program called Speccy. This neat (if somewhat geeky) tool gives you all the specifications about your computer that you could ever need. Download and install the free version. Then run it and click on "Storage." If the area under S.M.A.R.T. says "Good," then you're most likely ok. If it says anything else, that drive should be replaced as soon as possible.

It's hard to tell with 100% certainty whether a hard drive is going to fail or not. But S.M.A.R.T. tries to make an educated guess so that you have time to make plans about a replacement. It's widely accepted that if the S.M.A.R.T. readings tell you the drive is going bad, it's best to replace that drive. Google did a study which determined that if the S.M.A.R.T. readings reported a problem with a drive, that drive was 39 times more likely to fail than a drive with no problems detected.

In the end, if the S.M.A.R.T. reading says your drive is going to fail, assume it will. Call 3TG Tech Support today to ask about next steps. You might think about getting a new computer, or you might just need a Solid State Drive, which would be less expensive and a big upgrade. And all your programs, files and settings stay exactly where they are.

If the S.M.A.R.T. reading doesn't indicate a problem, your drive is much less likely to fail, but you should still be backing up your important data just in case!

Solid State Drives

Hard drives. In desktops they're the size of a paperback book, in laptops they're roughly the size of a smartphone, and they're the device inside your computer where all of your data is stored. Every photo, document, application, desktop shortcut, and every piece of data that's used to run your operating system is stored on that hunk of metal.

A quick glossary before we begin: SSD = Solid State Drive. HDD = Hard Disk Drive

HDD's are the most common type of drive today and the kind that we've had since the early days of personal computing. The inside of an HDD looks very much like a futuristic turntable. From the top, you see a disc that's spinning, and an arm swings back and forth, reading the drive. From the side, though, you would see that instead of one disc there's several (the number varies). And the arm is forked to be able to read any of the heads at any given time. As you use your computer, the discs inside (or platters) spin extremely fast at 5400 or 7200 RPM. The arm swings back and forth, accessing data as it's asked for. As fast as that sounds, it's actually pretty slow. One piece of data could be in a completely different location on the drive from the next one that's asked for, and the arm has to swing to find it and wait for the platters to spin around to meet it at the right spot. Sometimes a single file can be in multiple pieces and in multiple locations on the platter (this is what fragmentation is), slowing things down even further.

Enter the Solid State Drive (or SSD). An SSD has no moving parts whatsoever. It's just a case surrounding a circuit board covered in memory chips. There are several advantages this gives. The first is size. SSDs mostly come in the smaller laptop drive size and almost never in the paperback book size. They don't need it. And they can be even smaller, making for more compact laptops and other computers. The second advantage of an SSD is durability. In general, an SSD is less prone to bumps and falls, which often cause HDDs to fail when the head scrapes across a platter much like a record scratch.

But the biggest advantage of an SSD is speed. Because there is no moving assembly inside an SSD, the computer doesn't need to wait for an arm to meet a point on a disc. Instead, all data is accessible at equal speeds. It's also no necessary to break up a file for storage, so there's no need to defragment an SSD. The speed differences can be drastic, especially when first turning the computer on. HDDs need time to spin up and get started, and then are slower to operate. An SSD can be accessed immediately, resulting in boot times under a minute and sometimes as short as about 10-15 seconds. The speed is also especially noticeable when opening up applications. Programs like Word and Excel will launch almost instantly.

The biggest downside to SSDs is their price. A 500GB HDD only costs about $55. A 500GB SSD costs three times that, or around $155. And anything bigger than that is prohibitively expensive. A 1TB HDD runs around $85, but a 1TB SSD is around $400. I usually recommend a 250 or 500GB SSD as a good sweet spot. Because of the price, many people (myself included) will put their operating system, applications, and most-used files on the SSD and then get a second internal or external inexpensive HDD for the rest of the files. It's most important to have software on the fast drive, and files can come from a slower drive.

Almost any computer's HDD can be replaced with an SSD. It's often a great way to stretch out the life of a computer. The best part about an SSD upgrade is that if it's done right, absolutely nothing about your computing environment is changed. All your files and applications are still there, and everything right down to the shortcuts on your desktop are right where you left them. Replacing your computer entirely requires the reinstallation of all your programs and quite a lot of time getting everything set up just how you like it. This upgrade gets you the speed boost of a new computer without the hassle of setting everything up!

The cost of the upgrade varies, mostly depending on the size of the drive you want. Call 3TG today to ask about upgrading the drive in your computer.

The Slow Computer

If you have an older computer, you might feel like that computer is slower than it used to be. There are many reasons for this, so I'd like to go over a few.

First, files will not slow down your computer. If you have thousands of photos, that's ok. The only time the amount of data on your computer affects its speed is if you have nearly zero space left on your hard drive, but we're literally talking 99.99998% full, or when you have about 20MB left on a 1TB drive. So long as you have about 5-10% free space you'll be fine, but you'll want to start thinking about another way to store all that data, or clearing out some space.

With the applications on your computer, it's not about the quantity but the type, as some programs launch at startup and run in the background. These applications can be uninstalled or just set to not launch at startup, but this should be done by a professional. Some applications have to load at startup for the computer to run.

As you update programs and install new ones, keep in mind that current software will always run better on newer computers. Developers are pretty careful to make sure their software will run ok on older computers, but their applications might ask for more and more system resources.

One of the biggest reasons for slowdowns, though, is something referred to as "bit rot" or "software rot." This is the idea that as the computer is used over time, the software you use experiences slight changes in the operating system and small errors here and there. These minor issues build up and start slowing down the system as a whole. This problem is the most frustrating, because often the only solution is to completely reinstall the software. That's easy if we're just talking about Microsoft Word, but tougher when we're talking about Windows. There are ways to treat this issue, mainly by making the computer faster to combat the slowdown.

Lastly, there's the physical reasons for a computer's slowness, the two most common culprits being failing hard drives and dust. Dust can build up on heatsinks and fans inside the computer, making it harder for the computer to cool down its components. Sometimes your computer, unable to cool down, will slow down the system so that less heat is generated in the first place. Sometimes it's a good idea to take the computer outside and use some compressed air on it.

There are a number of ways to speed up an older computer, but sometimes it's best to simply replace it. Either way, call 3TG for free advice.

The Best PC

I often get asked to recommend a new computer. There's so many choices out there, so I can understand why it's a little overwhelming. Just walking into a Best Buy or a Costco or even an Apple store presents dozens of options to you. Laptop or desktop? Mac or PC? How fast? How big? How small? I'm primarily a PC user, so this article will focus on a PC.

For about a year now, the job of recommending a computer has been easy: the Dell XPS 13 laptop is the best Windows computer on the market. I think it's the best overall computer, but I know my Mac friends will debate me. I've been using one myself for the past several months, and continue to recommend it wholeheartedly.

There are many reasons why I think this. First, it's almost as well-constructed as a Mac. The body is all aluminum, with a palm rest of carbon fiber, which has a nicer feel than aluminum. I've never liked a trackpad on any Windows computer I've ever used, but this one is fantastic, and has gotten me to ditch a mouse full time.

The number one thing that most people will notice about the XPS 13 is the screen. It's beautiful. Not only is the color/contrast/brightness great, but the screen goes almost all the way to the edge of the laptop. The bezel (the plastic between the screen and the edge of the case) is only 5mm thin. The result is that the XPS 13 has a smaller footprint than the 13" MacBook Air with the same size screen. The overall weight is merely 2.8 lbs, so it's very easy to throw in a bag and carry anywhere. I regularly carry mine around the house, wherever I want to work.

All this space saving doesn't hurt the performance of the XPS 13. It comes with the latest Intel processors, which includes the best Intel graphics ever. An SSD will boot the OS and applications in seconds. The battery lasts a good 7-8 hours on average. The included wireless radios have the latest WiFi and bluetooth standards for the fastest connections. There's even a USB C port for compatibility with the latest connection standards (there are two USB 3 ports as well). [note: stay tuned to this blog for a post about USB C]

The aren't many drawbacks of the XPS 13. It's not going to be a gaming powerhouse. You really need a dedicated graphics card for that, and that increases the price, weight, and size of a laptop. Intel's latest CPUs have far better graphics processing than previous generations, so you'll be able to do some light gaming, but this isn't a computer for competitive gamers. Aside from that, the only other drawbacks are ones common to any laptop this size. There's no optical drive, but that lets you save space and you can get USB drives for under $40 if you want to use CDs or DVDs every once and a while.

The Dell XPS 13 starts at just $599, which is $300 less than the base MacBook Air. However, my recommendation is the model with a Core i5 CPU, 8GB of RAM, and a 256GB SSD, which runs $929 on Amazon. You can certainly find less expensive computers, but they won't offer the same level of build quality, performance, and portability. The XPS 13 is just the best overall PC on the market. After a lifetime of dedication to desktops, it has turned me into a fan of laptops, trackpads (this one, at least), and mobile computing in general.

[note: stay tuned to a future article about docking solutions]