Air Conditioners May Pose Threat to Hard Drives
Ben Carmitchel, president of ESS Data Recovery, claims that hard drives may have an unlikely adversary this Spring: air conditioners.
"On average we see a 20% increase in failed hard drives hitting our lab in the summer as in the winter," Carmitchel says. "We also see a seasonal change in the types of problems hard drives experience. In the warmer months, we diagnose far more electronic-related issues. From surveying some of our customers, we've found that power surges caused by air conditioners may play a significant role in the springtime increase."
Home cooling systems can increase the electricity usage in a house by 50%, and this additional strain can cause dangerous power surges and outages that damage computers. It's not just air conditioners that threaten data during the warmer months, either--a larger amount of thunderstorms and hot Summer weather can mean the end of hard drives and with them, computer users' valuable information.
To avoid data loss, follow these precautions during Spring and Summer months:
1. Keep your computer plugged into an un-interruptible power supply (UPS). With a UPS, you don't have to worry about brownouts and blackouts which are more likely during warmer months.
2. Turn off and unplug your computers during thunderstorms. There's point in risking working through a 15 minute spring storm when it could potentially cost days in lost productivity if a data recovery service is needed. Watch your local weather forecasts and pay attention to any warnings of storms or brown outs.
3. Make sure your computer has adequate ventilation. Hard drives can fail due to an excess amount of heat, but this can be avoided by simply removing items that may be blocking the ventilation, such as notebooks or other objects stacked on the top and sides of a computer. Check that your computer's fan is functioning properly, and take advantage of any system heat monitoring tools that your computer has.
4. Back up your data. "The only way to be completely prepared is to make sure that you've got a good backup of your important data," Carmitchel says. "That way, a failed hard drive is merely an inconvenience rather than a more serious issue."
Data loss costs U.S. businesses at least $18 billion a year, and professional data recovery companies such as ESS Data Recovery, Ontrack, and Drivesavers often charge upwards of $1000 for their least expensive services.
Sources:
USA Today: Lost digital data costs companies billions
ESS Data Recovery
Published by Phil Dotree - Featured Contributor in Technology
Phil Dotree has written copy for numerous websites and news sites for five years. His articles have appeared on the Howard Stern Show, Fark, Digg.com, and more. Phil is currently working on a book about fr... View profile
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16 Comments
Post a CommentWow! NEver heard it was the cool that bothered the computers. Mine always ran better when it was cool. I always unplug the computers when it is storming. Great article.
This is a great article. Thanks for sharing this information with us!
Did you know that some of the larger computers/servers that large corporation uses have their OWN A/C unit because it's the heat that kills computer components not the use of A/C *source from my husband who has worked on A/C units for over 20 years.*
You are all idiots, hard drives fail because of heat... hence the correlation in the summer.
You realise this may have nothing to do with A/C at all? The fact is, a damaging power spike will either be ironed out by the power supply, *or* it will damage the power supply and almost everything in the computer. HDD failures in summer are FAR more likely to be caused by higher operating temperatures (bear in mind that they aren't always going to be operating in AC-only conditions, they'll be exposed to higher temperatures in summer than winter). Temperature definitely affects performance, otherwise freezing the drive wouldn't sometimes revive failed drives.
good tips, thanks
Great information. I don't know how many times I have had people come to me to rescue their lost data from a hard drive failure. Back up the information and be safe.
You don't need to be digged ... you hit the Inquirer www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=39512
Thanks for reading the article, everyone. Please do me (and AC) a favor and Digg the article after reading it.
Excellent information!