NAND cell read disturb is a rare failure scenario that affects flash storage devices including (but not limited to) solid-state drives (SSDs).  Unlike a mechanical head crash or a firmware brick, read disturb is a form of data corruption....

Automatic RAID rebuilds fail most often because of secondary drive failure or an unrecoverable read error (URE) on a surviving disk. While RAID arrays are designed for redundancy, the rebuild process is intensive; if hardware is near its breaking point,...

You’ve decided to use RAID, but you’re not sure why RAID 5 is the most popular choice for home users and small businesses. Isn’t RAID 6 better? RAID 6 offers a higher level of fault tolerance than RAID 5 because...

Your computer will show the capacity of a 1 Terabyte (TB) hard drive as only 931 Gigabytes (GB). That’s simply a difference in how manufacturers and operating systems define storage (manufacturers use base-10 math, while Windows computers use base-2).  But...

Most mechanical hard drives have a small hole along with text that reads something like: “DO NOT COVER.” This is the hard drive’s breather hole, which equalizes internal pressure with the outside environment. Covering this hole can break your hard...

You attempt to save a document or transfer a file, and your computer throws an error: The drive is “Write Protected” or you’ve got a “Read-Only File System.”  If this isn’t a permissions error, it’s an issue with your storage...

Head parking ramps are small, static plastic guides located near the outer edge of a hard disk drive (HDD) platter that provide a safe resting area for the read/write heads when the drive is powered down or idle.  By physically...

Hitting a failing hard drive or SSD will not fix it — it’ll make the problem worse. There, we’re done with the article.  What’s that? You need proof that percussive maintenance doesn’t work on data storage devices with extremely narrow...

Failing hard drives tend to make noises (though not always, as we’ve discussed in other articles). Solid-state drives are more subtle: They may not give any indication whatsoever that they’re near the end of their operational lifespans.  The most...