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...

Electronic components generate heat, and ventilation is certainly a factor in the long-term health of your computer. Most modern computer cases are designed with adequate airflow, but a failure in ventilation can lead to catastrophic data loss.  When internal fans...

Yes, your Solid-State Drive (SSD) can and will eventually fail. No storage device is perfect — and while SSDs don’t have any moving parts (depending on how you define “moving parts,” if you want to get technical), it’s still susceptible...

Data recovery from fire-damaged RAID servers is frequently possible; each year, we receive several dozen cases (sometimes more, such as when wildfires impacted California business in early 2025), and most cases result in a full or partial recovery. However,...