The hard drive on a computer is vulnerable to many different threats. Some of these threats are naturally occurring such as heat and simple old age. Other threats are more personal, such as attacks from viruses or static electricity. This article is intended to point out these threats and give simple do it yourself solutions for preventing them.
Protecting The Hard Drive From Viruses
One of the most effective things that can protect the computer's hard drive is to use an anti-virus program. There are many different anti-virus manufacturers, including several that make their products available free of charge to home users. One of the most widely used is the AVG Anti-Virus program, published by Grisoft. When installed, AVG constantly monitors data that is being written to the hard drive to catch any suspicious code that is in its large virus definition database. This database can be set to automatically update on a daily basis, checking with the Grisoft server to download any updated virus definitions, keeping the computer constantly protected against the most recent threats. In addition, other products from the company protect against spyware and malware programs that can be just as dangerous as a virus itself. Online virus scanners such as HouseCall by Trend Micro download and install through the web browser itself. HouseCall is a free program that also includes spyware and malware detection.
Protect Your Master Boot Record
Most modern computers have a special feature built into the computer's BIOS that can prevent one of the most common hacking exploits. The master boot record (MBR) is a part of the computer's hard drive that stores basic information about the size, format, and other details regarding the partitions on a specific hard disc. Infected MBR's can be a major problem, but simply by activating the BIOS's MBR protection feature the computer will provide a warning any time a program attempts to write to the MBR without your permission.
Defragment Your Hard Drive Regularly
Using a tool built into most operating systems a user can defragment the data on a hard drive automatically. Fragmented files build up over time as data is written and deleted from a hard drive. Defragmenting the drive takes all of these small fragments and rewrites the data as one large contiguous block of data. Doing so reduces the amount of work and stress placed on the drive's mechanical parts and has the added benefit of speeding up file access and processing.
