HP EliteBook 8770w HP Notebook Hard Drives & Solid State Drives Identifyi - Page 3

File Corruption One of the most difficult software problems to trace is file corruption, because corruption occurs very easily during routine computer handling. For example, powering off the notebook before the OS has completed the shutdown process can create corrupted boot files that ultimately result in blue screens and/or continuous reboots. Issues such as blue screens, application lockups, and other occurrences are caused by write splices. A write splice is an incomplete write to a sector of the HDD. Upon the next read of that sector, the OS encounters incomplete data, and marks this area as a bad sector. The OS remaps a reserved sector in its place. If corruption of this nature continues to occur with increasing frequency, the aforementioned errors will result, because the HDD has reached the Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology (S.M.A.R.T.) attribute threshold. S.M.A.R.T. technology was developed by a number of major hard drive manufacturers to increase reliability of drives. For more information on S.M.A.R.T attribute checking, refer to the "Client Management Software" section in this white paper. File Fragmentation Hard drive performance is also degraded when file fragmentation is not reduced by regular software maintenance. Over time, the hard drive file structure becomes fragmented due to continuous creating, editing, copying, and deleting of files. New data is written to the hard drive on a "first available space" basis. Fragmentation occurs when an entire file or application is not stored contiguously on the hard drive. Once fragmentation occurs, the hard drive throughput performance is impacted, because it must seek the data from multiple locations across the hard drive. Read Errors HDDs can fail due to the same read errors. In this situation, a low-level format of the drive can be performed. Refer to your HDD manufacturer for low-level format utilities or download the HP File Sanitizer for HP ProtectTools, located at the following website: http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/SoftwareDescription.jsp?lang=en&cc=us&pro dTypeId=321957&prodSeriesId=4138624&prodNameId=4138625&swEnvOID=4054&swLang=13& mode=2&taskId=135&swItem=ob-86982-1 Page 3