Personal computers are nowadays seen in every household. Hard disk is an essential and very significant part of a computer. This is the place where all the data of the computer is stored. There are certain misconceptions associated with the hard disk. Correct knowledge is needed to uncover the real fact hiding behind these myths.
Formatting of a hard disk is the solution to repair its bad sectors
This is one of the commonest disk repair myths among people. The fact is that formatting does not help in repairing bad sectors. It only hides the bad sectors from getting accessed by denoting the areas of bad sectors in the new file allocation table. Due to which the OS is prevented from visiting the bad sectors at the time of storing data into the hard disk.
Electricity outage can lead to occurrence of bad sectors
This is another perception that people have in relation to hard disks. Power surge, fluctuations in power, unstable power supply can result in electronic or RW hard disk head failure which can only lead to logical data corruption but not anything more.
Data, when deleted from the disk, gets disappeared forever
Technically speaking, data on your hard disk remains on it till the time you don’t overwrite/ replace it with new data. If it is not deleted then data will simply remain in marked condition till new data does not take over it.
Once reformat happens, data is lost forever
Formatting a disk especially in Windows OS environment deletes only a specific system folder. All the contents of the disk are mostly untouched. The fact is that formatting does not destroy data. In most of the cases, data present on the hard disk drive before formatting can be 100% recoverable after formatting.
There is a possibility of losing hard disk data with a magnet near to it
This statement is not true for all magnets. Domestic magnets do not cause any data loss on the hard disk whereas industrial purpose strong magnets have the potential to destroy data on the disk platter. Such powerful magnets are only accessible in laboratory.
Dropping the hard disk will start it
If your hard disk has been accidentally stopped, then some people believe that dropping it from a certain height and on a hard surface would help. This is completely false. There is no truth in this statement. This action can turn out to be dangerous as it can cause damage to the internal component of the disk like disk head, scratch on the platter, actuator, etc. and the data will then be lost permanently.
Heat It
Heating of your hard disk can lead to a vulnerable situation wherein the magnetic material will start to lose its magnetism when placed under hot temperature. This activity will result in complete loss of data from it without any prior indication.
Conclusion
Myths about hard drive are the result of the self-perceived conclusions of people. Hope this information helps in debunking some of the very popular hard disk related myths held by people.