Update on my end with regards to my hard drive. According to Geek Squad it's screwed up and they have to replace it, and are going to try and recover whatever information they can from the HD. So, I figured I'd put the question out: what causes a HD to go bad?
Because their first question to me was if I was doing "a lot of hardcore gaming." I've played TF2, FFXIV and some other smatterings of Steam games (XCOM and BoI come to mind) on a relatively daily basis on it. However, my last machine (which I had since tech school in the military, back in... 2006-ish?) had me playing WoW just as frequently and lasted for years!
... I think it might have something to do with Iolo System Mechanic - which I used for antivirus and overall system maintenance. Part of its functionality is clearing clutter, backing up registries, and defragging the HD. I forget for how long, but I used to have it set to that it compressed and defragged on EVERY restart (because I am a dumb). Do you think that's what played in the HD's early demise? Because I heard you should really only defrag once a month or so to ensure optimal performance.
Basically, what steps can I take to keep my HD from running as it should, and what to avoid to keep from having to deal with this situation again.
Because their first question to me was if I was doing "a lot of hardcore gaming." I've played TF2, FFXIV and some other smatterings of Steam games (XCOM and BoI come to mind) on a relatively daily basis on it. However, my last machine (which I had since tech school in the military, back in... 2006-ish?) had me playing WoW just as frequently and lasted for years!
... I think it might have something to do with Iolo System Mechanic - which I used for antivirus and overall system maintenance. Part of its functionality is clearing clutter, backing up registries, and defragging the HD. I forget for how long, but I used to have it set to that it compressed and defragged on EVERY restart (because I am a dumb). Do you think that's what played in the HD's early demise? Because I heard you should really only defrag once a month or so to ensure optimal performance.
Basically, what steps can I take to keep my HD from running as it should, and what to avoid to keep from having to deal with this situation again.
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