Hard drive degradation

[CBrooks]

I need some opinions on this subject. I work at a school that has a lab of 23 laptops that have been used for 4 years now. I've replaced a TON of hard drives due to failure (every kid from 9-12th grade here has their own laptop) but there could have been many factors to why the hard drives went bad, the most likely being physical damage from drops. The laptops in the lab are hardly ever moved but are used almost all day and are turned off on the weekends.

Some of these laptops seem a bit slow, just recently I have went through and shut off all unnecessary start-up programs and defragged all of them. Some still seem a little bit slow at times.

We plan on keeping these laptops in use for a few years longer and I believe it would be worth replacing the hard drives in them but I'd still like to hear some opinions on this.

These laptops do not have bad specs at all for their age, Core2Duo 1.6 and 2gigs of ram.

 

[cboucher]

I wouldn't necessarily do blanket replacement of all hard drives, but it wouldn't be a bad idea to replace a few that are still having issues after a defrag.

 

[foothead]

I agree. If it isn't broken, don't fix it.

 

[BuzzCola1]

The problem can be caused by the hard drive getting seriously defragmented, as you work in a school I would highly recommend you use professonal software.

I have setup two schools now to use O&O Defrag 10 Professonial as it defrags and prevents fragmentation before it begins. Also it defrags when the computer is idle (Screensaver Mode)

I suggest you check out Top 10 Defrag Programs as you can see O&O Defrag is listed there, its highly recommended.