Hard-drive care — Which of the following is a valid preventative maintenance task for a hard drive in everyday support practice?

Introduction / Context:
Preventative maintenance reduces downtime and data loss. For modern HDDs and SSDs, practical tasks focus on monitoring health and filesystem integrity rather than invasive mechanical adjustments.

Given Data / Assumptions:

• Typical office PCs with either HDDs or SSDs.
• Routine admin privileges available.
• Goal: realistic tasks that improve reliability.

Concept / Approach:

Valid preventative actions include checking SMART attributes, running vendor diagnostics, scanning for bad sectors (HDDs), and verifying the filesystem. Mechanical “head alignment” is a legacy lab procedure, not field maintenance on sealed drives.

Step-by-Step Solution:

Verification / Alternative check:

Drive vendor tools (e.g., SeaTools, Data Lifeguard) and OS utilities (chkdsk, fsck) are standard in preventative routines.

Why Other Options Are Wrong:

Head alignment diagnostics: not applicable to sealed modern drives. Initializing (re-partitioning/formatting) regularly risks data loss and is not maintenance. Uninstalling programs is housekeeping, not drive maintenance.

Common Pitfalls:

Ignoring SMART warnings, skipping backups, and running destructive tests on mission-critical systems during business hours.

Final Answer:

Disk check diagnostics (surface scan, SMART review, file system check).