efficiency

Can power fluctuations and failure damage hard disk. Yes. What often kills a hard disk is the spike/surge that happens when power is restored - so if the power goes down, unplug it. A good power bar with surge protection can help in most situations. If you have a server that runs 24/7, get a UPS.

How do you maintain your HD. Defragment it often - monthly is good. Some people back up their files and format their drive on a regular basis - this eliminates a lot of issues.

Basically, the efficiency of a HD descreases over time - as the disk gets more fragmented and you get more bad sectors. The first you can address through maintenance, but the last just happens.

Make backups. Its not a question of if your hard disk will die, its when.

James

You can maintain your disk in a number of ways.
1. run scheduled scandisks
2. run scheduled defrags
these are native OS tools to maintain your HD.
you can also use 3rd party tools to check the disk and even benchmark it and also defrag or scandisk the drive. An example of a 3rd party app would be like Nortons System mechanic.

Yes Power Flatuation can damage or make your disk fail. While your disk is in the proccess of writing or reading data, a sudden power loss can currupt the drive and even give you bad sectors.

In order to increase a HD effeciency you would run the scheduled disk maintance utils to keep your disk up to par. Its like taking a car to get an oil change or change of spark plugs.