Which kind of hard drive is more reliable?
Q: I have had conventional hard drives fail, as I’m sure you have. Have you seen any information that would indicate which drive is more reliable and trouble-free: conventional hard drive or solid-state drive? I’m wondering if the SSD is truly worth the extra money.
A: Simply put, solidstate drives or SSDs tend to be more reliable than conventional hard-disk drives due to the fact that there are no moving parts in an SSD. Most harddrive failures tend to be due to mechanical failure, which is not an issue with the solid state drive.
That is not to say SSDs don’t fail, because they do. Just not as often and not in the same way.
Another benefit to the SSD is the speed. Data transfers from SSDs are noticeably quicker than regular hard drives. If you have two computers that are exactly the same and one has an SSD and the other an HDD, the SSD computer will boot faster and be more responsive than the HDD computer.
I have updated an old laptop with an SSD drive, and it has been a dramatic improvement.
Unfortunately, SSD drives are much more expensive than regular hard drives. When it comes to mass storage like backups or other big data sets, you are still going to have to consider a standard hard drive due to the cost.
Q: Occasionally when I close out of Outlook and then open, I get an error message that says my PST file is in use and cannot be accessed. The error remains until I restart my computer. Sometimes I have to restart it twice. Do you know what is going on?
A: A PST file is the file Outlook uses to store a local copy of email messages that have been downloaded from the mail server that hosts your email. If that file is being accessed by something other than Outlook, then Outlook needs access to your PST file to be able to display your messages.
The error you are seeing is telling us that something on your PC is accessing this file. The most common culprit would be your backup software. Programs like Acronis and Carbonite cannot back up your PST file while Outlook is running, so they will wait till Outlook is closed to do so.
In normal operation, your backup software should be able to do what it needs to do and then release the file so that Outlook can launch normally.
Since your backup software runs automatically and in the background, it’s not always easy to see that it is running. You can try disabling it in the Task Manager or finding the icon in the Task Bar and disabling it to see if you can then start Outlook.
If you do determine that it is your backup software causing this issue, I would suggest that you make sure the software is up to date. If it is and the problem persists, you may be looking at having to reinstall the application. But before doing that you may want to call tech support for the software to get troubleshooting help.