Q: I have a computer with 10 GBs of free space. Being a film student I have projects that I have to work on. So I fill 9.5 GBs. Then save what I want on VCDs and remove/delete what I don't. So I again have 10 GBs of free space. I have more projects so I do this again and then again. My question is will the quality of my projects suffer, if I keep doing this, re-re-writing over the free space on my hard drive? I.e. will the quality be better on my first projects and lesser on my newer projects. And how would I go about checking the hard drive to make sure that it is working to it's best capacity? Any advice, suggestions and recommendations welcome. Thank you.
A: Hard Drives are not affected by repeated read/write operations. You can use your Hard Drive as much as you need to, and the quality and speed will not decrease. Regardless, you can run Windows' Built-In Disk Check program to scan your Hard Drive for bad sectors and other errors. 1. Simply go to My Computer. 2. Then, right click on your Hard Drive, and choose "Properties" 3. Go to the "Tools" tab, and choose "Error Checking". 4. When the Error Checking window open, make sure that you select the "sector" or "deep" scan as well. 5. This will make sure that your Hard Drive is still working properly. Finally, it is important to note that while VCDs are very convenient, their quality is not very high. So any video files that you save in VCD format will definitely loose some of their quality. I hope this helps.