...!

[plonq]

I heard a disturbing sound in the computer room when I wandered in there with my first cup of coffee this morning. It was something between an angry buzz and a hum, almost like a transformer that is getting ready to explode. The sound had one of those all-pervasive qualities that you get in a room full of various whirs and drones and sound-reflecting surfaces. I couldn't readily isolate it, but I had narrowed it down to one of four things:

1. A UPS getting ready to explode


2. A power supply getting ready to explode


3. A cooling fan with a cord rubbing up against it


4. Something I didn't want to contemplate

Since my computer seemed to be working (for a change), I deduced that atara's new computer must be in distress. Still operating under the hope that it was either the power supply, or a cord caught in a fan, I tried to shut down windows, and everything froze up. At that point I knew that I was dealing with a hard drive. The buzz I was hearing was probably the sound of a drive head bouncing merrily along on a platter. That was pretty much confirmed for me when I manually powered off the machine and heard the buzz of the hard drive spinning down.

The only silver lining out of this is that it is the new hard drive that died. Almost all of her important, irreplaceable files are still on the old drive. That's not to say that she didn't lose anything, and she is also faced with a whole new install/reconfigure cycle once we get the replacement drive. She had finally got everything set up the way she liked it on the new machine when it all went to hell.

This is three hard drives we have lost in the last three of years that all died within their warranty period. The first two were IBM/Hitachi, and the most recent was a Seagate. As much as I like to save money on components, I would also like to get components that are not worthless shit that breaks inside of the first couple of months. Heck, I'd even be willing to pay a little more for my computer parts to get that.

In the mean time we'll do a repair install on her old XP hard drive so that we can get it working on her new hardware. That will keep her going until the replacement drive arrives. The price of hard drives is very low right now (for good reason, apparently) and I am seriously thinking about getting a second one and setting up a RAID 1 on her machine to help avoid this in future. What are the odds of two drives blowing up at the same time?

Comments

[ducktapeddonkey.livejournal.com]

Man, that sucks. I hate it when HDs cack out like that. If it's your OS drive, you'll be losing another few hours of your life.

Do you guys run Linux at all?

I recently got my little sister's laptop back after it was Owned. Installing Windows on it was a huge pain the ass due to all the weird drivers. So what I did this time was reinstall it but I left a small partition for a little Linux install. Then I did a PartImage on the Windows drive.

I've used PartImage before with good success. It sure beats spending all that time reinstalling and upgrading if you need to restore your OS.

I'm glad to hear you didn't lose an irreplaceable files.

[pierrekrahn.livejournal.com]

If you're going to do a RAID, why not go all out and do a RAID5? Hard drives are cheap, after all!

[atara.livejournal.com]

.... Don't encourage him.

[atara.livejournal.com]

Well, I'll have lost a few files, but at least I didn't lose all my photos and stories and stuff. :O

Meh, Plonq screwed around with Linux a while ago and found it clunky and hard to use. I was loving Vista, and once we get a new drive I'll reinstall it.

[ducktapeddonkey.livejournal.com]

Linux certainly isn't for everyone.

That aside, you might want to consider some other kind of "cloning" software. Even you only ever use it once, it's worth the effort of setting it up.

Acronis and R-Drive are two that I use professionally. Both seem to work well as long as your hardware platform doesn't change. You also might want to check out something called the System Rescue CD. It's a bootable CD with a bunch of free tools on it.

How long does it take to install (and update) Vista these days?

[shockwave77598.livejournal.com]

One, setup a Raid1 with SataII drives if you have SataII connections.

Two, try the RE series of drives from Western Digital. Little hint - they are cheaper at NewEgg for some reason.

here is what I run a pair of...
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136055

[typographer.livejournal.com]

What are the odds of two drives blowing up at the same time?

Well, if this were happening to the fictional Plonq, I'd say it was a dead certainty. :P

[atara.livejournal.com]

A fresh install took about an hour. (?maybe?) And it updates itself while I'm sleeping. :)

[plonq.livejournal.com]

I got a pair of Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 500GB for $115 (CDN) each.

Now the trick is trying to get Vista 64 to install on the RAID setup. It went really smoothly on the single drive, but I don't think I've seen so many consecutive BSODs since I set up the RAID1 on her machine and tried to install it.

I take back any good (or even average) thing I might have ever said, or even thought about Microsoft.