Please join me in a moment of silence for my dead hard disk. He read his last byte today. And he was so young, just 16 months. Too young to die.
It was a 120 GB hard disk that I used for video capture and working with other large files like CD images. It was used as a secondary drive. The primary drive has the OS and the important files and it is still A-OK. The important stuff on the 120 GB drive was all backed up. I only lost some big video files that were too big to back up. I had a raw capture of Universe 1 that I was going to make into a DVD for myself. That file was about 40 GB big. But I can do another capture from the video tape to get that back. I also lost a little video of some unicycling from a TV show that I was going to edit down but hadn’t gotten around to yet. But I can get that back if I can find the video tape that I got it from. So nothing really lost which is surprising considering it was 120 GB big and full of stuff.
The drive now makes a clicking sound like a drunk metronome that can’t keep even time. It’s no longer recognized as a drive by the BIOS. In fact, when it’s plugged in, the computer won’t boot at all. He’s dead Jim.
I bought a new 120 GB drive to replace the dead one. And to console myself I also picked up a DVD burner so I can finally get around to making that DVD version of Universe 1 for myself. Now I just gotta do the video capture again.
It could have been worse, but it sure sucks when it happens. Backup the stuff that you want to keep cause hard disks can kick the bit bucket.
What a coincidence. The drive that died was a Maxtor. It got replaced by a Western Digital.
I am making some space for Linux on the new drive, but I don’t know when I’ll get around to installing it. I had a couple of Linux ISOs on the drive that died. I’m going to have to re-download them to get 'em back. I don’t know which Linux flavor I’m going to play with yet. Maybe I’ll just go with Knoppix and avoid the whole installation thing.
But Linux would be just to play with. I’m a Windows and Visual Studio guy. I’m not much for unix type stuff.
let me tell you I got the same phenomena from a drive that was a primary drive, a few years ago. Turned out (thank you internet) that one chip on the drive’s circuit board had failed. I bought a similar drive (brand new) off someone through the Dutch equivalent of Ebay and got it working again. Happy I was, since I had quite some backlog in backing up.
Since then I am on a rigid routine of backing up every day to a second (internal) hard drive. I have a backlog, however, in backing up to an external medium. If the PC gets stolen or both drives would fail at the same time (e.g. lightning strikes) I would be in too much trouble.
This could be an unfortunate coincidence, or it might point to an outside problem, such as bad power.
Because the electricty in my house used to be structured like a bad Christmas light setup, I bought a voltage stabilizer for my computer. This conditions the power coming in, so it supposedly comes out of the device in a consistent stream. I haven’t had any hardware problems (knock knock), and my PC is from 1999.
Since then we’ve had our electrical system repaired by adding several new circuits.
Two dead Maxtors, eh? They’re very popular in the stores. Don’t know if they average more failures than other brands, but I’ll keep this in mind as I may soon be shopping for an external drive for my laptop. PC Magazine likes the Maxtor One Touch…
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Speaking of DVD’s of Universe 1, I wonder if Dan would object to people making copies of U1 to distribute on DVD. I already have it on VHS, but I don’t have a VCR and I’d like to see it again. If Dan ever put it out on DVD, I’d buy it, but it doesn’t sound like he’s going to.
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I wouldn’t read too much in to that. I had a Western Digital Caviar drive fail on me about 4 years ago. You’ll be able to find horror stories about every single brand of hard drive.
What convinced me to get the Western Digital drive is that this model of WD drive has a 3 year warranty while everything else has a 1 year warranty. Note that not all WD drives have a 3 year warranty, only certain models.
The hangup on doing U1 to DVD was music copyright. The permissions Dan originally got for the music he used were not solid enough, apparently, to support the move to easily-copied DVD. Instead of spending lots of time and possibly money on fixing up those rights, he concentrated on U2.
So based on that, making copies of U1 for anything other than personal use would probably be considered pirating. Even though I’d like to have one…
Actually, I think most hard drive failures are new drives. I had an 80 GB IBM Deskstar die on me a couple years ago. It was put in a new computer and died about 3 months later. I didn’t lose much data as most was still on the old computer or otherwise backed up.
Most hard drives are under warranty and they will replace them for you. Just send it back to the manufacturer and they’ll ship out another one for you, usually a refurbished one. Of course if you got top secret data on it, you’re better off just destroying it.
On my new computer, that I just built earlier this year, I put in a raid 5 system using four 160 GB seagate drives.
Unfortunately most IDE drives now only have a 1 year warranty. The standard warranty on hard drives used to be 3 years, now it’s down to 1 year. My drive died 4 months out of warranty.
Hopefully some time soon we’ll have affordable solid state mass storage devices that will replace the hard disk. A solid state device will be more reliable. Until that day comes, we’re going to have to deal with hard disk failures.
intrestingly times thread
i haven’t had disk failure (knock knock) but am about to get a 120 for my production studio as we’re moving away from using Soundscapes as a main audio editor and going to a PC based solution
the change was speeded up by the new office park we’re in deciding to do maintenance on the massive UPS/back-up power source for the entire place
they took this thing off line, clean forgetting to tell the radio station to power down and disconnect any electronic equipment
we’re not quite sure how big the wave was that came thru here but we had a good couple of fuses that simply melted down
a fair bit of damage, including my soundscapes unit
at least i’m getting new toys now
Regarding UNiVERsE 1 on DVD… I have no problem if people make personal copies for themselves if they already own the video. I would prefer that they do not distribute them.
I am planning on putting UNiVERsE 1 on DVD in the near future, so be on the lookout.
(sorry for any inconvienience caused)