Saturday, January 16, 2010  

[Dead or alive...]

I have four hard disks in my rig right now. One for my OS and data, another one to mirror it, a network drive for my sister, and one more which I use as a temporary drive. All the stuff I download or stuff I have no time to process yet are chucked there. I don't actually need a temporary drive, but when I got my new rig back in August, I had extra hard disks lying around so instead of letting them collect dust somewhere, I figured I would find some use for them.

Last night, I heard a clicking sound from my rig. Everything seemed fine at first, but after a while, my rig started hanging. It will recover and be responsive for short periods of time before hanging again.

I knew a hard disk was causing it. The problem is, I didn't know which one as I had four of them.

Eventually I was able to reboot and realised in the BIOS that it was my temporary drive that was dying. So while the bad news was that one of my hard disks has died, the good news was that it's the least important drive.

I was considering whether or not to replace the drive - after all, I didn't really need it in the first place. I thought it may be fun to try a SSD. But the nature of my usage and price of SSDs right quickly threw this option out the window. I thought I could get the smallest, cheapest hard disk to replace it, which will be a 250GB Hitachi for $60 (the dying one is a 500GB Western Digital).

I was all set to go get the new hard disk, even worked the trip into my pre-existing plans for the day. But when I turned my rig on this morning, everything seems fine. No clicking noises, the hard disk was detected by BIOS, no issues whatsoever.

I'm running a thorough Scandisk on it right now. I don't think I'll buy a new hard disk just yet. If this was one of my other hard disks, then I would buy a new one immediately. Since the dying hard disk isn't too important to me, I guess I'll wait and see how it all plays out.

^^^ by Locksley @ 10:26 AM. 4 comments.
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[Comments]

You want to throw away ur dead HDD? Can give to me? I wanna salvage the super strong magnets in the hdd. =p

I can return u the disk platters after I am done dismantling the whole HDD. =p

-Nixxy
Not dead yet. When it finally dies, I'll let you know.

What do you want the magnets for?
haha, they make superb fridge magnets! Ultra high powered ones! =)

If the HDD got 2 magnets, I can pass you one to play with it too. But with caution hor, dun injure urself over the magnet. =p

-Nixxy
Why can't you use normal fridge magnets like normal people? :P

Anyway, I'm planning to get a new hard disk on Friday. The want-to-die-don't-die one had another episode. No point prolonging the agony. I'll pass it to you at work after everything is sorted out.
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