Psst, Back Up That Hard Drive
from the ah-yes dept
I'll admit that this one only caught my eye because my wonderful laptop had its second hard-drive in less than nine months commit suicide on Friday, and I had the exact same experience when I spoke with the tech support folks as the guy in this article had. They told me, based on what I was telling them, that the hard drive was probably deader than dead, and they were sorry, the data was probably gone. I told them (as did the guy in the article), not to worry, I had all my data backed up. The repair folks were shocked. Despite years and years of people saying, "you need to back up your data", no one ever does until it's too late. Even I'll admit that my religious backing up of local data only started after the last hard drive died. In the meantime, if anyone has any idea what would cause a laptop to fry a hard-drive every four months or so, and can come up with a suggestion for what needs to be done to prevent another fried hard drive four months from now, I'd appreciate it.
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What about computerphile bacteria?
There are bacteria out there that thrive in battery acid. Is it not a matter of time before a bacteria arises, accidentally or intentionally, that thrives on computer circuits? Computer keyboards are more dirty than the surface of the average toilet seat, so the opportunities for transmission are there.
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MLO
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bad drives
if so, I heard of entire productions of a model of drive being defective. If your replacement was the same model, that's a possibility- and I would ask for a different brand/make if you can.
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install utilities
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Clicking Hard drives...
In my old Thinkpad laptop, the drive began clicking and then stopped working entirely. I rigged up some 5 inch muffin fans to force alot of air though the laptop, and dropped the CPU and HDD temps down, and could do a final incremental backup, and then did a full ghost onto a new drive.
The culprit was a dead fan on the CPU, which caused the drive to fail before the CPU.
Scott
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Re: install utilities
This isn't a software problem, but a hardware problem, where the drive starts clicking and then dies completely. I don't think any utility is going to help with that.
The only thing I've heard from tech support people is that they think it may have something to do with the power supply, saying that will often cause hard drive's to start clicking and die.
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Re: install utilities
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Re: install utilities
This time, the computer company, whose name rhymes with "Hoshiba" but starts with a "T" has so far been much friendlier. However, the fact that the hard drive has already died twice (and the docking station and screen have each died once) in a nine month old laptop, doesn't make me particularly thrilled with them either. But at least they've been friendly about it.
Anyway, new hard drive is in the laptop, and now I'm starting the process of restoring my backed up data. Fun stuff.
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If you're in the midwest, you probably know about the storms we have lately. The last big one fried my network card and knocked out the power in my house. Last year a similar storm blew out my power supply twice (in like two weeks)! So I have no doubts that such a storm could have easily killed your hard drive.
The solution:
1. Replace your surge protector every two months
I know it sounds lame, but that's what they're made to do.
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HDD failure
On power protection--I suppose you know this, but your average 'power strip/surge suppressor' is less than useless; all they do is provide 6 outlets from one. My criteria: any surge suppressor that has a disclaimer for lightning strikes is junk. The good ones (APC, Tripplite, etc) never have such a disclaimer--i.e. "This is a surge suppressor, not a lightning arrestor; it is not meant for..."
Finally, if the drives are actually having mechanical failures, I would suspect either 1--bad run of hard drives, or 2--some problem in the laptop causing excessive heat buildup.
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