Tuesday, July 05, 2011

The Sounds of Silence

“He’s dead, Jim.”

That was what flashed through my mind around 9 PM last night as it became clear that my external backup hard drive hadn’t just failed, but had done so in spectacular fashion. Despite an array of utilities I have, the thing won’t cough up any data whatsoever. Not even a low level format is possible.

I’ve had drives fail over the years in every possible way except bursting into flames or exploding. But none so completely. It looks like the power outages on Friday night killed it, since I suffered a BIOS corruption on our media center PC too. That was easily fixed.

So the hard drive I rely on to protect my most important data has shuffled off the mortal coil. Oh the irony. At the moment, I can’t afford a new one so I’ll have to buy a refurbished one at this rate. Of course, it was well out of warranty. Irritating.

Oh and for the record, it was a Western Digital 500 MB MyBook. WD drives and I have had an excessive failure rate compared to other brands. Perhaps I should find another brand.

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