Drakkenfyre's Journal: My New Hard Drive, RIP

They say the world ends not with a bang, but with a whimper. The opposite was true for my new Maxtor hard drive.

It was good that my beloved Svartormr was over; he was able to help me determine the cause of death. The first sign was a lockup. It was my first total freeze in Windows 2000. But I'd only had that OS installed for a month--though it took me a month to get an OS installed at all--so I thought it was one of those occasional blips that occurs, no matter your OS (yeah, I'm talking about you, Linux!Geeks).

So I restarted.

Later, Svartormr said, "Gee, what's that ticking sound?"

I said, "It's more of a pinging. 'Ping-wheeeeeeee' 'Ping-wheeeeeeee'."

We both got down on the floor, on our hands and knees, and listened to my computer. Was it the CD-ROM? No. Was it the other CDR? No. Was it the burner? No. Was it the clackity old Quantum Fireball? Nope. Was it even a fan? No.

It was by brand new Maxtor DiamondMax Plus. The hard drive I'd just spent over a month trying to build a working OS on. Just as I got everything up and running--my games, my apps, my tweaks--it all came grinding to a halt. Because after the pinging sound, the computer froze again. I turned it off to formulate a plan, and when Svartormr and I decided to start her up one more time to transfer the essential files off, this is what happened:

Chunk-chunk-chunk-chunk-chunk-chunk-chunk.

HDDs aren't supposed to make that sound. I immediately shut it off, but there was nothing that could be done. It was a dead as a frickin paperweight.

At least it's still under OEM warranty, if I can find the damn receipt.