RIP Aldhelm

[Haeleth]

Aldhelm, my loyal hard disk, passed away yesterday in the early hours of the morning after a short illness. He was survived by several gigabytes of backups. The funeral will be held on Tuesday at South Bristol Crematorium; family flowers only please.

While I had backups of all my important data (unlike some in the scene), I have lost a few emails from the last week or so. If anyone sent me anything important recently, you're unlikely to get a reply unless you send another copy!

Condolences.

南無阿弥陀仏。

most unfortunate, do rest in peace Aldhelm

Don't feel sorry for him, I'm sure he fulfilled his purpose in this world.

My Sympathies..

I have seen a number of hard drives pass away named and unnamed, everytime time they do, it hurts more than the last..I feel your pain..

At least Aldhelm recieved a name, I'm sure he was happy to be of service to you..

May Aldhelm find peace in the next world..

[Weave]

We never know when our time, or the time of our beloved HDD will come. So remember to backup, or atleast have nothing too important on your computer (yeah right).

[Aldareon]

Just out of curiosity, how long did Aldhelm serve before finally applying for retirement?

I still keep an old drive from the early pentium eras (about 10 years ago) which continues to prove its loyalty to me. I have a feeling it's about to apply for it's long service leave soon ~_~

[Haeleth]

Just two years. But then it was an IBM Deathstar, I'm probably lucky it lasted that long...

Relieved postscript: while Windows was no longer able to boot with Aldhelm connected, I managed to regain access through Linux (Knoppix is worth its weight in gold!), enabling me to recover the last few items I thought I'd lost, including those recent emails.

[Aldareon]

Ah yes .. IBM. Notorious for producing erroneous HDDs. The drive still ran .. so the cause of death was more like alzheimers? Just started having bad clusters and forgetting bits here and there (no pun intended ^_^).

I was lucky that when I got an IBM Aptiva a few years back I was given a quantum fireball instead of the standard IBM stuff. It's still working, but I've since placed it as a secondary drive just to be on the safe side.

Linux is cool .. my only gripe is when the computer does an improper shutdown and Linux tries to repair the inconsistencies. In my case if I choose to try a repair I always end up with some important files being missing or corrupt, forcing me to redo the entire linux installation.

[Haeleth]

The main symptom is going "Click...beep! Click...click...click...beep!" constantly, and sometimes hanging the computer for several minutes while clicking away all the time. Sounds like a faulty bearing or something. At any rate, it's quite unusable now (Windows even BSODs if I try to boot with it connected), even though most of the data still seems to be okay...

And it's all because IBM outsourced their hard drive assembly to a dodgy factory in Hungary. Grrr.

Named hard drives, huh?

My external hard drive is called BIG149, because it's (physically) big and has 149 gigs of space.

I'm weird.

Anyhow, sorry about your HD man.

[Talbain]

My hard drive's call C:\

=)

[Soulfang]

I named mine Naglfar and Reginleif :)

[zalas]

Originally Posted by Haeleth

The main symptom is going "Click...beep! Click...click...click...beep!" constantly, and sometimes hanging the computer for several minutes while clicking away all the time. Sounds like a faulty bearing or something. At any rate, it's quite unusable now (Windows even BSODs if I try to boot with it connected), even though most of the data still seems to be okay...

Wait, is the hard drive itself beeping or is the computer beeping? I didn't think hard drives had speakers...
I'm still wondering what I should be doing about one of my "dead" harddrives. It seems as if the voltage comparator for the hard drive relay is shot, because when it turns on, it'll spin up and then click as if the power had been turned off, turns on, spins up again, etc.

well I know one of the problems with the deathstars (60 and 80 gb models at least) had the whole problem with overheating them the heads (I think thats the name of them) on the hard drive would get stuck against the platters. I believe the clicking sounds were cause of the heads trying to put themselves basically in the positiont hey are supposed to start off in. I know on my old deathstars putting them in the freezer for bout an hour or so (of course in a bag) would help you get some life out of the drives. there is also a firmware update out somewhere for certain versions of the deathstars that is supposed to help.