It's not a good sign when...

[NeoGen]

... you hear a few odd clicking sounds from your hard drive, everything slows down, and a second later a blue screen comes up. :( :(


Just happened to me twice in the last 24 hours... Something tells me I have to get a new one ASAP!! :icon_neutral:

[gatekeeper53]

Sounds like you need to get a new one yesterday lol

[spikey_richie]

Start taking those backups whilst you still can...

[NeoGen]

I think this is the chance for me to do something I've been wanting to for a while. I'm gonna get myself two small hard drives and set them in RAID 1 (Mirrored).
I'm thinking of two 160Gb hard drives, that are quite cheap nowadays, and I don't even need half of that space, so it's more than great.
My other concern is that they should be SATA drives, altough my little old machine doesn't support it, so I guess I'll have to add a SATA controller card to the bundle.
When I upgrade the machine someday, at least the hard drives will be perfectly compatible.

[NVM]

do you have S.M.A.R.T. ? check your BIOS and it should be turned on. it could help you(warn you) about a failing drive next time.

if it were me with this drive and there was important data on it, i would pull it out, set it to slave on another system, and drag all important stuff off of it, now.

[drezha]

Unfortunatly I think my drive is a RAID1 (I seem to remember seeing it somewhere in documentation) which is bad because I want one for system data, the other for documents.

I mean I backup my docs weekly to CD-RW but the hard drive copy is nice as well. Did have daily backups as well to my laptop but I've kept that turned off recently until I get some air to blow out the fans.

[NeoGen]

do you have S.M.A.R.T. ? check your BIOS and it should be turned on. it could help you(warn you) about a failing drive next time.
Yea, it's always been turned on but not giving any warnings.
The only time I ever saw S.M.A.R.T. complaining was on a friend's computer and it was saying something like that there were damaged sectors on the hard drive.
Those clicks I heard sounded kind of metalic, I'm afraid it might be something mechanical.

[spikey_richie]

If you got BSoD that quickly, it COULD have been your CPU fan...

[Opteron]

I think this is the chance for me to do something I've been wanting to for a while. I'm gonna get myself two small hard drives and set them in RAID 1 (Mirrored).
I'm thinking of two 160Gb hard drives, that are quite cheap nowadays, and I don't even need half of that space, so it's more than great.
My other concern is that they should be SATA drives, altough my little old machine doesn't support it, so I guess I'll have to add a SATA controller card to the bundle.
When I upgrade the machine someday, at least the hard drives will be perfectly compatible.

I don't know what Brand you like but watch the WD SATA 160's... Although the one I have has never given me any problems it runs at 107-F while a HDD with the exact same cooling is running at 73... Just food for thought... Good luck!!!

[AMDave]

clicks and beeps coming from the hard drive that sound out of the ordinary are likely to be the hardware recalibration sequence kicking in. This is the first (and usually the last) indicator of a HDD hardware failure. It is most often experienced with laptop harddrives which are prone to bumps and knocks (regardless of their impact rating), as I discovered about 2 months ago. In some of the laptop (2.5") drives, the recalibration sequence is so fast that it sounds like a BEEP. At this point you get what you can onto a network drive ASAP. Gee I wish I knew that before it happened. :(

If you buy and build to RAID-5 on your most critical machine you will be doing great.

[AMDave]

Follow up post.

Anyone need a better reminder to GET YOUR BACKUPS DONE ???
I'm doing mine right now :)

[vaughan]

I backup my immediate day's work as I go to a flash drive, then I e-mail the appropriate files to head office and the State rep. I have a second HDD in my PC purely so I can backup to this locally. I also copy the files to my notebook via the flash drive so i have a copy when I'm on the road.

I have been helped in the past by Norton utilities and Go Back but now Symantec has suffered from terminal bloatware syndrome I don't buy it / renew it anymore.

My HDD of choice currently is the Seagate 320 GB SATA 2 with 16MB cache.

[drezha]

CD is in the drive burning as I speak. My auto script zips up all my docs bar the music and videos and saves a copy to my desktop so I can burn to disc.

Not sure if I could do something like that in Windows but it seems simpler in Linux :)

[spikey_richie]

There's a freeware app that does that, called Cobian Backup.

[Ototero]

Did all mine on Saturday to the 2nd HD. I use acronis true image, seriously fast at backing up.

[Jerod Vandehey]

We use norton ghost at work. It takes a while, but I have never had a problem with recovering from it (except for a bad burner). I backup my projects at home and work daily with automated batch scripts (I know - archaic) to remote drives. I also recently got a one-touch and it does a decent job and is quick.

[drezha]

There's a freeware app that does that, called Cobian Backup.

That looks good. Got no use for it now really though as I run Linux. I'll keep it in mind though, cheers.

[NeoGen]

Got myselft 2x Maxtor DiamondMax 10 SATA drives, of 160Gb. They are the version with 8Mb cache, only the higher ones have 16 Mb. Found a review on the net about it.
http://www.techreport.com/reviews/2005q1/maxtor-diamondmax10/index.x?pg=1

Now the only bad thing is....I can't set them up yet, I forgot to buy extra SATA cables!:BangHead: :BangHead: :BangHead: