hard disk failure

[garland]

This is more like a notification, not a request for help (I used to do hard disk recovery a few years ago so I'm good) but basically just incase anyone was wondering "hey, what happened to MPM" ..

I thought juggling 50+ hours a week at sprint, the business, my hobbies, my life, all the time spent driving to/from work (45 mins one way), new projects (se-r spec v cams, redline ecu, etc) were difficult... until my hard disk decided without warning to take a dump on me.

Let me tell you, it qualified as "spectacular catastrophic failure".

I was playing some quake 3 (recently took 3rd in a 100 man tournament and was trying to improve the skillz) when suddenly, without warning, the hard disk decided a head crash was in order.

For those who don't know, the hard disk consists of several trays (called platters) which store information on "hard" disks magnetically. My drive rotates at 7200 rpm. It's an IBM "desk star" (which I later found out is also called the "death star" for this very problem) drive. IBM is usually considered top shelf for hard disks.

Apparently what happens *edit - on this model of hard disk* is the spindle (The little arm that reads the data) gets "snagged" on the lubricating coating on top of the disk and basically drags across it. The sound it makes is very similar to a cat dying.

Oh and it's BAAAAAD. This drive is going to take me a VERY long time to recover anything from. Out of the first 25% I was only able to recover 12 files. Should have been more like 4,000.

So this is gonna put a dent in some product turnaround times and development.

[Guru1]

Man that sucks, been there. Are you in a Q3 clan by any chance? Used to have one myself not too long ago but moved on to UT 2004.

Good luck with the PC troubles.

[garland]

Nah, I primarily went to show my friend that I wasn't just BS'ing about how 6-7 years ago on TEN (an online gaming network) I had a 600 win streak in one on one games before I finally hung it up (in doom, doom 2, and duke 3d) and went to play quake 1 on the internet. I played some of the original UT after that but basically stopped playing games. I actually had never played quake 3 against real players (only bots as practice 2 days before) prior to that day.

Funny thing is the only people to beat me there was a kid who scored some quick frags (5 w/ quad) but then RAN from me the rest of the level.. final score on that was 5 to 4... I had him and he just kept running until the timer ran out :-/

The second was actually my friend from work. He's one of the best I've ever played and it was a helluva match. Unfortunately his skills were far more honed & he knew the levels alot better so he beat me 3-1 (I actually had -2 and came back to 1 so had I not fallen in the lava 2x it would have been tied ).. but that's ok, I'll get better and beat him next time (like I always do )..

www.fites.net

That's who sponsored the tourneys.

[myredline]

Was it an old or a new IBM drive?? IBM's used to be one of the best drives if not the best. They were bought out by Hitachi last year. Since then I have seen a little loss in quality.

Sorry I've been building and servicing computers for Fords, GM, Miller brewing, AB...etc for a long time. Kinda of a Computer geek.lol

[garland]

Yeah bro, the IBM quality was the reason I bought it. However apparently this is a kind of notorius issue with this type of drive, an IBM desk star hard disk. I've had mine for a while now. Basically the problem apparently occurs as it runs for long periods, where the head snags the lubricating surface on the hard disk.