Real-Life Hard-Drive Horror Stories
When It Breaks, Replace It If You Want, But Don't Do What Egan Did
I know this because I could see all these things from the window in my home office, where I've spent the last several days trying to fix my desktop computer.
I can empathize with the parents in one of the concluding scenes of "Galaxy Quest." Their son, who spends entirely too much time reading sci-fi and sitting in front of a computer screen, bursts out of the household after explaining that a starship crew needs his help in making an emergency landing. The mother turns to her husband and says with a shrug: "At least he's outside."
That's my problem. I should be outside, but instead, I'm chained to the computer formatting hard drives -- a process akin to watching moss grow on rocks.
Drivin' And Cryin'
The problem started early last week when my backup hard drive crashed.
Hard drives store all of the programs and operating software used by the computer as well as all of the material you save to the computer, like e-mail, documents, photos and the like.
I've added a newer, larger hard drive to my computer, so I use the older drive to store backup versions of the operating system and all important data -- the theory being that if something happens to the new drive, I can remove it and go back to the old drive.
When the backup drive crashed, I unfortunately made an incorrect diagnosis. The crash appeared to be a problem with the Windows operating system, because Windows Explorer (the tool that lets you search within Windows) would crash whenever I'd try to access a drive. Programs using desktop icons would work, but anytime I'd click on "My Computer," the Windows Explorer program would display an error message.
Assuming that the Explorer program had become corrupted, I made the unfortunate decision to try reloading Windows 98 from its CD. This trashed my new drive.
Time For The Drive-ectomy
At this point, I opened the computer, detached the ribbon-data and power cables from the new drive, and removed it from the computer.
Reaching around to the back of the backup drive, I reset the "jumper." (Jumpers are tiny pieces of plastic and brass that connect two small pins together to complete a circuit. They perform the function of an on-off switch -- one that is nearly impossible to change for an old guy with fat fingers. When I pick up my computer, it rattles like one of those "rain sticks" you can get at the Discovery stores because of all the jumpers I've dropped into it over the years. But I digress.)
Then I tried to restart the computer. As Gomer Pyle might say, "Surprise, surprise" -- my backup drive wouldn't work and the computer failed to start.
The Quest For Outdated Equipment
At this point, a less stubborn man might have decided that five years of use from a computer is good service, and that it's time to get a new machine. But there's a lot of good new stuff coming out this summer, and I want to wait until then to get my new computer. Besides, I'm not about to let some machine get the upper hand, and a fix should be simple, right?
Wrong! My "trusty" computer won't take a hard drive with a data capacity larger than two gigabytes. So any replacement I would install would have to be smaller than that, and no one stocks drives that small anymore. (I could use software to trick the computer into using a bigger drive, but that can cause more problems than it solves.)
In search of the small hard drive, I called around to some used computer stores. One franchise operation was willing to sell me a used 1.7-gigabyte drive for $70. That's ridiculously expensive for a teeny drive: For about $200, or less than three times that price, you can buy a new drive with 12 times the data capacity. I was a smart enough shopper to say "No thanks."
If I knew then what I know now, I would have said, "Take your used hard drive and stick it!"
After searching for an appropriately sized, and reasonably priced, hard drive for three days, another man might have broken down and bought a cheap computer. But not me. My search for old, small, obsolete drives continued.
Fortunately, a computer show opened at the state fairgrounds last Friday, so I was able to spend another day indoors, with a horde of other pasty-faced computer geeks, searching through tables of old, small obsolete computer stuff. The trip turned out to be worth the effort, and I brought back not one, not two, but three "new" 1.7-gigabyte drives for only $30 each.
Now all that needed to be done was install the drives and install software -- a simple process, right?
Did I mention that I've still experienced spring only through my office window?
A Window Is A Window?
My computer originally was equipped with Windows 95, but I purchased an upgrade to Windows 98 following another bad experience last year (see my earlier do-it-yourself computer nightmare, "How Not to Install Linux").
Here's how the process of installing a new hard drive actually works:
- Connect the hard drive to the computer (trying not to drop jumpers and get cut on sharp metal edges inside the machine).
- Boot the computer using a Windows 95 boot disk.
- Discover that the Windows 95 boot disk won't recognize the new DVD drive.
- Reboot the computer with the Windows 98 boot disk.
- Format the drive for Windows 95.
- Install Windows 95 from CD-ROM.
- Install Windows 98 from CD-ROM.
- Re-format the hard drive for Windows 98.
- Download new video drivers.
- Find drivers for everything that Windows plug-and-play can't find.
- Install software from CD-ROM.
How's the process coming? Well, I'm in no danger of getting sunstroke, and this is being written on my laptop computer, but I hope to be up and running sometime next week.
You're probably wondering why I bought so many drives. Unfortunately, I need Windows because I want to continue to use the computer for DVD movies. Most of my other computer activities are confined to writing and Internet activities, so I'm going to have a second drive for the Corel Linux operating system, with Word Perfect Office 2000 and Netscape and Opera for my browser needs.
As for the third drive? It could be a backup, or a home for the Be operating system.
In the meantime, I'm getting a sun lamp to mount over my computer monitor.
--Tom Egan has worked the information business from photography and journalism to video production and online editing. He writes about technology from his home in Saint Paul, Minn., within three blocks of four bars that serve Guinness on tap. He can be reached at at egan@ibsys.com.
Related Links- From The Help! Menu: Installing A Bigger Hard Drive and 'Defragging' Your Hard Drive
- From WinDrivers.com: The Hard Drive Center
Originally published April 25, 2000.
