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August 02, 2005

The computer gods are angry. At me.

Hardware, n.: The parts of a computer system that can be kicked.

Henri Karrenbeld

One of the more unpleasant ways for your computer to remind you that nothing is forever is by generating crunching and grinding noises from the hard drive. This, to me, has always been an explicit proof that demons do inhabit computers, and they are glutting the maw of the abyss with my data.

We all know things wear out, though the computer is only three years old, I had expected a little more longevity from a modern drive.

I thought I'd take the drive out, buy a new one and reinstall everything and mourn the data that Apollyon is now enjoying.

On removal, I discovered something I had not seen on a hard drive before, a breathing hole, labelled "Do not cover". If, like me, you were under the impression these things were hermetically sealed in order to keep everything bad away from the microscopic-tolerence workings of the drive, you were wrong too. Upon further research, I find:

Hard disk drives are not airtight. They have a permeable filter (a breather filter) between the top cover and inside of the drive, to allow the pressure inside and outside the drive to equalize while keeping out dust and dirt. The filter also allows moisture in the air to enter the drive. Very high humidity year-round will cause accelerated wear of the drive's heads (by increasing stiction, or the tendency for the heads to stick to the disk surface, which causes physical damage to the disk and spindle motor).

So... You're filtering out particles of everything except water. Thank you. New York, over the last two months, has been consistantly incredibly humid. So, at the very least, I have a steaming gun.

Finding a replacement drive is proving slightly problematic. The drive bay doesn't get a lot of airflow, so the drive gets quite warm. The old drive was 4200rpm and most of the replacement ones I've seen run considerably faster, and consequently, hotter.

Hunt for replacement hard drive, or bite the bullet and just get a new laptop?

The jury is out.

Scrawled illegibly by Meathe at August 2, 2005 10:53 AM

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