If Only I Had the Money for SCSI

Sunday, March 12, 2006, at 11:07AM

By Eric Richardson

I went for a long time before I had my first hard drive die on me. Now, though, it happens with far too much regularity.

I got a new drive for my laptop in November of 2004. Now, just 16 months later, I'm watching Seagate's pretty cool SeaTools spit bad sectors at me. Seagate has a very handy 5-year warranty, so I'm covered there, but it's still just a pain to have to go through the replacement process.

Sitting on my desk I have a dead 60gig IBM Deskstar and a dead Maxtor that I can't find a size on (I think it might have been Kathy's). Both were manufactured in 2001. On the other hand I've got a drive sitting in the server that's from 1997. Heck, I've got a Seagate sitting right here that's old enough their system chokes on the serial number. Specs I found online are dated 1990. That drive still works. Why can't modern drives make it two years?

Eric Richardson lives in Atlanta, Georgia, where he works on payments infrastructure for Cash App.

Past lives involved streaming audio for Southern California Public Radio, running a hyperlocal news site for Downtown Los Angeles, working on custom mapping code, and writing Perl at the Jet Propulsion Labratory.

Previously on this date...

2012
Scratching your own itch...
It feels nice to be able to build something that scratches your own itch, even if it may be one that no one else has. This morning I commuted to work...
2005
One With the Bike
I've mentioned in the last few posts that over the past few days I bought pedals (the SL-CR's) and shoes for my bike. Last night I very unsuccessfully...
Getting Around Town
Yesterday one of my PPD professors hosted our class for dinner at his house in Manhattan Beach. Being me, I made my way there via bike and train, taking...
2002
quote of the night
Paraphrasing Drew Pryor: The number one thing I would tell you is... don't be a COMM major. We already know common sense, we don't need to...
gar gar gar
It would make sense that the day before I have to take my COMM final, the USC email server would be borked up and I wouldn't be able to download the...