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?