Just like the Hee-Haw song, “If it weren’t for bad luck, I’d have no luck at all.” I wrote a few entries back that I had to replace the 500 Gig hard drive in my lightning struck main computer. Not so bad at about $70.00. The new drive was an OEM version so a good price.
Well, that NEW drive just failed. Yes, still under warranty but I had to schlep all the way back down to Micro Center (40 miles RT), stand in line for 35 minutes and pick up an exchange drive.
I figured the first new drive was flakey as when I installed it, it failed the slow formatting. Not a good sign. I messed with it a bit and did a quick format and that went well. A slow 500 Gig hard drive format takes a very looong time…
The drive looked good from Vista and it would take data without a problem. I just had that bit of worry in the back of my head about the long format failure. So I wasn’t putting anything important on that drive for awhile. A few backups, but they are not a loss if lost and what they back up is still good. (Think about that one.)
The last few days the computer began issuing a loud “CLICK” about every two to five minutes and I never heard that sound from a computer before. I suspected a hard drive, but since I have four I couldn’t tell which one. Worry thoughts started growing again. Was it one of the old drives going bad? I wasn’t blaming the NEW drive quite yet but I was actually hoping that would be the case.
Sure enough, I started getting very long boot delays as Vista was trying to deal with the failing drive. Finally a DOS type screen (white letters on black) warning appeared about a failed drive. Yep, it was the brand new 500 Gig. It tried to do a check disk but failed in a few minutes.
I tried re-formatting and all kinds of diagnostics but I had to face the truth that I had lost what was on the drive and I should yank it out of the computer box and get it exchanged under warranty.
I just got back and the replacement drive is installed. A new long format seems to be running well. It takes hours to complete. I’ll fill in some time posting this on the blog. I’ll let you know if this one has a problem, but I hope I don’t have to write about that event.