whirrrr-rr-rrr.. CLICK! CLICK!

The title of this entry is the sound a hard drive makes when it's thinking about or about to croak.

Yikes.

I use a laptop exclusively now, but my previous big box had two hard drives in it. One is a Maxtor 160GB and the other a Hitachi Deskstar 120GB. I don't remember why I have two.. just kinda happened that way I s'pose.

Anyway, I permanently retired the big box in favor of using a USB caddy which houses the 160GB drive that is plugged into my laptop via (duh) USB. It's been humming along like a champ for a while now. About a week ago the drive started doing that whirr-r-rr CLICK whirrr-rr-rr CLICK noise and it's been getting steadily worse.

Oh.. CRAP I said to myself.

I can still read all the drive data, but the drive may die as soon as tomorrow.

So I popped the 120GB out of the big box (it was still sitting in the case) and as I'm typing this I'm transferring data to the laptop, then unplugging the 160GB, popping in the 120GB and transferring to that.

You're probably wondering Why don't you just burn to CD or DVD?

Well, that would be all well and good, however I have 100 gigabytes of data to move that would require almost twenty-two DVD's which would take forever move that way.. so I'm doing the plug-in/plug-out method until I get all the data moved to the 120GB.

The biggest data that I'm moving are ISO's, audio files and movie files - all of which are frickin' huge. Games I've backed up, audio sessions I've done, video projects and so on. All of that just takes up a boatload of space.

This is kind of funny because I remember back in 1995 that every single app I would ever want or need would fit on two CD's. Two CD's can hold a full install of Windows 95, Office 97 and many many other apps for the time. Of course, you have to remember that tons of people were still using floppy disks in 1995 also, and burning anything to compact disc was a big deal.

What's also funny is that a 400GB (not a misprint) SATA is only $130.00. Eventually I'm going to have to spring for one. I say "only $130" becuase not so long ago drives less than half this size were selling for $250.00. Oh how the times have changed. Don't get me wrong, this is good, but sheesh.. I remember when the 1GB drives were first introduced to market. Who would need anything more than that? Right? 🙂