Skip to the Main Content

Note:These pages make extensive use of the latest XHTML and CSS Standards. They ought to look great in any standards-compliant modern browser. Unfortunately, they will probably look horrible in older browsers, like Netscape 4.x and IE 4.x. Moreover, many posts use MathML, which is, currently only supported in Mozilla. My best suggestion (and you will thank me when surfing an ever-increasing number of sites on the web which have been crafted to use the new standards) is to upgrade to the latest version of your browser. If that's not possible, consider moving to the Standards-compliant and open-source Mozilla browser.

April 21, 2010

HD Failure

The hard drive on Golem went south this morning, and the machine was offline for about 14 hours. It was a fairly quick matter to procure a replacement drive from the Campus Computer Store ($60 for a 500 GB model which, since the original 250 GB drive was less than half full, should be more than adequate).

It took a couple of attempts to restore the Time Machine backup to the new drive, and considerably longer to get the machine to boot properly from the new drive. This leads me to suspect that the SATA controller may, itself, be dodgy. If so, then a fourth-generation Golem may be imminent. After 15 years, perhaps it’s time.

There was a period of a few hours between the last Time Machine backup and when hard drive gave up the ghost. Any blog comments or emails received during that period obviously didn’t make it onto the new disk. I may still be able to recover them from the old disk …

This experience (aside from killing what was otherwise shaping up to be a very productive day) left me with a new appreciation for “the cloud” and the redundancy it provides. My concerns about data security haven’t so much been allayed as supplanted.

Update (4/25/2010):

The SATA controller seems to be fine. The fans, however, are continously cycling up and down (very distracting) and the machine is afflicted by intermittent bouts of thermal runaway. I wonder if I can used wake-on-LAN over the internet, to save myself a trip into the office when that happens.
Posted by distler at 2:08 AM | Permalink | Followups (2)