UTMC

That's all, hard drive crashed, bad. Not fixable, getting a new hard drive Monday. $300 no idea what happened, I guess these things happen sometimes.

Using a borrowed machine now, never thought I'd miss a computer so much...

First, I don't even know what a hard drive is. Second, someone other than me had to figure out what the fuck was wrong with the computer. Third, dude is going to load it with all the latest versions of whatever the fuck goes on a hard drive.
I figure the guy's time is valuable.

Still think I'm being taken for a ride? I honestly have no idea.

piccini9 wrote:First, I don't even know what a hard drive is. Second, someone other than me had to figure out what the fuck was wrong with the computer. Third, dude is going to load it with all the latest versions of whatever the fuck goes on a hard drive.
I figure the guy's time is valuable.

Still think I'm being taken for a ride? I honestly have no idea.

Cost of an average harddrive: way under $100 retail.
Time it takes to install: Five minutes if you know what you are doing.

Time it takes to install windows and a few other apps and do the online upgrades: about three to four hours (bitter experience).
You figure it out.

I'm of course referring to an off-the-shelf generic PC. If you have something fancy like a Dell or a Mac where you can't pick what hd you want, you've been boned from the beginning.

It's a Dell Inspiron laptop.
No way I'd attempt any of this shit myself.
I feel like kind of an ass, not knowing how these things work. Like I feel contempt fo people who have no idea what makes a car function.
Would like to learn more about this stuff, but I feel like I'm in a netherworld of "Well I can turn it on and use it, but if anything goes wrong I'm totally fucked."
Kind of like the difference between a car's owner's manual, "To raise window, turn handle in a counter-clockwise direction."
and a Haynes manual, "After removing camshaft, check for galling, and tolerances within .0001 thousandths."
Did I mention that I'm a stone-carver?

Don't feel bad. I just paid $250 bucks for the same thing about two months ago.
I don't do this stuff. But I'm willing to pay someone else who does. We all do something we get paid for and we all pay to have things done.

I spent the same amount on a hard drive for my Mac laptop earlier this year.

Cheaper than buying a new computer.

Shitty. It's happened to me too. And thats the thing, it's common. You should expect your hard drive to fail. It's a fragile, wear prone, failure prone device, especially in a laptop. Get an external drive and back your shit up. Regularly.

Ah, a laptop! Now, you didn't say that, you should have said that. Moneyhogs, these things are. Yes, you can use them in the kitchen and on the sofa and stuff, but those are privileges that want to be paid for.

Have you considered a ssd to avoid future crashes and things?

DerGolgo wrote:ssd

That's "solid state drive" Pete. It's a damn good idea.

DerGolgo wrote:
Have you considered a ssd to avoid future crashes and things?

ssd?

Ah, sorry about that.

Solid state drives are like the little flash-cards or the usb-sticks, but BIGGER and FASTER. No moving parts that can actually crash, and there isn't a reading head that has to move around to find the data you want to use right now, but just transistors and stuff, it's fast as fuck.

A bit priceier than traditional harddrives, but they just don't crash. And they make your computer a lot faster whenever you do anything with stuff from the drive. You can make your virtual memory blazing fast with these, also.

piccini9 wrote:

DerGolgo wrote:
Have you considered a ssd to avoid future crashes and things?

ssd?

No moving parts = no bearings to fail or heads to crash into disks.

Last time I looked, they were expensive and low on capacity compared to a traditional HDD. ...it has been a while... a-googling I will go...

DerGolgo wrote:I'm of course referring to an off-the-shelf generic PC. If you have something fancy like a Dell or a Mac where you can't pick what hd you want, you've been boned from the beginning.

You can't pick what HDD you want in a vendor computer? Really. Man, I've been fucking things up a lot at work, then :p

You just have to have the right size (usually 2.5" [occasionally 1.8" for small ones] for laptops, 3.5" for desktops) and interface (IDE or SATA), plug it in, bam.

Thing is, for OS reinstall, software installation, diagnosis time...$300 is actually not all THAT terrible. Still cheaper than a lot of tech services out there. I don't charge that much usually, but I only really work on computers for this one family whose kids went to school with me.

As for SSD's, they're cool. I have one in the laptop I'm on right now. They are fast and a lot more durable etc than a regular hard drive with platters. They are not cheap, and they are not immune to failure. Think about how much RAM goes bad. It's still flash memory in there. Sure, it's not nearly as likely to have a hardware issue as a regular HDD, but it's still there. And of course there's always the good old OS/file system shitting itself. I like those (at least the data is usually recoverable). All that said, SSD's will be the norm in many systems in the next few years I'd guess.

Here's a video of 24 SSD's in a RAID array going so fast it blows your face off.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96dWOEa4Djs

thesoapster wrote:

DerGolgo wrote:I'm of course referring to an off-the-shelf generic PC. If you have something fancy like a Dell or a Mac where you can't pick what hd you want, you've been boned from the beginning.

You can't pick what HDD you want in a vendor computer? Really. Man, I've been fucking things up a lot at work, then :p

I thought installing the non-vendor-approved product voided the warranty in these things (I was assuming the computer was moderately new-ish to warrant spending $300 on it). Oh well, nevermind.

Eh, depends. I have a friend who modded the shit out of his Dell computer (adding fans/lights and crap to the inside of his case). They didn't seem to care. If the computer was under warranty I'd hope this conversation would not take place and the OP would just get a new HDD for free.

Yeah, If I was doing side pc work putting in a $100 drive plus the hours to reinstall for a laptop three bills would be about right. I deal mostly with servers at work so $300 hard drives are not an initial shock. But you can get a ginormous pc hard drive for that. But you still have to rebuild the system, and hopefully recover anything you can from the old drive if it is accessible.
I hate IT...

thesoapster wrote:If the computer was under warranty I'd hope this conversation would not take place and the OP would just get a new HDD for free.

There, you see, that's where I got the stupid.

Bo_9 wrote:Yeah, If I was doing side pc work putting in a $100 drive plus the hours to reinstall for a laptop three bills would be about right. I deal mostly with servers at work so $300 hard drives are not an initial shock. But you can get a ginormous pc hard drive for that. But you still have to rebuild the system, and hopefully recover anything you can from the old drive if it is accessible.
I hate IT...

This reminds me of one of the interns we had. He was in the process of getting an information systems degree. While working on some computers in the office one day, he couldn't get something or another right, and I just remember him making this overly frustrated groan and going, "URGH! I hate computers!" This was repeated a few times over the course of his internship. We all just had to laugh a bit and say, "Hmm. Do you think you might be in the wrong career?..."

I will say IT is one thing, government IT is another . I have definitely been learning a lot of new stuff I don't think I could have anywhere else, though. For me, at least, I can still make plenty of fun out of the situation.

Dell laptop HD's are garden variety 2.5, never had one fail perhaps because I bought more expensive model. I get a warranty on my shit anyway, last time I dropped my Latitude (from a loading dock) it was repaired in 48 hours and they didn't care that I kept the drive while they overnighted it to their repair facility. I run a small business and use it to purchase my stuff, they do not offer same accidental damage warranty(insurance) to home use consumer. Did I mention the warranty was about $300, same as piccini paid for that drive.

Dell customer service had gone to hell in recent years and now I mostly buy Mac's... HD is still same 2.5" SATA