Computing woes

30 Jun 2006 · #misc

My laptop’s hard disk crashed last night :( It started making knocking sounds and then locked up, in a matter of seconds. Aren’t these things supposed to give a warning? Die a slow, painful death?! Roomie’s laptop drive did that - screamed for a month before giving up the ghost.

I don’t know which is better: work well and die quickly or work miserably but give all signs that you’ll be gone for good.

This is not a good month. First lost some disks at work and spent an awful lot of time recovering data from tapes. Now this. And I just got the laptop back after getting the fan replaced! Good thing its three year warranty still has a month left on it!

I don’t think I lost much data. Data from last year is on CDs. Some of my recreational code is lost but all the useful bits are sitting on the server anyway. Lost my messenger chat logs and some recent photos which I had neither burnt to disk nor uploaded to Flickr.

This incident just accelerates my PC buying which I’ve been contemplating for some time now. I thought I’ll hold off till I move apartments in September but not any more. Will go shopping for parts this Sunday.

This will be my first Windows free PC! I am planning to get a Pentium D 3.2 GHz system paired with a Dell 20” widescreen. Some component research notes here.

My laptop is called dungeon; that’s where this blog gets its name. What should I name this new machine?!