Ok, Seriously...

• 11th October 2005 at 09:19

So I wake up this morning and turn on my computer. Blue screen. Corrupt registry.

This isn't the first problem with this machine recently either. I've been getting "Unknown hard error"s for quite a few days, the computer has been hanging randomly - I've felt that the hard drive was on the way out. But what the hell? This one only just lasted 6 months, and for most of those months I haven't even turned the machine on, on account of me being on the other side of the country.

I don't do abnormal disk activity - it's a desktop and the hard drive only stores applications and games, I keep my work on other machines. I don't do long hard drive scans, I don't process hundred meg files every day, hell, I don't even play MP3s from it. I treat it better than any hard drive I've had, it's in a shock-proof temperature-controlled drive bay, and never runs at more than 25 degrees (apart from on abnormally hot days).

So I feel a bit bitter that this is the 6th hard drive this machine has chewed out in 4 years. I don't think it's the motherboard, I replaced that after the first 4 failed.

And now having blamed the hard drive, Seagate's diagnostic tools are saying everything's fine, just fine. Well, physically fine, but it says the partitions are corrupt.

All I can think is that it's the power supply - I've heard the loudest fan occasionally slowing, and I know that my graphics card was pushing the limits of the wattage. Perhaps the voltage (or whatever it would be) dropped too low just at the moment it was saving the registry last night. Is that even possible? Who knows.

So, what should I do? Order a new hard drive? New PSU? Or just scrap the whole thing and take up competition fishing?

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