MetaChat - Ask Mecha Techie Help

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17 May 2006

Ask Mecha Techie Help So I got a new external 250 GB hard drive →[More:](SimpleTech, on sale, Circuit City, 3 year manufacturer warranty) and I put all my music & my images on it so I would have more room on my regular hard drive and I felt all groovy and nerdy and techno and smart. Then last night while I was listening to my music on my possessed copy of winamp and playing an online word game, my entire computer suddenly froze and started emitting this high pitched non stop screaming beeping sound and so I shut it all down. Booted up fine this morning, working fine so far, but then I haven't had the nerve to try listening to music again. Is this new hard drive evil? Should I return it? When I look at the files on the new hard drive everything looks to be there and it all looks happy enough, chugging right along.

post by: mygothlaundry at: 11:54 | 4 comments

Was the screech coming from the external HD? If it was, then yes, your're hosed. If no, then it was more likely a seized fan in the powersupply or on the processor heatsink, or sometimes a dying CRT will squeal.
If you want to check out the health of the hard drive, you can use a S.M.A.R.T. monitor which accesses the builtin error reporting on the disk.

posted by Triode 17 May | 12:08

Tangentially related: Is everything backed up? If not, I'd do that, just in case.

posted by Uncle Glendinning 17 May | 13:11

Any new devlopments, MGL?

posted by Triode 18 May | 11:24

It hasn't happened again yet triode, but then I've been afraid to play music, too.

posted by mygothlaundry 18 May | 13:54

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