Inconsistent hard drive failures

[xenxander]

Sometimes things just ‘crap out’ after a short while. Even if the company made 20 million of whatever you bought, and only 0.5% are bad, that’s still 100,000 bad units, and of those ‘bad’ units, not all are actually ‘bad’ per se, but some may conk out sooner than is normal (maybe even past the warranty) but will last longer than the ‘truly bad’ units.

 

Your PC setup is ancient though… I will say that all PC hardware starts to ‘misbehave’ after a few years; for instance I got an ‘almost’ top of the line laptop in 2001, but by 2005 it was so crappy it would sometimes have problems booting up.

 

I paid $2400 for it too *cries* but I figured it had a good run and it was time for a new one.

 

Now my PC -sometimes- acts up, and I custom built it back in 2005. This summer, my hardware will be about 3yrs old, and I can ‘feel’ how things are a bit slower than they were when everything was ‘cherry’.

 

I’d say always think about a major system overhaul every 3 – 5yrs (whichever is in your budget) and a ‘nickel and dime’ upgrade policy interim (i.e. a new video card that is better than yours but still cheap in comparison to ‘top of the line’ stuff; 8600GT upgrade over a 7600GT, for instance).

 

But when it’s time to get a new motherboard, then it’s time to overhaul. My motherboard won’t connect DDR2 or DDR3 RAM, because its ram slots have two nicks (DDR1 style), and DDR 2/3 ram only has one ‘nick’ in the chip card *sigh*

 

I will say that Western Digital makes some mean HDs. Never had any major issues with my 10,000 RPM HDs or my 550w turepower PS (which I know is a little low by today’s standards of 650w).

[TheTerminator2004]

I, I'd go with Western Digital or Seagate, if you decide to get a new HD, they are both excellent.

 

On the other hand... I notice your current HD is IDE... if at all possible, you should really get a SATA one, though I don't think your motherboard supports it - not only is SATA much faster, but IDE drives are getting increasingly hard to get hold of these days. I was buying myself a new HD (Western Digital 320Gb - my old 160gb one just isnt big enough anymore), and I only saw one IDE drive listed on the site. Of course, if your mobo doesnt have any SATA ports, you're kinda screwed.

 

Oh, and one more thing - if you do get a SATA drive, make sure to order a SATA data cable too, as its needed to connect to the motherboard, and new disks dont typically come with one. I just made this mistake, which cost me an extra fiver in delivery costs, opposed to the amount i'd have paid had I ordered them together <_<

 

Just for reference, my HD cost £57, inc. delivery + VAT, not inc. the cable, which came to another £9.98, so if you're getting a smaller, IDE drive, then it could potentially be around £15. Not too bad, really.