[BigMike]

So, at the Race this Weekend, my laptop just stopped working. Cant find the Harddrive. I did everything I could to try and revive it, but alas, it didnt work. So it is now at my schools technology center being Data-recovered. Then off to Dell it goes.

So sad, I'm going to lose everything thats not super important

I had to make some hasty decisions at was was super important at $35/hr! :mumble:

 

[pixelninja]

I'm about there too. 2 nights ago, my c: drive started making some really really weird clicking/beeping/ticking noises. Sounds like computer death rattles to me. It also needs a new cd burner, I've run out of hd space and maxed out the ram a long time ago at 384mb. It's served me well since 1998, but I think its time to upgrade.

Besides this hd failure, have you been happy with your Dell?

 

[BigMike]

Besides this hd failure, have you been happy with your Dell?

Yes. I have an Inspiron notebook and it is really nice. Their customer service is bar none. Their extended warrenty is the best thing ever. Only bad part is you have to send it away to get it fixed.

 

[s1ngletrack]

We use all Dells on our network here (35 Desktops - 4 servers) - we've had very good experience with them.

 

[steve45]

my c: drive started making some really really weird clicking/beeping/ticking noises. Sounds like computer death rattles to me.

aaahhh the most frighteningly horrifying noise ever, especially when you've got 6 months worth of work stored on there, managed to get on another workstation to tranfer all the data and to burn off all the important files 10minutes before it kicked the bucket, i crapped myself.(the computers wernt connected to a proper server but they were connected together, if that makes any sense)

i always remember the metalic ticking and high pitched whiring, my exact word at that point were "AAAAAWWW PISH!!!!"

 

[pixelninja]

aaahhh the most frighteningly horrifying noise ever, especially when you've got 6 months worth of work stored on there, managed to get on another workstation to tranfer all the data and to burn off all the important files 10minutes before it kicked the bucket

Fortunately for me, I have an external firewire drive that has all my doc's backed up on. I've been burned BAD before.

 

[Wingnut]

I have a Dell at work that has been medioker, and one at home that did not work well from day one. I'm converting to Apple soon. My desktop at home is on a regular 'Blue screen of death' regiment, and, on occasion, works quite well. It is kind of my fault for not persuing the issues from the get go, but I just schrugged it off as typical windows operation.

 

[dh girlie]

Mine just passed away yesterday...It's at the computer doctor, but I'm fearing I lost all of my pictures and everything.

 

[syadasti]

Probably victims of IBM/Hitachi Deathstar HDD :devil:

 

[Skookum]

My hard drive was an IBM deskstar, had a cumulative problem with everything glitching out. The hard drive made a scritching noise from trying to read and re-read repeatedly over something. Turns out i had got my hands on a buggy hard drive that was named by tech geeks as the "Deathstar".
Got a new hard drive and tranfered everything over, i still have it as a secondary hard drive, haven't found anything to use it for since my new hard drive has got 136 gigs of space left on it....

 

[Skookum]

Probably victims of IBM/Hitachi Deathstar HDD :devil:

yup was funny when i was shopping for a new power supply i went thru a fairly new shop up here named Frye's and they were blowing em out for dirt cheap. A lotta people are gonna be unpleasantly suprised. It's too bad though because from what i understand, if you fix the bug before it starts buggin out, it becomes stable. Of course there was nothing on the box at Frye's that would tell any unwary shopper any of this....

 

[Ciaran]

Might I make a small suggestion to folks so that they do not lose their data in a catastrophic system crash....
Try one of the many motherboards out there that have built in RAID. All you need is two identical hard drives. You set the board to RAID 1 and the drives mirror themselves. When you look at the hard drives under My Computer (for windoze) all you see is one hard drive. In reality your data is written and stored on two drives. If one drive crashes, it's OK because it is mirrored exactly on the other drive.

I use this system for my music collection. I have had one drive totally take a dump on me. Had I not had the RAID system I would have lost over 40 gigs of MP3's. Rare and live stuff too. This system is really easy to set up and you do NOT have to be a computer geek to do it. Depending on how critical, or important your files are the cost of one hard drive is fairly cheap insurance.

Just a suggestion...