[Nottingham] New harddrive

[Martin]

Ron,

> My computer is getting on a bit and gets turned on and off quite
> regularly. As a result I'm getting a bit concerned about the hard-drive
> crashing on me.

Hard drives can last a good long time. The main killer for them is if
they are knocked or suffer too much vibration.

The other killer is smoke and excessive dust build up.

Make sure all the fans are clean and are working...


> Could the group let me know what information I need to collate from my
> computer in order to get a new one (eg compatibilities, etc), please, so
> that when it happens I can get on with getting a new drive straight away?

Is it an "IDE" drive or one of the newer "SATA" drives?

IDE uses a broad ribbon cable and the drive uses a 4-pin molex connector
for the power. SATA uses a narrow cable into a small plug and a broad
multi-pin plug that looks a bit like an edge connector for the power.

More important is: Do you keep regular backups of your data on some
external device? Memory stick, external hard drive, CD-R, DVD-R?


Hope that helps.

Good luck,
Martin

-- 
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Martin Lomas
martin at ml1.co.uk
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