[Wolves] OT: Noisy external hard drive.

[Stephen Parkes]

On 17 May 2010 11:46, DragonMaster <LUG at clews.homelinux.net> wrote:
> Hi all,

>
>  Would you say this is a 'foible' of the mac trying to handle NTFS or
> should I be concerned?

I've got Macs reading NTFS with no problems.  If they are IBM or
Toshiba 2.5" drives in the cases it could be the "tick of death" which
doesn't mean they are broken now but does mean they probably are on
the way out.  I've had loads of these drives break on me over the
years (the one in my old Mac powerbook was one rebadged Apple and it
died the same way)

Hold it up to your ear and tilt it slowly from side to side.  If you
hear a slight tick doing that it's time to start keeping regular
backups and think about ordering the replacements.

I've lost tons of code to these drives over the years (twice off-site
providers of my source control went bust within a week of having a
drive die, I have shite luck sometimes) and I seem to remember Re-Load
had similar problems as well.

They can last for 12 months after it starts and in some laptops they
are so insulated for drive vibration you don't even notice until the
tick turns into grinds and it's too late.


-- 
Steve 'sparkes' Parkes - blog zx-81.com