The computer's part buggered again…

[chrishansenhome]

I have not set London Stabbie on this one because the computer was a gift, assembled for me by our friend in Singapore. HWMBO carried it on the plane all the way from Singapore to London. And, for about 6 months it's been my main computer while I try to get some stuff off the old one and onto the new one.

Of course, I've been backing it up daily, which seems to have been, in hindsight, a very good idea. Last night the larger 1.5TB hard disk crapped the bed. I am still able to use the computer with the smaller SSD disk, and if I need to save anything I can do that to a SD card while I consider what to do.

I am tempted to buy a 2 TB hard disk and swap it into the computer. However, I suspect that one of the fans is not very efficient or something of the sort, and thus the new one will follow the old one into hard disk hell.

I am considering the "cloud" (this year's buzzword), but am not convinced that my data will be safe, secure, and instantly available when I want it.

I'm also somewhat vindicated in my former stance that buying a computer from a vendor (who can then be relied on for at least a year's warranty) is somewhat safer than building your own machine. Fine words butter no parsnips, though—I need to think about this quite seriously.

Any thoughts? How should I provide myself with good, comprehensive computing ability? Is the cloud the only way forward?

Comments

Dead Drive

[am0.livejournal.com]

When I filled up all of the space on my Mini's hard drive, I added a wireless extension drive, a two Terabyte device from Seagate. It is sort of NAS -- you do have a wifi network, don't you -- and it works well both as expansion and as back-up. It sits there (actually, in my coat closet), a little black monolith, radiating heat. If anything should happen to it, I can pull the monolith part off of the base -- which retains your seetup -- and slap a new one in its place, no additional setup required.

It is slow, though.