Jeff Liebermann wrote:
On Fri, 28 May 2010 14:47:25 -0700 (PDT), mike
wrote:


e-Machines are not the best quality. The power supplies and fans are
the first to go. CDROM and floppy are next. After that, the
motherboard.

The first one I owned had been a neighbor's that got blown up when
their incoming power lost the
nuetra at about age 3 - I replaced the PSU and the modem and used it
for another 3 years, Prior to it failing I'd noticed that some of the
caps on the MB were starting to bulge, and about six months or so
later it finally just wouldn't start one day. I'm glad to hear that
about the cd drives, I've got plenty of spares, I think even a burner
or two. Floppies in working condition are becoming much less
prevalent these days (my source always being the scrapyard, of
course


Model number? Series?

Caviar, can't get a look at the model # right at the moment, but if it
quits again I'll write it down.
The Protege series were tolerable. Protoge would last about 4 years
and blow up. The Caviar series would last perhaps 2 years and blow
up. About 1/3 of the pile is WD, mostly 40GB but some 80 and 120GB.
http://802.11junk.com/jeffl/pics/drivel/disk-drives.jpg

Wow, nice collection!

(New drives, boxed drives, and SCSI arrays are buried elsewhere).

Then, this morning in the middle of my readings the system went brain-
dead on me.

What does that mean? Did the drive fail, or was there some other
problem? It's highly likely that the drive failed.

Well, I had several browser windows open and of a sudden the bowser
was stuck viewing the last one I'd been looking at - the mouse cursor
would still move around as it should but clicking on stuff had no
effect. Couldn't close any browser windows, couldn't start up any
other programs, couldn't shutdown the machine, except by pushing and
holding down the power button.


- booted into Ubuntu 8.04 fine,

Ummmm.... Ubuntu 10.04 is the current version.

I haven't tried anything newer than 9.10, after I tried and failed to
figure how to get my modem working with it I went back to 8.04, which
seems much more intuitive to me.

The Western Digital diagnostics pronounce it to be error-
free.

The WD diagnostics will pronounce a failing drive to be good. What
did you expect? Fire up SmartMonTools in Ubuntu and extract the
S.M.A.R.T. statistics. You'll find one of three possible results,
depending on WD drive model:
1. Lots of errors and pronouncement of imminent failure. This is
what you get with the later drives. I don't think any of the 40GB
drives are late enough to produce an honest result.
2. Absolutely perfect drive with no errors. This is what I usually
see. WD lies on its S.M.A.R.T. stats.
3. Can't obtain S.M.A.R.T. That's what I see when someone has
juggled controller cards. I also see that when there's a controller
failure.

Thanks, I'll have to see if I can get this SmartMonTools in 8.04.