On Sat, 29 May 2010 03:52:45 -0700 (PDT), mike
wrote:

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!

I buy piles of them from the local recyclers. Those are the ones that
work. You should see the piles and piles that didn't.

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.

Basically, the operating system got lost. That could be anything. Bad
motherboard, flakey IDE device, flakey plug in card, or even a bad
keyboard/mouse can hang the machine. However, it also can be a bad
sector on the HD. If you can get it to boot, try scanning the HD for
bad sectors and disallocating them. Then, keep track of the number of
bad sectors on the drive. Any increase, and it's eWaste.

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.

What's a modem? Is that like dialup? I use those when desperate or
visting stone age retro enthusiasts.

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

http://packages.ubuntu.com/hardy/smartmontools

--
Jeff Liebermann
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558