On Sun, 28 Dec 2014 18:06:34 -0800, "Lew Hodgett"
wrote:

My Hard Drive crapped out; however,dodged a bullet, and have
recovered.

My Geek is located kitty cornered across the parking lot which is
about a
solid 7 iron.

Was on puter Saturday afternoon (12/27/14) when suddenly "BANG", a
mechanical groan and the monitor goes dark.

Windows XP attempts to restart but with no avail.

Unplug all cables from the case, throw case on my shoulder and start
walking
toward the geek.

Geek plugs cables into case and begins running chkdsk.

It's now about 6:00 PM and it is obvious these diagnostics are going
to take awhile, so geek says he will call me.

I'm in choke city since almost everything including the phones (Magic
Jack)
is handled on the puter.

I get a call from geek about 12:00 PM on Sunday (12/28/14) saying that
the hard drive needs to be replaced, the existing data needs to be
recovered then loaded into new drive.

He quotes a price and if I accept, he can be finished by 3:00 PM.

Such a deal, let me know when you are done and the case is ready
for pick up.

I had a bucket full of rabbit's feet this weekend and used them all
today
starting with the fact that the geek gave up his Saturday evening and
all
day Sunday to repair my puter.

Normally they close at 5:00 PM on Saturday and are closed all day
Sunday.

Now for the luck.

The geek was able to recover ALL my data including programs.

I had the same thing happen in 1994 when I left the puter on 24/7
since I was using puter as a FAX.

Was told that the failure in 1994 was due to running hard drive on a
continuous duty cycle and that technology had changed and when the
new puter would be in idle mode the hard drive would also be at idle.

Turns out that is not true.

When the puter is in idle mode, the hard drive is still spinning, so
plan
accordingly.

That depends how you have the power settings in windows set. You can
power the drive down after a set time of not being accessed, as well
as shutting off the monitor, and even powering down the processor, or
hibernate it.

SFWIW, the drive that just died was placed in service in 05/08 and
died 12/14, or 6-1/2 years .

Not all that time was spent with puter on; however, 15-18 hours/day
would be more typical.

My last computer ran 24/7 for almost 10 years without any drive
failure. That was Windows 98 upgraded to XP.
Just upgraded ton a brand new Win7 machine and it runs 24/7 as well
(but this one has WS Red hard drives - old one was IBM DTTA 351290
dated Dec 98 , made in Hungary, of all places!!!)
My experience has been running 24/7 can often last longer than being
shut down and restarted as the bearings don't flatspot and stick on
restart. That addresses the mechanical failures - but not the
electronic failures - where power surges from start-up can also
shorten the life of the drive. My computer is on a Powerware Prestige
dual conversion UPS so it gets perfectly clean power all the time.

As this day closes, am back up and running and consider myself to
be very lucky.

Lew