Well it appears that my Mac is back. The Cube suffered a massive drive
failure which knocked me back a bit. Thankfully, a) I had a few backup
cds laying around and b) I could order parts and pieces 24 hours a day.
I had to replace my hard drive. Not a big deal, just kinda annoying.
What is a bit shocking is how incredible cheap storage is. I got a
100gig drive for $230… that is 5000x times bigger than the first hard
drive I ever had and cost half as much. I remember thinking that drives
were cheap when they were $1 per meg. They are slowly approaching $1
per gig!
The other aspect of this little affair that has got my attention is how
unearthly quite this new drive is. First off, the Cube doesn’t have a
fan. It is designed as a cute little chimney and all the heat rises and
cools the processor with need of a fan. It is rigged for silent
running. However, my old hard drive did produce some noise. Not much.
Just enough to know it was doing something. I could tell the difference
between the read and the write head being engaged. I was comfortable
with the little clicking it made.
Not any more. My new drive makes no sound. None. It has stopped
breathing and I can’t if it has amazing lung capacity or is, in fact,
dead. This is a bit unnerving. More than anything else, I can tell
what a machine is doing by its sound. This seems a bit wrong from a
computer… a car, okay, but a computer… seems a bit strange.
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