The thought has just struck me: The hard disks in three of the four computers I have the pleasure of dealing with failed in the last year. My Macintosh Powerbook G4, just a year old now, lost its hard disk last summer. My son's Dell Inspiron 6000 lost its hard disk last fall. And my brand-new Lenovo Thinkpad Z60t apparently came with a faulty hard disk. However, in every case, the disks failed slowly, allowing me or someone else to back up the disks before they were replaced.
The tiny little Dell Latitude that my old firm provided me has been chugging away for more than two years with no problems (yet). My TiVos generally have gone along pretty well, although I think I got the green screen of death on the Samsung because the hard disk decrepidated. My iPods have generally been reliable, although the New York Times' Joe Nocera had something to say about that (registration required) yesterday.
This experience has lead me to believe that hard disks are a problem and computers are not to be trusted. I wonder if that means something about the hard disk industry.
Comments