When to Kill Your PC
Recently a former colleague sent a message to a mailing list, asking what the options were for a 4 year old PC that was apparently in the process of eating its own disk. The whining and grinding noises it was making, along with occasional Blue Screens of Death, indicated the system’s hard drive was on its last legs. What should she do, replace the disk or buy a new machine?
Replies began appearing almost immediately. Initially, people tried to guide her through various processes designed to preserve the current machine. The first suggestion involved backing up all her user data to an offline device, then buying a new disk and re-installing the OS (Windows XP) on it. Then she could restore her data and continue with her work.
Others suggested installing a second drive in the PC, then using Ghost or System Commander to clone the soon-to-be-deceased disk onto the new drive. This solution had the advantage of not requiring lots of user intervention or manual copying of files; instead she’d just start cloning the drive and wait until the process finished. I performed this process on an old laptop just last spring, in fact. It works great as long as you’re reasonably knowledgeable about disks and what steps should be performed. It’s not so good for someone who has little technical knowledge.
Someone else actually suggested building a RAID array in order to guard against such failures in the future. That’s not a bad idea, but again it’s not really a solution for a generic user. Of course, a PC shop could set all this up for a fee, but the bench charge and disk hardware could easily cost as much as a new system.
Finally the talk turned to replacing the whole system. As I’ve pointed out in recent months, this is a great time to buy a new system. Most makers are offering deep discounts and extended (often interest-free!) payment plans. You can buy a good system with 4GB of RAM, a big disk, and a fast graphics card for under $1000.
The former colleague in question hasn’t made her decision yet, but the whole discussion process just shows how wide-open the options are these days. Cheap upgrades are still a good choice for anyone on a budget, but a brand new machine (with a brand new warranty) could also be just the ticket.