Computers, Hard Drives, and Clicks

FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF.

I have owned my computer for less than 6 months.

3 days ago, due to a sudden power failure, my harddrive quite suddenly developed a number of bad sectors right in the middle of registry country, probably caused by the head of the drive crashing and proceeding to BOUNCE before coming to a halt.

After two days of HDD diagnostics and failed attempts to restore my computer back to its previous state, I gave up, loaded up a Linux LiveCD and copied all my data off before reformatting my HDD and reinstalled windows.

Now, the computer is quite slow over one part of the bootup process - probably re-reading data that is difficult to read from bad sectors. This is fine and manageable, and given time I could work around it.

However, sometime in the last half hour, the damned drive has started clicking. Faint clicks, at irregular intervals, but they are there, and they weren't before.

Hard drive clicks might not mean much to alot of you, especially given that some older drives used to make horrendous sounds while they were running.

But to me, as a semi-professional IT type, a click is a mechanical failure, which means the drive is dieing. And probably not slowly.

Usually, this would certainly be covered by warranty. On modern drives, power failure should not cause head crashes.

However, the company that sold me this computer, a web-based outfit called c1com, have done a runner. They just picked up and left, leaving pending orders, repair jobs and, yeah, warranties in their wake.

I can't afford a new Hard Drive right now. I just don't have the cash. C1 aren't around to honour my warranty. And the laptop I am currently using to write this post leaves with my mother in a weeks time.

TL;DR - I'm fucked.

I'm Greg, and, well, you may have heard the last of me for a while >_<