Win Modem
Posted by Tarbolde on .
I declared a red alert and turned my computer off until the hard drive cooled down. After rebooting, the drive returned to its overheated state within minutes. And that wasn't the only thing getting hot; the foul minions of IRL were rapidly bearing down on me and I had to choose between meeting them ill-prepared or facing an even more unpleasant alternative: downtime.
With the PC's side panel removed, I set up a table fan aimed directly at the overheating HDD. After giving it some time to cool off, I checked the temperature again using a time-honored method (the Touch Test) and found that the drive was still scorching hot.
*drop*
My wits now sharpened by the fear of losing 200 GB of vital data, I suddenly remembered reading (in an actual book, actually) that when filled to within 15% of capacity a hard drive becomes more error-prone. Following that train of thought, it occurred to me that a nearly-full drive would get hotter as it worked harder to find empty space, and I did mention earlier that I haven't defragged in ages.
*drop*
It turned out that the hard drive was within ~ 3% of capacity, so I deleted some obsolete files to free up more space. It didn't happen right away, but gradually the drive did cool down and disaster was averted.
That didn't resolve my connection problems, though.
*drop*
With the PC's side panel removed, I set up a table fan aimed directly at the overheating HDD. After giving it some time to cool off, I checked the temperature again using a time-honored method (the Touch Test) and found that the drive was still scorching hot.
*drop*
My wits now sharpened by the fear of losing 200 GB of vital data, I suddenly remembered reading (in an actual book, actually) that when filled to within 15% of capacity a hard drive becomes more error-prone. Following that train of thought, it occurred to me that a nearly-full drive would get hotter as it worked harder to find empty space, and I did mention earlier that I haven't defragged in ages.
*drop*
It turned out that the hard drive was within ~ 3% of capacity, so I deleted some obsolete files to free up more space. It didn't happen right away, but gradually the drive did cool down and disaster was averted.
That didn't resolve my connection problems, though.
*drop*
After a few months I'd nearly forgotten how bad my connection problems had been. I was planning on downloading full-time while attending to other things; unpleasant things straight out of the bowels of IRL. But at least the computer would be at work in my absence, delivering its usual high win / bandwidth ratio in fetching me some entertainment courtesy of These Here Internets.
*drop*
My connection problem suddenly returned in force, the symptoms just like before. I tried all of the fixes detailed above, right down to cleaning the fans again, but to no avail. I did happen to notice, though, that my primary hard drive was running hot. Alarmingly hot, and heating up everything else in the drive bay. This really got my attention because I haven't been backing up my data for quite a while; there may have been as much as 200 GB at risk.
*drop*
*drop*
My connection problem suddenly returned in force, the symptoms just like before. I tried all of the fixes detailed above, right down to cleaning the fans again, but to no avail. I did happen to notice, though, that my primary hard drive was running hot. Alarmingly hot, and heating up everything else in the drive bay. This really got my attention because I haven't been backing up my data for quite a while; there may have been as much as 200 GB at risk.
*drop*
Replies:
| Win Modem | Tarbolde -- 5/27/2013 9:58 pm UTC |
| Re: Win Modem | Tarbolde -- 5/29/2013 6:59 am UTC |