[Leica] Strictly OT: System Crash

[spencer at aotera.org (Spencer Cheng)]

On Jun 9, 2011, at 1:44, Jim Nichols wrote:

> So, the choices appear to be:
> 1) Buy a refurbished drive, if it can be found, from whatever source can 
> provide it
> 2) Buy a modern drive that is jumper-equipped, and hope it will work with 
> the Dell controller
> 3) Buy a new or refurb Win7 box, and replace a lot of software.
> 
> As I said, I am still working the problem.  Any supporting information 
> would be appreciated.

Jim,

Don't buy a refurb drive unless you don't care about your data. Spend the 
extra $10-20 for a new drive. Don't buy Seagate 3.5" drive until Seagate 
re-establishes their track record.

At this moment, I would go for a Western Digital Black if it for the main HD 
for your PC. SATA 1.5 and 3.0 should be compatible and there are no jumpers 
with SATA unlike the old IDE interfaces.

Did I mention you should have backups? :)

All HDDs fail. I've had Seagate, Hitachi and Western Digital HD fail on me. 
Western Digital has a better track record for me than the others but that's 
just my experience. Too bad Brian doesn't have access to large scale HDD 
failure data any more. :)

Regards,
Spencer