What does a hardware failure mean to you?

[KeyboardDemon]

The reason I ask is that the other day I was just minding my own business pottering around on the Internet when I noticed a familiar clicking sound, you might have heard it yourselves, but yes it means my hard drive is going to die. I think I mourned the pending loss for almost two entire minutes when I had that special warm feeling that can only mean one thing, and no, I didn't wet myself I realised that this clicking noise meant it was time for an upgrade. woohoo!

My new 250gb Samsung 840 SSD will be going in to my rig over the weekend. I can't wait.

Do you guys see hardware failure as a bad thing or use it as an excuse to get your other half to allow you to dip into the rainy day money? (Like I did).

[Dutchjonsey]

Its a bad thing if I don't see it coming However, the high pitched whine coming off my old psu means that in about half an hour my lovely new one will be arriving, along with a new Graphics card ofc

[mikeo01]

Hate hardware failure, which includes a lot of cursing and hesitation to cough up the money especially if I just spent £££ on a component.

The only component I don't mind failing would be a fan, HDD or optical drive. The rest, ouch.

[Saracen]

Generally, no, I don't see a hardware failure as an opportunity, but rather I see it as an expensive pain in the backside.

For me, a PC isn't a hobby project, a toy, or a status symbol. It's a tool I use to do a job. I don't feel any need at all to upgrade because there's something later or notionally greater. I feel a need to upgrade when the tool is no longer adequate for the job, either because the tool has degraded or the job has grown.

[1stRaven]

I lost a hard drive in my unraid server last night so just pulled one of my stock, replaced it and let it rebuild the data array. It can be a pain but as long as you are prepared, it doesn't have to be a nightmare.

[technodean]

I lost 2 drives last year, My M4 SSD and a 2tb Drive, Lucky with my 2tb drive, bios and win 7 gave me warning back up and replace (hitachi replaced within 3 weeks, came from Sweden) . But my M4 C drive, died, no warning and no amount of power cycles to revive. Lost my windows disk and serial number so had to buy another win 7. Had to change every password for my accounts. Forgot most of the programs and codecs Iv'e installed. Lost my latest game saves, lucky I backup every week. (crucial replaced within 9 days)

[RhinoUK]

Ive been lucky and had most failures on hardware within the first week of buying the item or it was faulty from day 1so returned for replacement ones but when something has gone and ive had it for ages, ive had good use from it and its out warranty i do see it as a good thing but then hate the expense. Ive only ever had a GFX card go faulty in year 3 of the warranty and i hated the RMA process. I Backup my crucial data since i lost everything about 10 years ago.

[KeyboardDemon]

I lost a hard drive in my unraid server last night so just pulled one of my stock, replaced it and let it rebuild the data array. It can be a pain but as long as you are prepared, it doesn't have to be a nightmare.

I tend to keep copies of my most important files but as this is now the second time I'm having to re-install Windows from scratch, and the second time I've had to make sure that I have copied everything that's important to me on my current drive, I'm starting to think it's about time I had a proper backup solution, I was thinking of getting a WD Live drive for this.

I lost 2 drives last year, My M4 SSD and a 2tb Drive, Lucky with my 2tb drive, bios and win 7 gave me warning back up and replace (hitachi replaced within 3 weeks, came from Sweden) . But my M4 C drive, died, no warning and no amount of power cycles to revive. Lost my windows disk and serial number so had to buy another win 7. Had to change every password for my accounts. Forgot most of the programs and codecs Iv'e installed. Lost my latest game saves, lucky I backup every week. (crucial replaced within 9 days)

This is another area I'm starting to think I need to be smarter with my important data, I can't rely on Steam cloud to back up all my games as not all games support this feature, so I might start using Ghost to back up my System partition to a network drive. I have a ReadyNAS enclosure that I'm not using so setting Ghost to update my Backup once a week seems like a good idea, I can put two drives in there so I get a mirrored back up then if one fails I won't lose the content on the other and can rebuild it.

[jim]

Windows 7 already has a built-in backup feature, which I've found to be a pretty neat solution.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

When the hardware stops working reliably.

[Biscuit]

[brianzion]

just lost a drive myself a Seagate 3 years old i managed to save most of the important stuff though can be a nightmare but that's hardware for you sometimes.

[Pob255]

depends on the nature of the failier, if your pc just dies with no indication of why it can get really frustrating
likewise if some starts going slowly it can cause random issues which you can spend weeks trying to trouble shoot.
Made worse if you don't have the money to repair/replace items.

[DanceswithUnix]

Part of modern life.

Family of 4 means 4 games playing spec PCs, and a server, and a wifi access point, an adsl router, and a couple of laptops. That's quite a lot to go wrong, so something is bound to sooner or later.

I keep a small stock of fans and usuallly a spare graphics card.

My daughter's PC failed to boot recently and she asked why we don't have a spare PC, and I think she might have a point.

[Thorsson]

Having had several HDD failures over the years I finally got myself a proper backup solution last year with a Linkstation and a scheduled backup. But I still also copy my must have files to another HDD - just in case.

Anyway, I just see it as a pain, because it's not a planned upgrade. I generally have an upgrade cycle and I know what's planned next (e.g. atm it's replace the video). Honestly I don't have any problems in spending the money, neither from not having it, or having to argue with the missus, but an unplanned purchase just pisses me off. Perhaps a leftover from the years when I had no money.

[KeyboardDemon]

Windows 7 already has a built-in backup feature, which I've found to be a pretty neat solution.

Do you recommend it then, over other solutions, I've tried using Windows based backup solutions with network drives in the past and found that the software would refuse to see the network drive until I manually opened up a folder on the drive first, or maybe that was just something to do with the NETGEAR ReadyNAS drive.

When the hardware stops working reliably.

lol. Sounds like nearly all of my builds!