Back in December, I wrote about how one of my external hard drives died for apparently no reason at all (and another had previously failed a drop test at the Los Angeles airport). My intention was to get two USB hard drive enclosures to put the hard drives in, provided they still worked. As with anything in life, my plans changed. It was unintentional, but nonetheless predictable. I decided I should turn them into internal hard drives and forgo the hunt for decent enclosures in Olongapo or San Fernando.

Attempted Testing

A few days ago, I took a break from my daily and boring routine and decided to test both hard drives. The first thing I had to do was to get them out of their external USB enclosures. That took some time, even though I knew what to do. I ended up destroying both enclosures in the process, but I didn't care. They were of no use to me anymore.

I opened my desktop computer case and prepared it for testing. I noticed that I only had two spare power connectors running from the power supply and two hard drives to test. That was fine, but I realized I'd need to add an auxiliary fan to the case due to additional heat generated by even one more hard drive.

I installed the Western Digital 750 GB Caviar SATA hard drive first. When I booted up again in Windows, it showed the hard drive as being uninitialized. It dawned on me that the circuit board in the enclosure I destroyed was responsible for identifying the [former] partitions. Oh, well. I went through the process of reformatting it and checking it by doing some large file copies from the main hard drive. This hard drive was still good!

I swapped it out with the old WD 250 GB hard drive I accidentally drop-tested while going through the TSA checkpoint at LAX. When I booted it up, the BIOS recognized the drive but Windows did not. In a very short time, I heard some loud clicks coming from the hard drive. This was a crashed hard drive and it was dead!

I'm thankful that the second hard drive didn't have anything of real value on it. All of the files were copies of the originals I have elsewhere. Most of them were MP3 files I'd created for hard drive storage — music files I really didn't listen to very often. I listen to music online (Launchcast) most of the time. I probably would have attempted data recovery from a dying hard drive, if that was the case, but it wasn't. I'm sure it was dead when the floor rushed up to hit it.

Getting Parts

This morning, I took another break from my daily routine in order to get the auxiliary fan, a power supply line splitter (a "Y" connector), a new automatic voltage regulator (AVR) and a couple of IDE ribbon cables. I ended up at Dataworx in downtown Olongapo and got everything but the power supply doodad. The sales girl told me they didn't carry them (I could find them just about anywhere I looked when I was in the US). I asked her how a major computer supply store like this could NOT have this particular part. She just shrugged and continued to tally the cost.

I ended up spending around P650.00 (a little over $13.00 in US dollars) for everything I bought. After I left the store, curiosity had me going into the computer store next door to Dataworx. I don't even know the name of the place. I asked about the power supply whatsit and they offered to make me one for 150 pesos (or a little over USD $3.00). It was highway robbery for something so cheap, but I guess I needed to pay for the 15 minutes of labor. I examined an MSI netbook computer while I waited.

The Final Installation

When I returned to the house, it only took me about 30 minutes from the moment I parked the car to get it all done. That included removing and cleaning the CPU fan and heat sink before closing up the computer case. I didn't need the extra power supply cable, but I have it for the future in case I ever do need it.

I had to put the extra fan in the rear, just below the power supply, because I couldn't get my fat fingers in the hard drive bays in order to mount in on the front. I also had to take care to make sure it was sucking the air out versus blowing it in. It required one of the power supply connectors, so I'm glad one was left over for the big hard drive.

Heat Dissipation Check

I downloaded and installed SpeedFan so I could check the temperatures sensors in an hour or so after using the computer again. The temperatures ended up being all in the normal ranges, including the Intel Celeron CPU.

I ended up pulling the side off the computer case to double-check the new fan. I couldn't feel the air blowing from it. It was blowing fine — I just couldn't feel it being so close the power supply fan, which is twice as strong.

More Hard Drive Fun

I still have one spare, a 2.5 inch hard drive, available. It's sitting in my dead notebook computer. Well, the notebook isn't really dead, but I don't feel like spending a whole lot of time and effort in getting rid of the red lines on the monitor and replacing the CPU fan. It has too many screws for me to get through before I can even get to it. Doesn't an external mini hard drive contain a 2.5 inch hard drive? If so, that may be my next option.

When I bought that notebook computer, I bought the same model and everything for my older son (now in Germany). Guess what? His notebook computer is actually dead. He's heading to Phoenix in August as a dependent for his Air Force wife who will be stationed at Luke Air Base. My wife will be returning to the Philippines a couple of weeks later (hopefully), so I'm going to "negotiate" the transfer of that notebook computer from him to her. With two exact models side by side, I'm sure I can cannibalize one for the other and actually have one solid notebook computer. That's the plan, anyway. Knowing my son, it's probably ONLY a plan.

• Why Using an External Hard Drive is a Good Idea
• My External USB Hard Drive Died
• My USB Flash Drive
• Online Backups or Local Computer Backups – Which Do You Use?
• Electrical Surges, Spikes and Sags or How to Kill a Computer Power Supply without Trying