At work I was looking through some electronic archaeology and have been trying to resuscitate some old Buffalo Linkstation external hard drives. When I say "old" I mean more than five years old. There were three altogether, each 500 gigabytes. That was when 500 gigabytes was a lot. They were LAN drives, so could be accessed from any computer connected to the network. This is usually a sure way to let them fill up with crap and corruption.
Anyway, all three of them are broken. They flash seven times for an error message that the disk is knackered. I think that's just the way things are with disk drives. The guarantee is for a year or two, they may work for five, after ten they are rubbish. The moral of the story is probably not to buy storage devices together, otherwise they will probably all fail together. Instead you should get one at a time, over a period of time.
I asked my friend John about these, knowing him to be technologically savvy and also concerned about the fate of the planet and all it's little creations.
This was his reply:
Not sure if those external hard disks can be revived. On the continent I come from, whiteys and buffalo, they just didn't go well together. ;-)
I recommend ... kneel over them, utter the words:
"oh holy beast, you roamed this great LAN,
you served us, you gave us sustenance,
and your blood, and 500 gigabytes of storage,
for the good years and the bad,
thanks for the memory,
the bits and bytes now forgotten,
we see your red lights,
they blink, faintly;
and to you our fading friends,
this final data to each of us must come,
goodbye and an eternal power down.
amen"
