I've had a couple of computers, some good, some not so good. The Packard Bell on which I cut my teeth (and fingers, trying to wrestle it back to life) sticks out as one of the latter. It had multiple head crashes that made it progressively more demented as its ultimate failure ground inevitably closer.

To make it less of a mystery as to what's failing, I think a very subtle texture should be embossed into the surface of a HD platter. Nothing too fancy - no words or anything like that.

But when the RW head makes contact with the platter, it should reverberate at the right frequencies and waveforms to generate a horrified scream.

"AAAIIIEEEEE!" *chatterchatterchatter grind clunk* "What was that?" "Self-diagnostic system says we need a new hard drive."
-- elhigh, Apr 23 2008

Commodore 1541 drive http://www.youtube....watch?v=5gnMgmlKi_o
Remove the "or" and it spells "commode". Co-inkee-dink? [Klaatu, Apr 23 2008]

You've obviously never heard a real head crash.
On an old cartridge platter disk, a head crash would sound like a circular saw "singing" after you've just sawn a plank.
Isn't this just another "mumble strip" idea [see help file] ?

[EDIT] The cartridge also provided a visual indication of a head crash by blowing fine brown dust around the drive.
-- coprocephalous, Apr 23 2008


//"AAAIIIEEEEE!" *chatterchatterchatter grind clunk*//

That's the sound I produce upon discovering the hard drive crashed.
-- Amos Kito, Apr 23 2008


Well, thanks for that helpful contribution, [fastthinker]. Aren't you yourself guilty of unsustainable fishing?
-- MaxwellBuchanan, Apr 23 2008


It is one thing to be pejorative, but another to be wrong. There are many ideas on the HB which feel like they were written by a 2 year old, but this is not one of them.
-- bungston, Apr 23 2008


C'mon, the dweeb's a troll, pure and simple. Just ignore him, like I do. Um, wait a minute...
-- DrCurry, Apr 23 2008


The title was all we really needed.
-- WcW, Apr 23 2008


Would this be a series of speed bumps that would repeat the sound at each rotation or the groove like an old vinyl record sized to the read head?
-- normzone, Apr 23 2008


[+], but, I think curiosity would get the better of me and I'd start kicking at an old drive just to see if it did make a noise when the heads crashed.

Maybe I've just been extremely lucky, but none of the scores of hard discs I've ever used have crashed. Some have seized up after they've been unused for a while but I've never experienced one breaking while in use. Even the 30MB effort I bought in 1993 still works.
-- Srimech, Apr 23 2008


Baked in the old Commodore 1541 Floppy. It clanked and whirred and made dreadful sounds when it was working well. <link>
-- Klaatu, Apr 23 2008


[Srimech] you raise an uncomfortable possibility that I hadn't even considered. It's like the old HP printers that would play Claire de Lune if you held down the right buttons at startup - "Hey, listen to the sound the hard drive makes when I thump it!"

"AAAAIEEE!"

"Yeah, it'll sound just like that! Here goes..."

"AAAIIEEEE!"

"Quit that screeching, wouldja? You'll drown it out."

My name would be cursed everywhere there were households with curious teenagers. And perhaps a few curious adults.

Hell, my name is cursed a lot of places already. Let's go for the gusto!
-- elhigh, Apr 24 2008



random, halfbakery