Toronto Mike

Hard Drive Hell

Hard Drive Hell

My secondary hard drive, the one I got last December, has stopped spinning.  This really pisses me off.

It's still under warranty with Maxtor but that only means they'll replace it if I ship them my busted one.  What I really want is the data residing on my failed drive.  This 80GB drive housed my multimedia, including over 40GB of MP3s.  When I originally ripped my collection to MP3, I ripped them at a bit rate of 128.  Then, in a wise preventive measure in case of hard drive failure, I backed up all of my MP3s on CD.  Subsequently, I've re-ripped my CD collection to MP3s that are a bit rate of 160.  The end result was over 40GB and the thought of burning these to CD 700MB at a time led me to a decision to wait until I had a DVD burner at which time I'd copy it to DVDs and save me a great deal of aggravation.  In hindsight, this was a terrible idea.  I have now lost weeks and weeks of work.

I don't expect any sympathy as I blame myself for not backing everything up.  Hard drive failures happen, it's a fact of life.  I'm now faced with a decision.  Do I rip my collection for a third time?  If I do, do I up the bit rate to 192 or higher?  Do I remain content with the MP3s I do have with a 128 bitrate and only re-rip my absolute favourites at a higher quality?

Who am I kidding?  192kbps, here I come.  Thanks Maxtor.

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