And so I’ve spent days and days, prolly weeks, to get rid some of the problems I faced in my FreeBSD. Currently running on version 8.0-RELEASE, I’ve upgraded almost all of my installed ports, and get my usb stick to work with the new usb stack. Everything works wonderful, stable and I’m a happy user.

Happy eh?

At least I thought so.

Today it crossed my mind to check how my hard disks are doing and to my surprise, one of the report came back with a failure alert:

# smartctl -d ata -A /dev/ad4
smartctl version 5.38 [amd64-portbld-freebsd8.0] Copyright (C) 2002-8 Bruce Allen
Home page is http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net/

=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART Attributes Data Structure revision number: 16
Vendor Specific SMART Attributes with Thresholds:
ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME          FLAG     VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE      UPDATED  WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE
1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate     0×000f   200   200   051    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
3 Spin_Up_Time            0×0003   165   164   021    Pre-fail  Always       -       4741
4 Start_Stop_Count        0×0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       211
5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct   0×0033   065   065   140    Pre-fail  Always   FAILING_NOW 1080
7 Seek_Error_Rate         0×000e   200   197   051    Old_age   Always       -       0
9 Power_On_Hours          0×0032   085   085   000    Old_age   Always       -       11344
10 Spin_Retry_Count        0×0012   100   100   051    Old_age   Always       -       0
11 Calibration_Retry_Count 0×0012   100   100   051    Old_age   Always       -       0
12 Power_Cycle_Count       0×0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       209
192 Power-Off_Retract_Count 0×0032   193   193   000    Old_age   Always       -       5447
193 Load_Cycle_Count        0×0032   001   001   000    Old_age   Always       -       1227719
194 Temperature_Celsius     0×0022   097   092   000    Old_age   Always       -       50
196 Reallocated_Event_Count 0×0032   101   101   000    Old_age   Always       -       99
197 Current_Pending_Sector  0×0012   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
198 Offline_Uncorrectable   0×0010   200   200   000    Old_age   Offline      -       0
199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count    0×003e   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
200 Multi_Zone_Error_Rate   0×0008   200   200   051    Old_age   Offline      -       0

And this makes my heart races even faster:

# smartctl -H /dev/ad4
smartctl version 5.38 [amd64-portbld-freebsd8.0] Copyright (C) 2002-8 Bruce Allen
Home page is http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net/

=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: FAILED!
Drive failure expected in less than 24 hours. SAVE ALL DATA.
Failed Attributes:
ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME          FLAG     VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE      UPDATED  WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE
5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct   0×0033   065   065   140    Pre-fail  Always   FAILING_NOW 1080

Less than 24 hours? And I happened to be damn lucky to check on my disks today? Since day one I bought the hard disks, I’ve never really checked on it. Today I did, and I got this. Am seriously hoping that it’s just a false alarm (still am gonna do my backups).

And that is my around-2yo WD hard disk. My second WD hard disk. My first WD hard disk failed on me after running for less than a year. Jinx? Lol. Wait. This is not funny! Hmmmpphhhhhhhh..

Anyway, am too frustrated now. My hands are cold, my feet are cold, and all I could think of right now is doing a backup so that I could port my old system to a new hard disk. Which I have to buy..

Speaking of which.. another WD? Seriously I don’t know. Everyone is saying WD is the best, yet 2 of them died (well this one hasn’t died yet but already complaining) fast enough. Maxtor served me for a good 5 years or more, but the reputation isn’t that great either compared to other brands. Suggestion?

They both suck donkey balls.

Ok, so I was pissed this morning. Last week I sent an email to this company and I have not gotten any reply from them. This is one of the thing that annoys me. What’s the point of displaying an email address on your website, when you’re not even bothered of checking it? If you feel that emailing is not important, then by all means, remove the address off your website. There is no point of having it there – Note that I’m only referring to business websites. Not personal ones.

I was feeling angry so bad this morning that I decided to send them an email to complain on their service. Well it was not an all-polite email (but yet not too nasty) since I was pretty mad at that time, but sorry, patience have limits. And magically, I got an immediate respond from them. How wonderful! And boy, was he furious..

He asked me who am I to say such thing to them – I am a customer, I have rights to complain. Arse.

So he told me the delay was due to one of the staff was on leave, so she was not able to attend my email. By the time she forwarded my email to him, it was already too late. Well, reason accepted. But seriously, that is none of my problem. I ain’t a psychic. A simple solution would’ve been if she is on leave, she could simply turn on the auto responder to acknowledge me of her absentee. I would be damn allright with that. Or, better, configure the email server so that it redirects the email to other recipient. Ok, prolly the latter is rather a ‘high hope’.

Anyways, I suggested him to get the auto responder configured whenever a staff is on leave, and all I got was a reply from him saying that their server does not support it. Guess Larry the Croc would’ve said.. “Dat’s ammaaaayyseeeeeeeeengggg!”

Wtf? For a company that has ‘Technology’ as the first name, that, is plain dumb.

Shoot me.