Seagates are Tough Little Buggers

Today I’m .advertising Seagate’s FreeAgent external hard drives. Why? Because the manufacturer isn’t kidding when they say it’s built to last!

I got up this morning, laptop and external in my arms, and scurried down the stairs only to find that my brother had neglected to unlock the door at the bottom before he left for school. It’s one of those locks that is basically like a latch. I can’t remember the exact name for them, but the purpose of them isn’t security. It’s a little metal latch that fits into a little metal ring, thus preventing the cats from opening doors they shouldn’t.

Anyway, I was in a rush because I had to start on Duke’s medication and physical therapy, so I quickly shuffled back up the stairs to find a piece of notebook paper I could use to the unlock the door. On my way back, I took the first step down and the external slipped out from under my burdened arms!

I could feel the blood leaving my face, running cold and turning me pale. The little box was bouncing on its corners, down every step, and not stopping. I could hear bits of plastic breaking as it turned the corner and my heart just about stopped. I’m sure that even non-computer geeks can understand that feeling, as it’s about the equivalent of realizing you just dropped your infant kid down the stairs.

When that horrible noise stopped, I slowly began my descent, wondering what I would find at the bottom. I found the external hard drive sitting at the very bottom of the stairs, one corner busted off and its wires exposed. The first thing I did was, naturally, pick it up and shake it, hearing a faint rattle inside, presumably a piece of the corner. The top and bottom pieces of the outer shell had popped off. The top managed to go back on easily, despite a corner missing, but I still haven’t gotten the bottom on nicely.

I thought to myself, “Well, it’s gone. How much data did I have on here? What can be replaced? What is going to send me into a prolonged grieving period?”

I unlocked the door and mournfully set the computer up, not expecting the little hard drive to even kick on. I plugged both the laptop and external hard drive in and booted it up. Sure enough, I could hear the drive making its normal sounds and the lights came on. I breathed a sigh of relief that perhaps it could be repaired, although I didn’t expect it to load any files.

It takes my laptop an interminable amount of time to boot up, probably because of all the junk I have on it, so during this time I managed to take care of Duke and come back out for a look. Seeing as how it had loaded, I went into My Computer and found the FreeAgent icon happily waiting there. I held my breath and double-clicked the icon, wanting to look away as my cursor became a little hourglass. However, within seconds I was looking at all my folders on the external, not believing that it was actually working. I went into a folder to play a video clip, figuring that if it could load that, it could load any picture or word document on there, and it played. The sound seemed to fade out a bit every now and then, but it was great.

So, I got to work on burning a DVD for my negligent brother. I wasn’t about to lend him my DVD, as that would be the equivalent of kissing it goodbye, but the whole thing burned and works!

So, buy Seagate! I don’t know how long my little external will last, but it survived the initial falling down the stairs episode. I didn’t expect it to! Now, if only I knew where to send it for repairs…