As hard as it is to believe…because of the behavior and especially the noise, I’m pretty sure I’ve lost another home drive after a mere 2 weeks.
I’m a cheap sun of a gun, so first…
- I’ll add a Surge protector.
- I’ll replace the power supply
- I need to replace the /home hard drive…again. The previous and the current new drives were both 2TB Seagate’s. So replacement will be Western Digital which is only ~$3 more.
This seems to be the cheapest route. If the problem happens again seems to me the only culprit left is the motherboard which I can replace at that time.
Not using a surge protector all these years has been stupid. I’m looking at a Anker Power Strip Surge Protector (4000 Joules) with 12 Outlets & 3 USB Charging Ports and it’s a whopping $25.
I would also probably need to replace the processor. I think it would be too hard to transfer the existing processor with the fan attached. At that point there would be no need to replace the power supply because it’s new and protected.
I mentioned before that I lost 2 physical drives when this problem began. Guess what? They were both Seagate’s, a 2TB and a 1TB. So I’ve lost 3 total Seagate’s. Two had been in use for a few years,
I had 4 total physical. The 2 surviving are the root SSD and a Western Digital.
Obviously the new hard drive is under warranty. However I wouldn’t want return the drive with my personal information on it.
I’m updating this on my desktop from a live Mint USB drive.