The other day my laptop started acting up - it slowed down to a crawl then barfed on burning a disc (which I originally attributed to irregular I/O behavior on the side of µTorrent); that in itself was annoying, but it only raised warning signs when another burn (this time without any active background applications) failed in the exact same spot.

I decided to run scandisk (which, being that I'm running only one partition, would not run until the next reboot), and over the next three hours I could do nothing but stare at what any seasoned computer professional will sadly tell you is one of the most horrible sights in existence:

Three hours later I have a fully-functional laptop with over 5MB of bad sectors (and, as the same seasoned computer professional will tell you, the problem is only exacerbated with time) that runs somewhat slower than it ought to on I/O operations. Luckily the warrantee is still in effect, but invoking it means having to spend days without my laptop.

Almost makes me wish I bought an HP (unless I'm mistaken, they have a "if it breaks we'll replace it for you at home within 24 hours" kind of policy), but then I remembered that my laptop has been customized by the shop in which I bought it (with a 7200RPM Hitachi drive instead of the standard 5400RPM one). Since I'm not even (remotely) new to hard drive crashes I knew what this meant - a trip to the store, which sends the drive to the local importer, waiting for days while it's being "examined" and then another trip to the store to get it back. What makes it even worse is that the shop where I bought the laptop (Lamir) is situated in another part of the country.

Luckily the lab guys were kind enough to allow me to remove the hard drive and send it to them via courier, which should save me a couple of unnecessary trips to the centre of Israel. I'm not sure how support services work in other countries, but this is quite unusual here - normally warrantee on branded products is voided if you tamper with them (even if it's something as trivial as removing or installing a hard drive yourself), so in that I have to thank them. I just hope the rest of the experience is as pleasant.

Now I'm off to get myself a NAS device to back up my stuff on.