Comments on: Failing Hard Drive Sounds

Failing Hard Drive Sounds

sveskemus — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 05:55:19 -0800

Failing Hard Drive Sounds. via

By: subbes

subbes — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 05:58:19 -0800

It's like something out of a nightmare.

By: sonic meat machine

sonic meat machine — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 06:02:01 -0800

Okay, let's take bets on how long it will be before this is remixed into a techno song.

By: mjg123

mjg123 — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 06:04:23 -0800

you can do it yourself just by clicking on every play button at once!

By: twoleftfeet

twoleftfeet — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 06:09:16 -0800

Definitely a techno song! Like Music using only sounds from Windows XP and 98!

By: flapjax at midnite

flapjax at midnite — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 06:09:34 -0800

...remixed into a techno song Techno song? Oh, you must mean that rave music the kids are listening to these days!

By: flapjax at midnite

flapjax at midnite — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 06:11:54 -0800

Look ma, no Macs!

By: adamt

adamt — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 06:21:04 -0800

Oooh... a very pavlovian knot in the gut there. That heart sinking 'cause you know that 10 minute reboot job just turned into a couple of hours rebuild job. I think I'll just umm... just check last nights backup... yeah.

By: sonic meat machine

sonic meat machine — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 06:26:27 -0800

flapjax at midnite, you can't tell whether the drives are from Macs simply by the brand name.

By: SansPoint

SansPoint — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 06:40:08 -0800

*weep*

By: flapjax at midnite

flapjax at midnite — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 06:45:17 -0800

You're absolutely right, sonic meat machine. For all I know, they were all from Macs! *goes back to singing along with techno song*

By: The Power Nap

The Power Nap — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 06:58:14 -0800

Techno... Techno!?

By: ardgedee

ardgedee — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 06:59:07 -0800

> Music using only sounds from Windows XP and 98! Music using only sounds from OS X alert noises.

By: twoleftfeet

twoleftfeet — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 06:59:30 -0800

Many years from now scholars will study the ancient posts labeled with the fail tag. They will discover that these posts included "Iceland's last non state-owned bank is nationalised" and "Palin on Foreign Policy" and "20 Ways to Die Trying to Dunk a Basketball". They will wonder why the ancients were so obsessed with failure.

By: ZenMasterThis

ZenMasterThis — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 07:11:33 -0800

1) Mrs. ZenMasterThis says they sound like the death cries of animals. 2) ZenMasterThis, Jr. says they remind him of Beepy Little Girl.

By: empyrean

empyrean — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 07:14:23 -0800

Experiencing flashbacks to countless western digital drive... platters...failing... Thanks a lot.

By: Horace Rumpole

Horace Rumpole — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 07:18:41 -0800

What is it boy? [click, click, thunk] My mp3s have fallen down the well?

By: sdodd

sdodd — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 07:23:14 -0800

Setting one of these to play in a loop on your buddy's laptop would make an excellent prank.

By: Brandon Blatcher

Brandon Blatcher — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 07:24:39 -0800

*heads out to get 2nd and 3rd backup drive*

By: Meatbomb

Meatbomb — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 08:00:05 -0800

Setting one of these to play in a loop on your buddy's laptop would make an excellent prank. I was thinking to set it up as a custom system sound, like every time a new window is opened or something.

By: DecemberBoy

DecemberBoy — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 08:16:41 -0800

Music using only sounds from OS X alert noises I don't recognize any of those sounds for some reason, even though I use Macs every day. And is that the Wilhelm scream at the end?

By: any major dude

any major dude — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 08:30:10 -0800

I've heard this song before...

By: Slithy_Tove

Slithy_Tove — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 08:32:40 -0800

...remixed into a techno song Radiohead's "Nude." Arranged for Sinclair ZX Spectrum, dot matrix printer, flatbed scanner, oscilloscope, and ten ruined Winchester disk drives. (Music begins about 1:10.)

By: fuq

fuq — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 08:32:43 -0800

Techno? Nope. I'm going to make a crunk hyphy jam with these. Click click thunk beep... you know how I do.

By: Nice Guy Mike

Nice Guy Mike — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 08:49:29 -0800

Definitely a techno song! Like Music using only sounds from Windows XP and 98! Is it wrong that I think that sounds really quite good? Yes? I'll shut up then...

By: Cat Pie Hurts

Cat Pie Hurts — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 08:51:55 -0800

I can't listen to any of those sounds. I'm terrified that my drives will hear and want to sing along *shudder*

By: bardic

bardic — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 09:06:49 -0800

Is it OK that I just masturbated to this?

By: ardgedee

ardgedee — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 09:09:47 -0800

> I don't recognize any of those sounds for some reason, even though I use Macs every day. System Preferences -> Sound -> Sound Effects -> Choose an alert sound Everything the track used should be in that list, excepting the scream at the end.

By: PROD_TPSL

PROD_TPSL — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 09:13:19 -0800

The answer to your question, bardic, is no. Albeit, I must admit that I ***lurves*** me some glitchambietech. Just sayin'.

By: Civil_Disobedient

Civil_Disobedient — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 09:24:11 -0800

Coming soon... the sounds of people hearing failing hard drive sounds.

By: zouhair

zouhair — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 09:41:30 -0800

Oh, this hurts!!

By: Smart Dalek

Smart Dalek — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 10:07:09 -0800

Let's not forget Man...or Astro-Man's "A Simple Text File", performed in concert by the Image Writer II (track 20).

By: cgomez

cgomez — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 10:12:21 -0800

That is the most depressing collection of waveforms I have ever heard on the internet. All that unrecoverable data, oh the humanity!

By: Beautiful Screaming Lady

Beautiful Screaming Lady — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 10:17:00 -0800

Okay, let's take bets on how long it will be before this is remixed into a techno song Jin Sangtae's been doing far more rewarding and thought-provoking things than making techno songs [sic] for some time now. David Webber also does cool stuff.

By: JohnR

JohnR — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 10:37:54 -0800

"Trying to explain its origin will no doubt lead us to physics which uniquely operates in the environment of Saturn."

By: bigschmoove

bigschmoove — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 11:07:44 -0800

Damn. Listening to that is like watching a kick in the nuts, but I don't know where to put my hands.

By: rokusan

rokusan — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 11:40:03 -0800

Only seven words for the first comment to nail my reflex response. These sounds scare me.

By: furtive

furtive — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 12:02:40 -0800

Previously: Songs to make backups to

By: riccar

riccar — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 12:24:28 -0800

I am just amazed that I have never had a hard drive break. The oldest PC I own right now is about 9 years old, and I have run it every almost day and hardly ever shutting down since I got it. I am impressed. It is old and slow, but it is still kickin!

By: crapmatic

crapmatic — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 12:32:13 -0800

Is this page coded correctly? Why am I not seeing the sound links? My Firefox > Add-ons does show Shockwave Flash 10, and I have Javascript and Java checked. So why isn't the Flash object coming up?

By: louche mustachio

louche mustachio — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 12:56:06 -0800

Crapmatic, maybe Adblock is blocking the play buttons to keep you from being sad.

By: reventlov

reventlov — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 14:08:47 -0800

Gizmodo ran a "Hard Drive Dying Dance Track" contest almost 3 years ago.

By: kcds

kcds — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 15:08:04 -0800

@riccar - most drives these days have a MTTF (mean time to failure) rating of about 10 years, so if you don't have your 9-year-old drives backed up, you might want to go ahead and think about doing that ... Also - be aware that doing a full-disk backup can be the final straw for an already-marginal drive, so that full-disk backup may be the last thing your old drives do! NB - I haven't had a full-size (desktop-size) drive fail on me in over a decade now, but I've had several Hitachi Travelstars just up and die on me in less than a year of use. The Western Digital in my laptop has (fingers crossed) been healthy though ...

By: Foosnark

Foosnark — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 15:18:33 -0800

This is awesome. (And yes, I make glitch- and glitch-influenced music.)

By: nosila

nosila — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 16:06:26 -0800

Is there any way to download these? Not that I want to make that any of that danged techno music with them or anything...

By: cenoxo

cenoxo — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 19:04:41 -0800

Needs more violin...

By: Kronos_to_Earth

Kronos_to_Earth — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 20:25:10 -0800

I've had two drives fail on the Toshiba laptop I'm using right now (The replacement drive went out a couple of days after I got the machine back...) without any kind of sound beforehand. As the thing goes out I learned that Windows struggles to put together an emergency account of some sort for you to try to save as much as you can. Apart from being very frightening, it was kind of sad; the minimal icons and grey desktop before the screen goes black....