The dual g4 Quicksilver I use for general productivity at home was made in 2002. It has lived at 10 different addresses in 4 different states over that period of time. I used it to writing my B.S. thesis project and heavily used it in my Ph.D. work. While some of my friends have had lemon macs, I got my moneys worth and then some out of it.
To wit: the thing's been used. And I think it wants to retire, as much as a computer can tell you it wants to retire, but having trouble running a current operating system, having vanishingly small amounts of new code targeted to it, and most recently, killing all the hard drives I put in it.
I don't think there's anything physically wrong with the system; the problem is that every ATA-66/100/133 drive I have that is large enough to be useful is 5-7 years old and already has a lot of on-time. Statistically, they're already end-of-life.
One drive kicked the bucket in March. This past week, the drive I replaced it with, a barely used 160 gig drive I used to use for backups (back when 160 gigs was a lot) started spinning up and down, first at random, then all the time. It's motor is clearly gone. Now I get to pull out the screwdriver and put in another drive. I think I'll put in the newest drive.
Thank goodness for rsync. There is script that synchronizes the mac's data with the linux server over the LAN. Used weekly, it has saved every byte worth saving from depolarization.
Backups rock.
Keeping stuff working forever rocks.
But this is getting ridiculous. I have real stuff to do. Every computer in the house is newer and better in most ways. Time to kick this thing to the curb and find a way to do business with something else.
EDIT:
It turns out, the 160 gig drive is fine, and it's one of the other disks that have not raised a S.M.A.R.T. error, that's dying. Insanity.
