===============
 Disks on fire
===============

A little over a week ago, soon after waking up and heading to the
kitchen, I heard a "beep" from the computer room. Found the computer
unexpectedly rebooting, but then it went into another reboot before
booting completely. I power-cycled the PSU, then it did not boot even
that far, and just seemed to hang, without the motherboard
beeping. Seemed like an issue with either the PSU or the motherboard;
it is an old workstation motherboard, so finding a compatible one
would have been tricky, likely expensive, and perhaps not worth it,
since the computer was pretty old (about 14 years), and I thought of
replacing it anyway. But decided to quickly hop to a nearby hardware
store, get a new PSU, which could be reused easily, and try it. So I
did, but then hurried (on top of me sleeping for 3 hours that night,
for an unrelated reason, and being distracted by yet another set of
unrelated household issues unfolding simultaneously) and plugged the
old PSU's SATA power cable into the new PSU, which was a bad idea: all
the HDDs (3 disks, 3 TB each, WD Red; worked well for all those years)
caught fire at once. So I turned it off, tried turning it on without
the disks connected, but it still did not reach the POST screen.

This is basically how my two nightmares happened together: the
computer dying and the HDDs dying, with the latter being particularly
frustrating because I caused it, and they died all at
once. Fortunately I have multiple backups of important data, though
still have lost some data that I did not count as important enough to
backup.

So I switched to a laptop, then ordered a new computer (ordered it
with building at once, to avoid further surprises, including those
with faulty components which I would have to send back, spending more
time without a working computer) and a new screen (thought of updating
it as well, the old one still used DVI; could later try connecting it
via an adapter, too). Once the screen has arrived, I connected it to
the laptop, as well as keyboard and mouse, and it became considerably
more usable that way, despite having no free USB type A ports left.

Then the new computer has arrived. The memory is awfully expensive
these days, so I went for 32 GB of non-ECC memory (which is still
expensive, although in the current local situation, it is unclear
whether the money/savings will be worth anything in the near future,
so it is easier to part with them). Also a 1 TB SSD (so I finally
switched to an SSD for my primary system), a 4 TB HDD (also WD Red),
Ryzen 7 9700X (with integrated graphics) with an overkill CPU fan,
ASUS TUF GAMING B850-PLUS WIFI motherboard, Phanteks Enthoo Pro
chassis. The chassis fans turned out to be loud, but then I have
unplugged the front one, and plugged the rear one directly into the
motherboard, instead of the chassis fan hub, so it became
controllable, and I was able to set the silent profile in UEFI for it
(probably it would have been silent with the standard profile as well
though, I am going to try that later), which really did make it
quiet. I thought to try a smaller and lighter chassis this time, but
then forgot about it, picked all the hardware quickly, and chose this
chassis because it has a bunch of neat HDD cages and a space for three
5.25-inch drives (maybe I will try Blu-ray backups at some point).

As a little bonus issue, I updated some of the backups after that, and
ran into read errors from an external 5 TB HDD when tried to verify
checksums of the newly written files, afterwards confirmed by the
SMART test. It was still on a warranty, barely used, so I have sent it
for diagnostics, maybe will get a replacement one. Bought a new 2 TB
external HDD at once, for more copies of the backups.

As for now, I am on the new computer, with a fresh Debian 13 system,
and it seems to work fine so far. Those computer and HDD loss
nightmares seem a little less scary after living through them. I still
have to figure out what to do with the old hardware, and there are
still things to configure in the new system, but generally it works.

Lessons learned (or, rather, refreshed): do not set your disks on
fire, but if you do, it is good to have backups. And it is important
to check those backups occasionally, ensuring that they are readable
and undamaged.


Other news and activities
=========================

- I am almost halfway through the Heywood's "Politics" textbook, which
  I have mentioned in the previous post, and it still looks nice: many
  points of view and arguments, on a variety of questions, are
  presented in it.

- Trying to advance with back bridges (doing half bridges, from the
  floor, and aiming full ones), and attempting to do typewriter
  pull-ups, but apparently injuring my shoulder with the latter.

- I keep attempting some political participation, even though the more
  direct methods, like registering for election monitoring and
  collecting signatures to nominate municipal deputy candidates, keep
  failing: the state keeps rejecting/declining everything from party's
  entry in the ballots, to lists of electoral observers, to lists of
  signatures. Not to mention peaceful protest applications and
  complaints following such rejections. Meantime, the economy (and
  daily life along with it) keeps worsening notably, the repressions
  keep going. But there are still things to keep trying, and plenty of
  people willing to work towards a change.


----

:Date: 2026-09-27