the battle of the computer

the battle is joined

i’m getting a new computer. the primary hard disk on the current computer says this:

salamandir@Gingko:~$ sudo smartctl -l selftest /dev/sda
smartctl 6.2 2013-07-26 r3841 [i686-linux-3.13.0-63-generic] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-13, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, www.smartmontools.org

=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART Self-test log structure revision number 1
Num Test_Description Status Remaining LifeTime(hours) LBA_of_first_error
# 1 Short offline Completed: read failure 90% 29056 323066047
# 2 Short offline Completed: read failure 90% 29025 323066047

salamandir@Gingko:~$ sudo smartctl -l selftest /dev/sdb
smartctl 6.2 2013-07-26 r3841 [i686-linux-3.13.0-63-generic] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-13, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, www.smartmontools.org

=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART Self-test log structure revision number 1
Num Test_Description Status Remaining LifeTime(hours) LBA_of_first_error
# 1 Short offline Completed without error 00% 38197 -

which means, basically, that the primary hard disk – /dev/sda – has a read failure, and the secondary hard disk is okay… but i just copied all of the data off the secondary hard disk today anyway… and they’re 180gb and 200gb respectively, which means i can replace both of them with a brand new 1TB disk for about the same price that i could search out two used drives of the same size, and for a little bit more, i can replace the whole machine, with 4 times the RAM.

which sounds like a very good idea to me. so, i’m doing that. i’ll probably be offline for a day or so, within the next few days, but i don’t anticipate a major ordeal.