Requiem for a Hard Drive

June 08, 2005 | Category: In My Life

Let's take a moment to remember F:/, the little drive that could...

Steadfast for years as a sturdy companion to C:/, and D:/, it passed over this weekend to the Land Where Hard Drives Choke, Rattle, and Die.

In its last moments, chilled from a stay next to the Klondike Bars and Omaha Steak Tips in the family freezer, it gave up its most precious secrets. A flow of bits and dats and bytes and pauses through a ribbon attaching it to a new system. As it pulsed its last, the gigs of information spewed with haste to a new host, did it know? Did it know that it was moments away from the final sieze that would forever consign its future to that of a doorstop?

We can only hope that it was painless, and unaware.

We remember F:/ with that sort of antiseptic fondness for which all Microsoft-formatted systems incur. The handicap of not being a Mac never showed in any tangible way on F:/'s surface activtities but, of course, one wonders about what could have been.

F:/ was only briefly survived by its longtime mates C:/ and D:/. In the brutal reality that is the computer world, those drives were quickly tainted with F:/'s failure and emptied of their contents. Within days, they too were cast aside.

As a new system is built with the ghosts of what went before, we remember F:/. The drive that lasted, improbably, for the better half of a decade. The drive that is now at rest after nobly serving for so very long.

Good night, F:/. And thank you.

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