Watched my hard drive fail mid-showcase at a gallery in Austin

Was showing a 4K animation loop when the drive started clicking and froze the entire display, had to yank the power cord and swap to a backup laptop I luckily brought, has anyone else had a storage device fail at the worst possible moment?

2 comments

2 Comments

rowanjenkins1d ago

Honestly, I used to be one of those people who thought "eh, I'll just use whatever drive" until I had a similar thing happen at a small screening in Portland. That clicking sound is something else, right? It's like a little mechanical scream. I had my whole reel on a cheap external drive and it just died during the intro. Now I'm kind of paranoid and always bring two backups, one being a solid state drive that I know won't make that noise. It's a hard lesson but it really changed how seriously I take storage for any live setup.

avery_fox931d ago

Got my attention real quick reading this. I used to be in the "whatever works" camp too, never gave storage a second thought until I watched a friend's entire set go silent because their drive took a dump mid-show. That clicking sound is haunting, like you said, it's the drive's last cry for help. After that I went out and got a couple of solid state drives and never looked back. Definitely made me respect the gear a lot more, especially for anything live.