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"We drive a stake through it."

My 320 GB LaCie external hard drive, which served me faithfully for five years, failed to mount last week. This could have been because it accidentally fell on my hardwood floor, although I’m not ruling out an act of suicide over being upstaged by my new 1TB LaCie hard drive.

I brought it to Tekserve to find out if there was anything that could be done. Diagnosis: Sorry, it’s trashed.

“So do I bring it somewhere to be recycled or something?”

“Actually, we can dispose of it for you right here.”

“How do I make sure that nobody can retrieve what’s on the hard drive?”

“We take the drive out of the case and put a stake through it.” And he wasn’t kidding; it’s actually what they do. And then they sell the case as scrap.

The tech brought me a release to sign. I felt like I was putting an old sick pet to sleep. Fortunately, I had backed up all the info on the drive just before it (literally) crashed, or there would have been a data recovery fee of up to $800.

I’m treating the new one with kid gloves now, continuing to back up regularly, managing the octopus of cables so it doesn’t accidentally get dragged off the desk, and being on the lookout for hard drive suicide notes.

I’m in the middle of a project that involves audio and video files, which eat hard drive space voraciously. I’ve been looking into how to upgrade the internal hard drive. Based on what I’ve read, my Intel iMac is held together by a bunch of magnets that a normal person will never be able to put back together properly again.

A techie friend said, “Oh, it’s simple. You just remove the bezel.” I replied that it wasn’t so simple for me, although “bezel” is a funny word.

I went for an external hard drive instead. My 300 GB LaCie 2d Quadra’s been running faithfully for over four years, so I feel confident about the brand, even though I still don’t know if it’s pronounced “Lacey” or “La See.” J&R and B&H both carry the 1 TB drive for $150, which is the cheapest you’ll find anywhere. J&R had a coupon on their site for $15.00 off a purchase of $150 or more.

Once I got there and was in a mild trance staring at an array of RAID arrays, the clerk told me I couldn’t use the coupon on the hard drive because it wasn’t good on sale items. Just about everything this weekend is a sale item there, so I went ahead and bought it anyway.

“So, Miss Spendthrift,” said my Inner Parents, “you don’t know where your next paycheck is coming from and you’re buying more equipment? You might as well get the two terabyte drive.” This is how I know it’s my Inner Parents speaking. My actual parents wouldn’t know a terabyte if it bit them.

I explained to them that while a 1 TB drive would be a good investment, the 2 TB would be overkill right now. By the time I need the 2 TB drive, it’ll be time for a totally new iMac that will have a 10 TB internal drive and make toast.

So now I’ve got both drives connected and I’m nervous about putting stuff on the new one, afraid I’ve jinxed my equipment by recommending it. I keep checking them to see if they’re running. They are, but as you can see in the photo above, the little blue light is beginning to dim on the old one. I’ll have to find out if you can change the bulb and if it involves magnets or bezels.

The underside of your iMac, with the little panel removed. Photo courtesy Bleedingedge TV.

I needed to upgrade the memory in my iMac from the 1GB that it shipped with in 2007 to 4GB so that I can run Parallels Desktop. This is so I can use MS Office 2007 and the Beta version of Office 2010 in their native habitats, because the Mac version of these apps is like a toy.

I ordered the upgrade from OWC, which has a little video on how to install it, but I was really inspired by this video because they showed what actually happens when you, a real person, upgrade your own memory cards. They’re supposed to pop out of the slots like Pop Tarts out of a toaster, but they don’t. I had to ease the old one out with that most intricate of contemporary instruments, the bent paper clip.

Also, I thought I was pushing the new ones in too hard, so I didn’t push: I didn’t want to ram the RAM. So when I plugged the computer back in and turned it on, instead of the familiar Bwwwoongggggg! I got “boop boop boop…boop boop boop…” So I pressed them in harder than I’d thought I was supposed to, turned it on again, and got the familiar start-up sound.

And there you have it:

"Nom-nom-nom!"

Now I’m going to look for a hard drive upgrade. What part of the iMac do you unscrew for that, and what sound does it make when you’re doing it wrong?