My First Ever Missed Release
Or how Maplin's couriers conspired to prevent the
release of Zex Beta 1
Right about now I should be writing up the
release of Zex public beta 1 on Version Tracker. But I'm
not.
"Why's that Stu?"
I'll tell you why not dear
reader.....
Last night we were looking
pretty good for the release; final graphics were coming together, internal test
was underway (we'd done an alpha over the weekend), the web site was functional,
the manual presentable; we had some testing to do and it'd be good to go.
I'd got some money for Christmas
("Holidays" if you're American) and promised myself a nice new Western Digital
Raptor disk drive. I thought I'd do all the release stuff on the new, speedy,
ultra sexy (IMO) hard drive. According to all reports (and my own experience)
this drive isn't to be sniffed at. And Maplin had a New Year's sale on; they'd
knocked 40 quid off the price bringing it down to an almost swallow-able
£139 (it's about £124 mail
order).
So, crack of dawn today (that's
10AM ish for us coders) I shot up to Maplin in East Kilbride, money and Maplin
Newsletter vouchers in hand. Rushed in (only a little bit dramatically - I was
on a tight one; I'd spoke to Rob about quarter to 10, told him I was getting the
new drive and we'd tie up the release stuff in the P.M.), asked if their sale
prices applied to the stores as well as the web; was told it depends, so I
blurted out "A21CY" - the guy goes type.. type... type.... and then says "Yes,
139 quid.". Woot. "I'll take it. Ta. Can I use my voucher for it? ". "What
voucher?" "Well it's this number 'er" "Where's that from?" "Your newsletter -
sign up; you spam me; and I get money off vouchers...." "Hmmm, I'll try it."
type.. type... type.... "It's not recognised?" "OK, fuggedaboutit, just give me
the drive."
And off I toddled with my
Raptor. It's black, it's sexy and it's even got, like, heatsinky fins on it!
Excitement city.
Back home, plug it in,
boot up and CCC my boot drive across. After about 5 minutes I noticed CCC seemed
to be doing nothing. Strange. Reboot and try again. Same. Not good. OK, lets try
some diagnostics - natch Windoze only (thank you WD). So, install XP on an old
10 Gig gig that's been around since Fred Flintstone was a
lad.
(2 hours later).
OK, try the diagnostics - hmmm, "Quick
Test" looks good. I run the quick
test.
"FAILED - S.M.A.R.T. status
failed to be read."
SHITE!
OK, "Long Test".
Looks better, starts writing and
reading sectors - good! Maybe I can just map a few out. Not totally satis but
it'd do for now.
"FAILED - S.M.A.R.T.
status failed to be read."
WTFF?
Bugger.
Drive back in box and Bess and me hair
it back to E.K. double quick time (sorry to the guy in the Rover in my blind
spot on the roundabout just off J6 of the M.74 - but don't try to overtake on
the inside!). Anyway, back into Maplin - rather tedious conversation about how
the guy there thought it was their couriers faul deleted - back in the car and
home again.
Unwrap second drive, plug
it in, straight in to windoze this time. Format the effing thing just to be
doubly sure.
And again "Quick Test"
from the WD diagnostics.
"FAILED -
couldn't read a sector - status
7."
Sheer and absolute
bewilderment.
(Although, when the guy
told me he thought it was their couriers fault I did
wonder....)
Turns out this one has been
well bounced - the first few thousand sectors are hairy at best and zeroing
seems to be recovering them over multiple passes, but 'round about sector
65000000 there's just nothing for quite a few cylinders which is obviously not
repairable.
And so here I am now;
it's just gone eleven at night and rather than reveling in the glory of yet
another successful release I'm crying into my blog. And of course it means I
have to get up before the crack of dawn tomorrow to make it up to Maplin by 9.
And I know they haven't got any left, so gonna need a refund and then see if I
can find another
one.
'Triffic.
(Note:
In amongst all of today's angst, I did get to boot off of the first one and it
is very fast. Maybe tomorrow I'll get one that works for
real).
Posted: Mon - January 2, 2006 at 10:47 PM