crazybobbles

mmmm 320 gigalo bytes

Ickle post, I bought myself a lovely 320gb 2.5inch hard drive to replace my PS3’s harddrive. I wanted to fit a lot of TV shows, photos and videos on my ps3 and felt my PS3 is really struggling with the capacity.  It was bugging me, if I wanted to watch a film or whatnot I would have to copy it into a CF or SD card and actually play the thing on the flash card instead of the HDD since it was brimming with videos and whatnot. Games were also starting to pile up so I thought it was best to start investing in a bigger hard drive for my multimedia needs. I bought the badboy from play.com and it arrived pretty promptly at the office. Everything was fine and dandy until I started trying to upgrade the damn HDD. After removing all my music from my ipod to backup my PS3 I was stuck trying to unscrew the damn screws that was securing the HDD to the caddy. I pretty much stripped all 4 screws, leaving the thing stuck. Crapsticks. A lot of searching for alternative screwdrivers was involved and I ended up staying up till 4am finding screwdrivers until I gave up, I resorted in synching my ipod with a fixed playlist of music since my backup stuff were still in the ipod and I didn’t have enough room to store all my music (which was why I was stubborn enough to go searching for screwdrivers in the middle of the night because I wanted to have my music back). I went to sleep, hoping I will be able to solve this damn mess.

The next morning I called up the Sony support centre and asked for a new caddy which they were happy to send for free (go Sony Customer Support!) but got weary of waiting for it. I decided to take matters into my own hands (well to be fair, it was my matter in the first place but I like using that line) and googled for people who were experiencing the same problem (it wasn’t me! The damn screws were reallllly tight for others too). The suggestion was to either phone Sony or use a pair of pliers to carefully take the screws out. unfortunately I didn’t have a pair of pliers so an adventure down to the my nearest Maplins was at hand, I wasn’t able to do it that day either so another day went by with limited music and no HDD.

The next day it was a slightly miserable and rainy day, I took a trip to Royal Mail to collect some stuff and went to Maplins afterwards. At the store I presented them with the HDD and caddy and told them I needed the tools to take it out, the friendly store assistant got his screwdrivers out and tried unscrewing them to no avail. He eventually suggested pliers which I asked him to do, I granted him permission to mangle my HDD and caddy and that I wouldn’t sue him if he broke it (I just wanted the caddy). After several attempts he gave up and handed it over to a collegue who we shall call ISSA (ignorant stubborn sales assistant). He instantly recited some Maplins policy (which he most likely made up) saying he couldn’t do it for us as he wasn’t allowed to mangle up customer stuff (despite the other guy helping out). In frustration I asked him what tools I needed to do it myself and he recommended me the pliers (initially he had no idea, but I hinted at pliers in which he tried rewording so it sounded like it was his idea in the first place). I bought the pliers for £3.50 odd (I had another tough screw at home I wouldn’t mind unscrewing with the pliers so it wasn’t just for the HDD) and began the painful task of unscrewing the thing, now the tediousness of this task was just. too. tanterlising for engineers and nerdy folk, ISSA couldn’t help grabbing the tools and caddy out of my hand, mutter “you can’t do this, only I can do this” and began his ignorant journey of opening the damn thing.

It was pretty hilarious watching him doing it, the expression of frustration and stubbornness was clearly painted on his face. I got bored and went online on my mobile to talk to Kev about the situation whilst the other members of staff were serving other customers. The store supervisor came out and told ISSA that it was his lunch break but he refused to go because he had to get the damn thing out. It was almost a matter of pride now, I would have happily went back home and slowly tried taking it out myself but hey, once an ISSA starts, it’s almost impossible to get him to stop. Eventually one of the screws finally came out and hope began to settle in my doubts of whether ISSA could actually unscrew the thing, I continued to chat with kev and a few other people on msn and the store supervisor began nattering at ISSA to go have his lunch break, he even at one point offered to unscrew it himself only to find himself failing miserably. It wouldn’t have been right anyway, it was now a point where I wanted ISSA to unscrew them, better to have someone else do all the hard work eh? After 15 minutes of ISSA screams of frustration, he finally unscrewed all 4 of the screws HOORAY! The catch however was that at the last screw, he started mangling up my caddy in order to get room for the pliers! Damnit! I took the pliers and began unbending the thing he bent out. The supervisor shoo’d him away to lunch and I pretty much left the place having no other reason to be there. Once back home I was able to screw the new HDD into the caddy and begin transferring my old stuff back onto the PS3 and getting my music collection back into my ipod! (YAY!)

The extra room was all kinds of awesome, I was glad I finally made the upgrade. So yeah, that was quite an adventure :p