Sigh... a little rant and a question

[sophia jane]

In the last fourty-eight hours, I've had several bad things happen. The big one being a very dead, and expensive to fix, car.
Today, my hard drive decided to act up. In fact, according to the hard drive company, it's "failing." I've never had warning about a hard drive problem before- anyone know how long I have till it dies? Anyone think they'll let trade sexual favors for a new one at Best Buy? Cuz with all the other shit going on, buying a new hard is going to be hard to justify to the ex (who pays the bills).

So...hard drive experts- anything I can do? Besides back up and pray? I've tried running the error checking program thru Windows but even that wouldn't work, which I guess means it's too sick to fix?

Any help, words of wisdom, or even a little sympathy would be welcomed.

SJ

 

[impressive]

So...hard drive experts- anything I can do? Besides back up and pray? I've tried running the error checking program thru Windows but even that wouldn't work, which I guess means it's too sick to fix?

Any help, words of wisdom, or even a little sympathy would be welcomed.

SJ

I have found that e-mailing documents to myself is a cheap, easy way to do temporary backups.

Obviously not feasible for the long term, but can be useful in the short.

 

[Colleen Thomas]

Back it up first.

Before you do anything else. I would also suggest puling off to disk anything you really can't stand looseing as the mirrors sometimes fail and you can't restore the back up.

How long you have depends a lot on why it's failing. that also has a lot to do with the feasibility of salvageing it.

I wish I knew more specifics, but I am just going on experience from loosing mine.

*HUGS*

 

[maggot420]

In the last fourty-eight hours, I've had several bad things happen. The big one being a very dead, and expensive to fix, car.
Today, my hard drive decided to act up. In fact, according to the hard drive company, it's "failing." I've never had warning about a hard drive problem before- anyone know how long I have till it dies? Anyone think they'll let trade sexual favors for a new one at Best Buy? Cuz with all the other shit going on, buying a new hard is going to be hard to justify to the ex (who pays the bills).

So...hard drive experts- anything I can do? Besides back up and pray? I've tried running the error checking program thru Windows but even that wouldn't work, which I guess means it's too sick to fix?

Any help, words of wisdom, or even a little sympathy would be welcomed.

SJ

you have my sympathy

The Earth quakes and the heavens rattle;
the beasts of nature flock together and the
nations of men flock apart; volcanoes usher up heat while elsewhere water becomes ice and melts;
and then on other days it just rains.

 

[gauchecritic]

A failing hard drive can give up the ghost at any time, without warning. As far as I know it tends to be a mechanical thing, so there aren't any detection programs.

As a safety net, until you can afford a brand new wizzo, out of the box, 120 gig peach you can buy second hand drives for a very small amount of money. My back-up on this pc is 8 gig and cost me £8. ($12-15?)

Simplicity itself to install and if you're unsure then yes, installation by a local geek can probably be paid for by sexual favour. Hell, he's probably get you the drive too for little more than a topless hand job.

 

[ElizabethWest]

Any help, words of wisdom, or even a little sympathy would be welcomed.

SJ

I can't offer help or words of wisdom, but you have my sympathy.

Wanna borrow my geek?

 

[sophia jane]

Thanks all for your support.

I hadn't thought about buying a used one temporarily- an excellent idea. We know how to install them (we always have custom pcs); just getting the damn thing that was worrying me. But I'll look into the a cheap one for the time being.

Liz- can your geek help??? Cuz I'll borrow anyone who can.

SJ

 

[ElizabethWest]

Liz- can your geek help???

I'll find out and get back to you.

 

[sophia jane]

I'll find out and get back to you.

Thanks. I'll be here. I hope.

SJ

 

[Guest]

Thanks. I'll be here. I hope.

SJ

Drives are getting cheap. I saw a 250 gig at Sam's Club for about 50 cents a gig.

Outpost.com has a 80 gig for $60 with rebate driving it down to $25. (with rebates, be prepared to pay the higher price, and feel like you scored if you really get the rebate). I'm not saying Outpost is bad about it, but the whole rebate thing is getting a bad name.

 

[Wildcard Ky]

Drives are getting cheap. I saw a 250 gig at Sam's Club for about 50 cents a gig.

Outpost.com has a 80 gig for $60 with rebate driving it down to $25. (with rebates, be prepared to pay the higher price, and feel like you scored if you really get the rebate). I'm not saying Outpost is bad about it, but the whole rebate thing is getting a bad name.

Ted E is right. Hard Drives are cheap. The trick is getting someone to install it for you.

Back up everything you need to disc first.

 

[sophia jane]

Prices are low, which is good news. The bad news, of course, is that we're totally broke and looking at least $1500 to fix the car. Hopefully we can squeeze out enough to replace it. I don't think I would know what to do with myself if I lost my puter completely.

SJ

 

[Weird Harold]

I hadn't thought about buying a used one temporarily- an excellent idea. We know how to install them (we always have custom pcs); just getting the damn thing that was worrying me. But I'll look into the a cheap one for the time being.

I picked up two "dead carcasses" at the local thrift store looking for a cheap powersupply fan for $15 -- included in the one labeled "No Hard Drive" was a six gig harddrive that was unplugged from the mother board. The other had a three gig harddrive.

St Vincent Depaul or Deseret Industries usually have employees/volunteers who are a bit more knowledgeable about computers and don't let deal like that slip through very often, but a local independent thrift shop will usually have something you can use that is going to be way under-valued because they don't have anyone who can repair or evaluate donated computers.

FWIW, the failure notice you're getting is probably from S.M.A.R.T hardware monitoring that most newer drives/computers have built into them. How long you've got depends on the exact problem it detected, but most of the faults are nebulous enough that you've probably got a while before a complete failure. The few SMART faults I've dealt with never did lead to a failure because they were "soft faults" and were correctible by a complete unconditional reformat of the drive. (A "soft fault" is a problem reading data that is caused by the data rather than the hardware -- to the monitoring hardware and software it looks like a head alignment problem.)

 

[SeaCat]

What happened to the car?

Cat

 

[sophia jane]

What happened to the car?

Cat

I'm not a car person, so I'm not going to explain this right. Something with a piston and the engine needs to be replaced now. But, it's a ten year old car so we're reluctant to plop that much money down.

SJ

 

[sophia jane]

I picked up two "dead carcasses" at the local thrift store looking for a cheap powersupply fan for $15 -- included in the one labeled "No Hard Drive" was a six gig harddrive that was unplugged from the mother board. The other had a three gig harddrive.

St Vincent Depaul or Deseret Industries usually have employees/volunteers who are a bit more knowledgeable about computers and don't let deal like that slip through very often, but a local independent thrift shop will usually have something you can use that is going to be way under-valued because they don't have anyone who can repair or evaluate donated computers.

FWIW, the failure notice you're getting is probably from S.M.A.R.T hardware monitoring that most newer drives/computers have built into them. How long you've got depends on the exact problem it detected, but most of the faults are nebulous enough that you've probably got a while before a complete failure. The few SMART faults I've dealt with never did lead to a failure because they were "soft faults" and were correctible by a complete unconditional reformat of the drive. (A "soft fault" is a problem reading data that is caused by the data rather than the hardware -- to the monitoring hardware and software it looks like a head alignment problem.)

Excellent info. It was a SMART fault; when I boot up it tells me bad drive, backup and relace, etc. I thought about formatting but I don't have any software with this harddrive (always had software of some kind with previous drives), so I don't know how to format it and if I'll need software for it when I reboot. So...any tips on reformatting would be great!

SJ

 

[rgraham666]

Can't help. I'm a Mac person.

So I'll just send *HUGS* instead.

 

[sophia jane]

I answered my own questions about reformating, so I'm off to give it a try. Everyone cross your fingers for me.

SJ

 

[Weird Harold]

Excellent info. It was a SMART fault; when I boot up it tells me bad drive, backup and relace, etc. I thought about formatting but I don't have any software with this harddrive (always had software of some kind with previous drives), so I don't know how to format it and if I'll need software for it when I reboot. So...any tips on reformatting would be great!

SJ

The problems I had were corrected by a simple windows/DOS format with the /U (uncondtional format) flag set. Since I have multiple drives and multiple partitions I was able to just copy the entire drive to another, reformat, and and copy everything back.

"Head Creep" sometimes causes a drive to read the edges of the original formatting tracks and reformatting puts the data tracks back under the center of the head. It's always a good idea to replace a drive that is suffering from "head creep" but reformatting will usually extend its useable life and somtimes clear the SMART faults that are based on error rates.

A low level format (the kind that requires spcialized software) is a last resort because it usually erases the drive ID information and confuses autodetection of drives. Reformatting (either HIgh-;evel or Low Level) is a "temporary fix" even though it is often good for a year or two of further use.

 

[logophile]

Sophie just called to let me know that she attempted to reformat but she is missing her Window's boot disk and so is now completely without a computer. She hopes to find either a boot disk or a spare hard drive (her friends are geeks) tomorrow. If that fails, she is offline indefinitely. *sob*

 

[Guest]

Sophie just called to let me know that she attempted to reformat but she is missing her Window's boot disk and so is now completely without a computer. She hopes to find either a boot disk or a spare hard drive (her friends are geeks) tomorrow. If that fails, she is offline indefinitely. *sob*

We need an "Extreme Makeover - Computer Edition" where a team of geeks swoop in and repair someone's computer and restore them to the online community that loves them so.

May the geeks be with her, and she be online to us soon. Otherwise I may have to setup a Paypal Donation Jar for her tomorrow.

Logo-give her our best.

 

[logophile]

We need an "Extreme Makeover - Computer Edition" where a team of geeks swoop in and repair someone's computer and restore them to the online community that loves them so.

May the geeks be with her, and she be online to us soon. Otherwise I may have to setup a Paypal Donation Jar for her tomorrow.

Logo-give her our best.

Will do, Ted.
And I like your idea about the computer makeover.
I don't know how I'll make it without her. *sigh*

 

[Guest]

Will do, Ted.
I don't know how I'll make it without her. *sigh*

There, there. Do we need to start a support group for you?

 

[logophile]

There, there. Do we need to start a support group for you?

Well, it's a good idea, but I think it would really help if Sophie was the featured guest speaker.

 

[minsue]

Hard drive hell. I can relate.