Hard Disk Problem Again
My secondary hard drive is crapping out again and it's tearing down my whole computer. It's barely functional. You can see this earlier post: http://enoa4rpg.blogspot.com/2008/03/hard-drive-problems.html to read about the issues I was able to resolve it but it's back again.
What would I loose on the secondary drive.
Video (home video)
MP3s including some purchased recently and not burned to disk yet
NWN2 backup files.
I have 10 minutes to resolve this problem today. Perhaps 60 tomorrow.
There is no time for this.
What would I loose on the secondary drive.
Video (home video)
MP3s including some purchased recently and not burned to disk yet
NWN2 backup files.
I have 10 minutes to resolve this problem today. Perhaps 60 tomorrow.
There is no time for this.
I'm sorry Ernie :( I spent my entire Friday night formatting, reinstalling XP 64 bit and all my programs. Not to mention all the drivers, critical updates etc FUN! NOT!
ReplyDeleteI hope you resolve your issues with to much headache. :)
Liso
Dude, take your drive out of the computer and bring it to a PC shop so they can transfer the data to a new drive. Shouldn't cost you more than $30 and a few hours, plus a new hard drive if you need to buy one.
ReplyDeleteWindows doesn't differentiate if you have a different drive. You can just pop a new one in with the data transferred and it won't know the difference.
You should make backups of everything though, in case it breaks while they are working on it. In that case the data can be recovered, but it's extremely expensive to have done.
Hope that helps
Sorry to hear about your problems. I hope you're able to get them fixed soon.
ReplyDeleteI'm back on the road. I yanked the secondary drive. With a few hours of work I might have been able to repair it and convince windows that the volume was not dirty, grab the data then yank it, but I've got some personal constrains on my time. I've got surgery Tuesday and need the box operational shortly after for telecommuting.
ReplyDeleteSo... I'm down 250 GB of storage, which includes backups, music, video and NWN2 backups. The only thing I don't have presently is the music. The video I can grab again.
My plan is to buy a new secondary drive, for whatever reason the average lifespan of my secondary drive is 18-24 months. Like clockwork, it fails or flakes out on almost every computer I've owned.
Then I'll buy a USB case for an external hard drive, plug the failing drive into it and see if I can salvage the data. I feel like I'm going to have more luck getting at the data this way even if the drive is flaky. If I can plug it in and yank the drive without getting in the way of my start up sequence hopefully the computer won't be crippled.
Finally I'll buy another drive, plug it in the USB enclosure and use that as a back up disk.
Right now I back up to DVD periodically and very critical files go on a flash drive.
It's a far cry from work where we've got shadow copy, and full backups nightly, but it will help.
@Dirtywick. Thanks for the advice. Sincerely appreciated good sir. I work in IT and with enough time I'm going to get that data off that drive. It's somewhere between a good challenge and a matter of pride. ;-) With my personal schedule (surgery and the need for telecommuting) I'm not able to spend as much time messaging the drive as I'd like to, I'm going to have to yank it. I have approximately 2-3 hours of personal time on the calendar before I'm 'under the knife'.
It's ankle and foot sugury but I won't be mobile for a while. No lifting CPUs, fetching screwdrivers, etc...
Heh, didn't know you worked in IT. Guess you should solve this problem easily then.
ReplyDeleteThat's what I did when my hard drive started making a ticking noise a while ago. It was pretty painless and actually got a better drive out of the deal.
I could if I had time, but time is pretty short. I've got 1.5 hours today and 3-4 tomorrow night. Kids to take care of, and I've got to gather a few things to take with my for surgery. No big deal, but it really puts a crimp in my ability to resolve the issue the way I'd like to. :-(
ReplyDeleteI got a new 500GB SATA drive for about $99, cheaper with a gift certificate. It's in and formatting now. Takes a while for those big drives to format. :-)
ReplyDeleteI had one software program on my former secondary drive, and off course according to my program list (and the registry) it's still there. Reinstalling should be fairly interesting. :-)
I'm missing some purchased music from iTunes but not too much.
If I have time to get a drive enclosure I'll try recovering the missing data.