Hard Drive Crash!

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charlesb
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Hard Drive Crash!

Post by charlesb » Tue Jan 28, 2014 11:25 pm

I've been kind of scarce lately due to a hard-drive crash on my personal computer. While I round up parts to repair it, I'm getting by with a little Acer ultrabook I got last year to keep me occupied in hospital and doctors waiting rooms. - Most of those places have WIFI now.

Some of my stuff was backed up, lots of it wasn't, including a novel that was close to completion.

Since I have to start off from scratch with a new hard-drive and operating system, I'm going to try something new and have a solid-state drive for the OS, and a regular 1 terabyte hard-drive for storage.

It'll make the computer boot up in seconds instead of minutes, and will speed up some other things to computer does too.

Part of my outlook is to look for opportunity from tragedy. I won't just fix the computer, but will use this opportunity to make it better.

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blue68f100
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Post by blue68f100 » Wed Jan 29, 2014 9:49 am

Sorry to hear you lost some important data. Some times it's the system board that fails on the HD's. I have recovered many by replacing the system board. If the data is important you can use one of the recovery services but that can be very expensive. The SMART system on the hd's are suppose to report a problem but I have never had one do so. I back up all my computer to some NAS's I have. I have close to 12Tb of NAS storage if I turn them all on. I use one of the 3 to back up the other 2 to.
David

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charlesb
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Post by charlesb » Thu Jan 30, 2014 11:22 pm

I may try replacing the HD system board, but wouldn't spend much more money than that.

I write a lot, but its just for my own enjoyment so it's not really that tragic that some of it was lost. Sometimes I think that I write so I'll have something to edit, it seems like I put in three or more hours editing for every hour I spend writing.

The little ultrabook is amazing. With a monitor, sound system and keyboard attached to it, the thing comes close to duplicating what my desktop did. The main drawbacks are in the graphics and connectivity departments. It has no ethernet port so I have to get by on WIFI.

Also, the ultrabook runs on Win8.1 and I liked the Vista Pro on my desktop a lot better.

My son advised me to try Win7 instead of Vista on the new hard-drive, when I get it.

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blue68f100
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Post by blue68f100 » Fri Jan 31, 2014 9:49 am

Charles if you send me the info on the HD that failed and any numbers on the board, I will see if I have 1 I can send you.
David

SS MKIII 6 7/8" Fluted Hunter. Mueller Quick Shot, Bushnell 2x Scope, Hogue Rubber Grips
Custom Built 1911

greener

Post by greener » Sat Feb 01, 2014 7:55 am

W7 is a better OS than Vista. W8 supposedly has some improved features. I have a laptop with W8 and I find the OS annoying. When I wanted a touch screen tablet I bought one, having a non-touch screen laptop trying to look like a touch screen is a waste.

Are you sure it is the hard drive failure and not a controller failure? I've run across a couple of external backup drives that had controller failures and the disks worked perfectly.

I like the idea of going with a solid state OS drive and a disk data drive. I've been using a Seagate Central (3 TB) for backing up the three computers on my home network. I also have a 1 TB backup plus, a .5 tb external seagate backup and two .5tb drives in external cases, all doing image backups. Years ago i was using a tape backup. The HD failed and tape restore failed at the start of tape 2 of 5. It took me about 9 months to rebuild a family history file.

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Post by charlesb » Sat Feb 01, 2014 8:39 pm

I'll pull the drive out tomorrow morning and see what it is.

Have been roped into some family business that has kept me hopping the last couple of days. ( Whew! )

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Post by charlesb » Mon Feb 03, 2014 7:20 pm

The dead HD is a Seagate 'Barracuda' 7200.11 500 GB

SATA power and data connectors

P/N 98X144-621

Firmware: HP24

I was surprised at how easily it came out of the case.

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Post by blue68f100 » Tue Feb 04, 2014 9:46 am

Charles, I went through my controller boards and I do not have one for yours. The drives that failed were under warranty so I got them replaced. Most of my boards are the older IDE not SATA like yours. If the drives spins up it would be worth the expense to find one. If it does not spin up it's toast.

With the cost of HD's being so cheap these days I would buy the Seagate Plus external BU drive in either a 2-3T. Fry's has been advertising the 4T for $160m lately. I use a 2T plus I have close to 12T of NAS storage in the house. I do not put anything on a cloud service. I consider everything on the web as public access.
David

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greener

Post by greener » Tue Feb 04, 2014 9:59 pm

The BIOS will tell you if the drive is good or bad if it supports SMART. Like Blue said they are so cheap it's simple enough to replace them. $60 for a 1TB internal at Amazon. It hardly pays to send one back for warranty.
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_c_ ... Caps%2C189

The external cases are cheap if the drive works
http://www.amazon.com/Sabrent-3-5-Inch- ... drive+case


And I remember when I got a great deal on a 40 MB RLL drive for $400.

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Post by blue68f100 » Tue Feb 04, 2014 10:07 pm

I have yet to have a HD report with the SMART system that it was failing. Normally there is no warning when they die. When I get a new drive I have a program that test the media rw for errors. If it reports a problem I send them back before I put them in service.
David

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greener

Post by greener » Wed Feb 05, 2014 7:40 am

I've had one the SMART system reported, but it was about the time you could tell the disk was going by sound and performance. That was a WD 120MB that failed about every 12 months. I finally gave up on it. I've kept hard drives when I've tossed components. I can make someone a real deal on 80MB Samsung drives or a 120MB WD, guaranteed to fail.

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Post by charlesb » Wed Feb 05, 2014 8:55 am

I'll apply power to the offending Seagrate today and see if it spins.

This drive made no noise or vibration as it failed, and it failed in increments. First it would not load a particular program, so I re-booted and was only able to get a DOS-like diskcheck program to run that tested and listed lots of dead sectors, then it would no longer boot and was dead at last.

If it spins, I'll check around on eBay etc. to see if I can find a loose system board floating around that is not too pricey.

greener

Post by greener » Wed Feb 05, 2014 11:00 pm

All the symptoms of a dead drive.

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