Well that's not good, stupid hdd.

[Aro]

Seems my sata hdd has decided to not work. Think the main partition was backed up not too long ago. The second partition may be a different story...

May I continue to live in interesting times.

[amtct]

That's bad .Hope there were not to important stuffs on the second partition .

[xeon_1]

One of my disk in the raid 5 also died this weekend not fun as i don't have enough space on other media to store everything.
Still have 600gig i can't backup most of it is recoverable true other means (making new backup's of the servers at work ect.)
The rest i can't get anywhere else as those are home made foto's recordings ect.
But still i would be alot of work to recreate it
I am still building a new home server for this purpose
So here is hoping that the rebuild procces is successful

I know it suck but that is why i had the raid to give me the chance to save some if not all data.
I used to use simple external hdd to store everything with out backup's now that was problematic.

[Aro]

Been wanting to set up a basic file server again (was using an old computer). It was rather handy to have data stored in a way that multiple computers could get to it and simple to back up. Could even use a free online service for a smaller section of important stuff. Funny thing I was going to do another full backup too, gremlins musta heard me.

Casualties of the failure: bunch of save games, maybe a few pictures and music, stuff I've forgotten about for sure, XFF fleet spawner 2.0 progress and extra files, Plot Skipper newest version, other stuff probably, more miscellaneous stuff.
XFF spawner and Plot Skipper still had some bugs but doing them again will be annoying.


Vista recovery disk didn't do anything. Tried some mbr loaders. Stuck an Ubuntu disk in to try. No results. The drive just vanished. Though messing with some settings caused Ubuntu to spin the hdd but give an error and fail. It's quite late now so time for bed. *sets wake up timer and turns blackberry off*

[Pat the Cat]

Check the basics - cables and connections.

If BIOS can't see a drive, it's had it.

Mind you, even if BIOS can see a drive, that doesn't mean it actually spins.

[Mr-Ten-Percent]

I heard an old wives tale how if you put a dead hdd in the freezer in an airtight bag (to prevent condensation) you may be able to recover some of the data on it.
Of course I have never tried this and have no idea if it will work, but I have the same perception about baking graphic cards and I seem to remember a thread about how that does work.
Anyway hope you manage to recover your data and bad luck on the failed hdd.

[Aro]

@Mr-Ten-Percent, must be the same people that spread the towel + xbox360 red ring cure...

Yay! The new 1TB drive is recognized by the bios. Only 20 bucks more to double the storage space from the drive I was looking at so why not (more stuff to lose next time).

Now the question for tomorrow... restore the backup image or start a fresh install. Hmm, simpler to just restore the image. Off to bed.

[Geggo]

I heard an old wives tale how if you put a dead hdd in the freezer in an airtight bag (to prevent condensation) you may be able to recover some of the data on it.

It has it's uses but it's not a miracle cure for all problems, mainly it helps in cases where the drive/controller heats too much for what ever reason.

[logan86]

but I have the same perception about baking graphic cards and I seem to remember a thread about how that does work.

I made a thread here after I baked my GFX card in the oven. That was ages ago now. It did indeed work and that card still works even today, not that I actually use it any more. Im not sure about the xbox360 towel cure though, that sounds far less likely to work.

About the broken drive, have you tried hooking it up to another machine, just to see. Maybe thats too obvious actually because you probably would have tried that already. Other than that, I haven't really heard of any methods to get HDD's working. That freezer one is interesting though, but probably not relevant to your problem if the drive just isn't recognised at all.

[amtct]

I made a thread here after I baked my GFX card in the oven. That was ages ago now. It did indeed work and that card still works even today, not that I actually use it any more. Im not sure about the xbox360 towel cure though, that sounds far less likely to work.

Some poeple say that if the card worked for two years before it needed that reflow it will work for another two years before it will need a reflow again.
I have a baked 8800 Ultra here but I don't use it.Maybe I'll put it in a PC at work just to test how long it will last before I'll have to cook it again

[Aro]

Not sure if any of the other boxes I have can use a sata drive.
Do intend to check but methinks the drive was buggy from the start and finally just gave up.

On another note those 4 TB drives look smexy. Would rather get a SSD but prices are still way too high.

Edit: Yay up and running again. Just have a ton of updates to do as the backup was from February. Only a few gigs, plus whatever other things need updating.



Edit2: Yay vista service pack is bsoding the thing.

[logan86]

Edit2: Yay vista service pack is bsoding the thing.

Yay

[BeidAmmikon]

Edit2: Yay vista service pack is bsoding the thing.

Yay

Yay

[Aro]

Edit2: Yay vista service pack is bsoding the thing.

Yay

Yay

Think it's a bios thing, will try to update it before trashing progress and restarting. Thought it said it had made a system restore point.. oh well.


Edits:
Ok. Made another backup of current progress. Bios update did not want to run. Restored the first backup again.
Logged in and... get logged out? How odd. Try another account. Log in.. automatically get logged out. Wha? Alrighty, admin account time. Ok better... or not. Not logging me out but just spinning. Task manager! Things are odd... what is going on? Ok try some more stuff and while checking the partitions accidentally wipe both segments on the new drive.
Oops.

Restore the first backup again... at least this time it's working properly. Time for more updates, won't bother with other things just all drivers/bios/etc for the service pack attempt. Yay?

Bit of a scare after flashing the BIOS but everything seems fine now. Waiting for the main backup I've been using to finish copying to another drive, only a few hours left... stupid slow USB. Then a quick driver update spree and apply the service pack and hope for the best. May need to buy another box. Or see if it's possible to locate the spare copy of XP+key. Not sure where they are now and reading stuff online it's still a hassle to get XP running on this machine model.

A ton of updates and checks for updates and comparisons later. Now in goes the service pack, oh and disable that stupid auto-restart. What idiot thought of that. And another bsod. Good thing a manual system restore point was made. New error message to look up this time too. Stupid vista.

[ external image ]

Ookay. Could be a ton of stuff. And for some odd reason a bunch of restore points were made this time. Now I'm pondering. Must be something to do with the service pack. Eliminate everything else first (software conflicts and the like) then install it. Fresh install of vista, update drivers, then apply service pack. If that works.. well.. keep it.

Not hit the big reset button yet. More like format c:\. Trying a few other things first so hopefully something works. If more programs were supported on alternate platforms...
Nope those did not work. Gotta try a fresh install next. If that doesn't work...

Well that's REALLY annoying.
The fresh install works. Downloading a bunch more updates, then a ton of stuff needs to be installed. Really wonder what caused the problem. Seems this confirmed it was software/driver related. And need to activate windows. After all that is done... backup! Glad I went for the computer with installation disks.