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Dead Computer

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(@kingpatzer)
Noble Member
Joined: 19 years ago
Posts: 2171
Topic starter  

AAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Turn on the power and the little hard drive goes "thwacka thwacka thwacka bzzzzzzzzz thwacka thwacka" in a non-stop "ugh is this bad" sort of way.

Sooo . ..

I'm pretty sure I've lost all my recordings since the last time I backed things up (6 months worth probably) as well as a ton of other important stuff that I should have been smarter about backing up . . .

What are folks suggestions out there?

I'm seriously thinking of making the jump to macs . . . but I don't know how to compare between the mac and pc world.

"The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side." -- HST


   
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(@baldwin)
Trusted Member
Joined: 18 years ago
Posts: 58
 

If you really think that it is dead, take the drive out and slam it on the table. I had the same thing happen to me over a year ago with a 250GB drive that I'm still using to this day.

It's worth a shot and I have heard of other people doing the same thing with some success.


   
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 Bish
(@bish)
Famed Member
Joined: 18 years ago
Posts: 3636
 

David.

Take the drive out and put it in a second computer as a slave.

If you can get it to spin up, you can get data off of it.

And last....DON'T EVER TURN OFF YOUR PC unless you need to reboot it.

Bish

"I play live as playing dead is harder than it sounds!"


   
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(@gnease)
Illustrious Member
Joined: 20 years ago
Posts: 5038
 

If you have a bootable CD-ROM, try booting from that. Then see if you can access the hard drive. You may have first to enable booting from CD-ROM drive in the PC's pre-boot setup utility (usually through pressing a function key during power-up). If the data are truly valuable, there are data recovery services available. Check the web.

-=tension & release=-


   
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(@minus_human)
Reputable Member
Joined: 20 years ago
Posts: 381
 

You could try tiramisu data recovery it was free last time is used it and worked fine.

Good Luck

Minus

And all the things you said to me
I need your arms to welcome me
But a cold stone's all I see

Let my heart go


   
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(@rparker)
Illustrious Member
Joined: 20 years ago
Posts: 5480
 

I'm with Bish. Put a new drive in there, use the utility that comes with it to copy from another disk and you should be all set.

Roy
"I wonder if a composer ever intentionally composed a piece that was physically impossible to play and stuck it away to be found years later after his death, knowing it would forever drive perfectionist musicians crazy." - George Carlin


   
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(@pearlthekat)
Noble Member
Joined: 19 years ago
Posts: 1468
 

I've had nothing but computer problems for a long while now, though nothing has actually died except for a monitor. My problems have been about trying to record and not having the right equipment so i've been thinking about buying a new Mac. both my old computers are Macs also. I don't know how to compare Mac to PC and thats why I'm sticking with another Mac. If you want to buy a Mac especially for recording you don't need to have a high end one. The one that I'll most likely be buying is the MacBook second from the cheapest. It comes with GarageBand which is what you'd want. The next one up is $300 more and there's not much difference except it's a little bit bigger.


   
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(@chris-c)
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Joined: 19 years ago
Posts: 3454
 

I'm with Bish and Roy. Most drive 'failures to proceed' are caused by corruption in a key data area, not total physical failure of the drive. Usually you can put the 'bad' drive in another machine as a slave (may need the 'jumper' to be reset to slave on some drives) and copy the data across.

The original drive can usually then be re-formatted and used again.

I always run two drives in my machines, then it's easy to use the second one just for backup. The more fiddly the backup procedure the less likely you are to do it regularly.

If the drive won't spin up, or can't be read as a slave, then - depending on the fault - the data can sometimes be rescued by swapping the circuit board on the back with one from a similar working drive. But this is not really a job for the casual computer owner... :shock:

Good luck.


   
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(@ghost)
Prominent Member
Joined: 19 years ago
Posts: 815
 

Turn on the power and the little hard drive goes "thwacka thwacka thwacka bzzzzzzzzz thwacka thwacka" in a non-stop "ugh is this bad" sort of way.

My brother described the same thing happening to his computer before it went bye bye on him. Computers. :roll: :?

"If I had a time machine, I'd go back and tell me to practise that bloody guitar!" -Vic Lewis

Everything is 42..... again.


   
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(@kent_eh)
Noble Member
Joined: 18 years ago
Posts: 1882
 

I have had hard drives physically fail due to overheating. The bearings seized up.
If that's what happened the "whack it on a table" method has a chance of working.

I wrapped a newspaper ’round my head
So I looked like I was deep


   
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(@the-dali)
Noble Member
Joined: 18 years ago
Posts: 1409
 

For what it is worth, my Dad picked up a Mac after years of PC frustration and he loves it. I've had PCs for the last 10 years and had nothing but bad luck with viruses. No major hardware issues, but I've been invaded more than once. I might opt for the Mac approach with my next computer.

-=- Steve

"If the moon were made of ribs, would you eat it?"


   
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(@chris-c)
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Joined: 19 years ago
Posts: 3454
 

I have had hard drives physically fail due to overheating. The bearings seized up.
If that's what happened the "whack it on a table" method has a chance of working.

Interesting... that explains something... :)

I've heard tales of people having success with putting the drive in a bag and chilling it in a freezer for a while. Apparently it will then sometimes work again long enough to get the data off.

I often wondered what type of fault or failure could be helped by chilling. But it could well be exactly that overheating/seizing thing. The contraction caused by the cooling might free up bearings at least temporarily.

Over twenty years of working with computers I've nearly always managed to get the data off by making the disk a slave. Only once has one really 'died' on me. It was actually only a month old, and as the data was already backed up, (and the warranty gave me a brand new one) I didn't bother with trying all the fancy tricks once it was clear that it wouldn't read as either master or slave.

I've often fancied a Mac to fiddle with, but I have too much software that needs a fast Windows based PC, and too many drawers full of spare bits for it to be worthwhile changing. I've also had no virus problems, and not much in the way of technical problems that I couldn't solve without too much grief...


   
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(@jwishart77)
Estimable Member
Joined: 19 years ago
Posts: 91
 

Yep - I had a problem with my laptop not booting last year. I stuck the whole thing in the fridge (probably not ideal, should take out the hard drive..) and then it would boot. Problem just got worse though until i replaced the hard drive, however I had been able to get any information I wanted off of it by then.

As far as leaving your computer on all the time, that is definitely not the case for laptops, but it won't hurt a pc. Good idea to reboot fairly regularly though as windows has inherent memory leak issues that will slow down your computer over time.

I think i would try the freezer idea before the 'whack on a table' one!

Also, if you can boot to a DOS prompt (you may need to insert your windows disk and run the repair function) then you can try running CHKDSK /P and CHKDSK /R (i think that's the right command) at the prompt. This will check your hard drive for bad sectors and other IT stuff that I don't fully understand and hopefully repair them.....


   
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(@gnease)
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Joined: 20 years ago
Posts: 5038
 

Yep - I had a problem with my laptop not booting last year. I stuck the whole thing in the fridge (probably not ideal, should take out the hard drive..) and then it would boot.

Was it a Toshiba? The A series is reknowned for overheating. There's a class action suit over boot/shutdown issues for those.
Also, if you can boot to a DOS prompt (you may need to insert your windows disk and run the repair function) then you can try running CHKDSK /P and CHKDSK /R (i think that's the right command) at the prompt. This will check your hard drive for bad sectors and other IT stuff that I don't fully understand and hopefully repair them.....

Worth a try, but it may not repair a bad boot sector well enough to boot Windows until the bad sectors are written out, and the boot sectors restored from the Windows CD (on to new sectors). In any case, if the machine boots Windows from the CD-ROM, there's a good chance most of the hard drive will be accessable as long as it is only slightly corrupted. And booting from a CD-ROM is a lot easier than inserting a master boot drive and slaving the original drive -- In fact, it's really pretty much the same thing, but about 10x easier.

-=tension & release=-


   
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(@chris-c)
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Joined: 19 years ago
Posts: 3454
 

In any case, if the machine boots Windows from the CD-ROM, there's a good chance most of the hard drive will be accessable as long as it is only slightly corrupted. And booting from a CD-ROM is a lot easier than inserting a master boot drive and slaving the original drive -- In fact, it's really pretty much the same thing, but about 10x easier.

True, it's quicker - but, if you know what you're doing, it takes only a few moments to whip a drive out and slip it in another machine anyway. For me, time or easiness isn't really the issue though. The real advantage of hooking the drive up as a slave is that I've then got somewhere else to copy any 'lost' data to.

In theory you might be able to view a drive in order to repair some crucial piece of damaged code and get the disk working again, but I've yet to succeed in that endeavour. At least, not since the days of Windows 98 when you just stuck the OS Cd in and re-installed over the top. That worked on many occasions... :wink:

If a drive gets corrupted, develops bad sectors or whatever, I'm not usually interested in re-using it as a master anyway. If they're otherwise OK they just get reformatted and used as slave drives.

You only need one experience like this to make you get a bit more serious about backup. When I build a new machine I now install all the core software that I always use, and then make a complete clone of the drive and store it. Then I just back up the data on a regular basis. In the event of a serious crash it only takes a few minutes to have the system up and running again. :)

Cheers, Chris


   
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