Update On 'Puter Stuff
Jul. 18th, 2005 03:39 pmSo, I went to CompUSA and got a hard drive and two USB 2.0 hard drive cases. Plastic -- there's some aluminum in there, but they still get hot, dammit -- but they work, and the hard drive was deeply on sale, so I ended up spending a large hunk less than I feared.
I put the old hard drive into one of the cases, and the system recognized it as functioning properly, but it needs to be formatted, would you like to do that now? (That would be "no", Pat.)
Went a-Googling for "hard disk recovery software". First thing that came up was something called Stellar Phoenix. Downloaded the demo, which said it would read what it could -- and damn if it read pretty much every file I'd had on that drive. Recreated the directory tree completely, didn't seem to be missing anything.
It seemed a bit pricey, so I tried to call 'em for some more info. The tollfree didn't work. Not promising. So I checked out most of the rest of the other programs on that first Google page.
Only one of them could even find the drive, and that one -- like two of the three others -- crashed badly.
Upshot: I need the stuff on that drive -- it's, like, most of the last five albums. I was trying to finish the config (which I now have been forced to finish today) so that I could more easily back everything up. And now, I'm waiting for Stellar Info Systems to recognize that I've paid them for this software, and send me a license key. I'll let you know how it works out.
I put the old hard drive into one of the cases, and the system recognized it as functioning properly, but it needs to be formatted, would you like to do that now? (That would be "no", Pat.)
Went a-Googling for "hard disk recovery software". First thing that came up was something called Stellar Phoenix. Downloaded the demo, which said it would read what it could -- and damn if it read pretty much every file I'd had on that drive. Recreated the directory tree completely, didn't seem to be missing anything.
It seemed a bit pricey, so I tried to call 'em for some more info. The tollfree didn't work. Not promising. So I checked out most of the rest of the other programs on that first Google page.
Only one of them could even find the drive, and that one -- like two of the three others -- crashed badly.
Upshot: I need the stuff on that drive -- it's, like, most of the last five albums. I was trying to finish the config (which I now have been forced to finish today) so that I could more easily back everything up. And now, I'm waiting for Stellar Info Systems to recognize that I've paid them for this software, and send me a license key. I'll let you know how it works out.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-07-18 08:16 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-07-18 08:34 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-07-18 08:22 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-07-18 08:32 pm (UTC)I've been doing some backing up to CD-R, but I wanted to have a hard drive back-up as well, and I basically am taking precisely the steps I would've in about three weeks, just not as I would've wanted.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-07-18 10:29 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-07-18 08:25 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-07-18 08:35 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-07-18 08:51 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-07-18 09:00 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-07-18 09:18 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-07-18 09:24 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-07-18 09:33 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-07-18 10:06 pm (UTC)Click Start, click Run, type compmgmt.msc, and then click OK.
In the console tree, click Disk Management. The Disk Management window appears. Your disks and volumes appear in a graphical view and list view.
Now, Disk management can have one of about 17 differnt statuses, ranging from Online to such oddball statuses as Healthy (At Risk), Foreign and my own personal favorite, Failed.
Device Manager only looks at the driver software and the controller/drive interface. Disk Management actually looks at the drive data itself, including the master boot record, bootstrap, partition table, etc. Just from what you've said, it sounds like you've lost a decent portion of the master boot record but have managed to keep a significant portion, if not all, of the master file table.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-07-18 11:14 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-07-19 12:21 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-07-19 12:28 am (UTC)What concerns me is XP wants to format the drive, but yet Disk Management shows the partition as healthy...
When you boot the system with just this drive and hold down F8 as it gets ready to boot, does it give you access to the boot control menu?
(no subject)
Date: 2005-07-19 01:16 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-07-19 01:33 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-07-18 10:49 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-07-18 11:14 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-07-18 11:43 pm (UTC)It won't help with this case, but if you go to http://shipit.ubuntu.com/, they'll send you multiple free copies of their Linux distro. Along with the install disk, they send a LiveCD, which lets you boot into Linux without making any changes to your hard drive. It runs off a RAM disk and doesn't even mount your HD unless you specifically tell it to.
I've been playing with this a bit: I think the next step is to install it using Virtual PC, so I can actually have stuff stick around after I reboot. :-)
(no subject)
Date: 2005-07-18 11:23 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-07-19 03:23 am (UTC)hard drive...
Date: 2005-07-19 03:33 pm (UTC)As for the replacement drive... What brand did you grab? The only one these days with anything of a real warrantee has been tending to be Seagate who gives you 5 years. (Everyone else is 1 year or less and you can pay for longer on a few of them.)
Harold
Re: hard drive...
Date: 2005-07-19 04:55 pm (UTC)