PC Failure

[JG]

The hard drive in my workstation failed on me yesterday.  The good news is I do monthly backups but even better news is that I was able to do a sector-by-sector copy (thanks EASEUS Drive Copy) to another hard drive.  However, the first 729 sectors are kaput on the old drive.  It seems its all Windows files that early on the drive so I don't seem to have lost any data, although some critical Windows files are unrecoverable and I can't repair it well enough to boot up on that partition.

So I'm running off a clean install of XP on a third hard drive.  This means I dont have access to all my regular programs and won't for a week or two.  If any of you are wanting me to translate something or scan something, it'll have to wait.  Sorry folks.

I'm taking this opportunity to upgrade, too.  Barring a DVD burner and memory upgrade, I've been running the same hardware for 5 years and its time to renew.  My batch of new hardware won't come in until later this week, after which I'll start getting things back to normal.   Now is a good time to buy from Sogna Digital Museum and help pay for my new parts. 

[Hyperguy]

I'm sorry to hear that JG.

Though at the same time, I'm curious as to what you plan on upgrading to.  I recently upgraded my PC too is all(after using the same one for about 5 years).

How do you manage your monthly backups?  I assume you have at least one personal computer and one for the server SDM's on.

I'm considering getting an extra drive to act as a redundacy drive myself.

Now is a good time to buy from Sogna Digital Museum and help pay for my new parts. 

Capitalism, ho!

[MMX]

I dropped my external HDD off the desk while it was plugged in and transferring files.  That was funny.

Then I cried.

But then i plugged in the hard drive again and found it was completely fine, if a bit slower than usual.

Then I was happy face again.

Still afraid to use it though.

This has been a Bang Doll informational status update.

[JG]

New parts arrived Wednesday.  I got it working Friday.  Was able to to connect to COA briefly then the server ban took effect.  At least I was able to take the weekend finish installing stuff (though if someone has recommendations for DVD/CD burning software akin to Nero, please say so.  I have Alcohol 120% for image burning, but don't have file burning software at the moment becuase my Nero Express isn't compatible with Windows 7.)

My new hardware is an AMD Phenom II X4 970 quad-core 3.5Ghz, an ASUS M4A89GTD PRO motherboard, 4 GB of Crucial Ballistix Tracer memory modules (2x2GB), an Antec Basiq 550W power supply, LITE-ON 20X Blu-Ray/DVD burner, and a pair of WD Velicoraptor 600 GB SATA 6.0gb/sec hard drives in RAID 1 configuration.  Running Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit.  Reusing my case, monitor, and other peripherals.  All told it's run me $1553.93.  The hard drives alone were over $600 but they're freakin' badass fast and more secure in the mirrored RAID configuration.  You might notice there's no video card listed there - the M4A89GTD comes with an integrated Radeon 4850 HD video card, which more than suits my needs as I don't play graphics intensive games on my PC (that's what Xboxs and Wiis are for.)  Likewise, I'm prefectly content with integrated audio.

I've upgraded from an AMD Athlon 64 2800 single-core, ASUS K8V motherboard, 1 GB of Kingston RAM (2x512MB), an ATI Radeon 9600 video card, the original Enlight 330W PSU that came with the case, Plextor 16X DVD burner, and a Maxtor Diamondmax 120GB SATA 1.5gb/sec drive, running XP.  It orignially cost me maybe $800-$900 and I probably put another $200-$300 of upgrades into it over its five year lifetime.  As soon as I get a new case for these old parts it'll become my secondary/testbed machine.

Additionally I have a server in my the closet (not kidding, my office is a converted bedroom and I've run power and ethernet into it for the express purpose of storing my server and printer in there).  The server is an Athlon 1400, an ASUS A7V motherboard, 1 GB of RAM, and a pair of small hard drives (one for O/S and one for web sites).  It runs Windows 2003 Enterprise Server (which I got for a steal on eBay a couple of years ago)

[JG]

(continued...)

I also have an HP tx2 Tablet PC laptop (the one with the reversible screen that can be carried like a tablet).  It has an AMD Turion 64 2.2 GHz dual-core procesor, 4 GB of memory, and a 250GB hard drive.  It runs Vista Home Premium.  I usually only use this for trips and such but have used it in the lastweek or so as needed.

So I have a grand total of four PCs in my house.  It should be no secret that I greatly prefer AMD processors and ASUS motherboards. I also recommend ATI video chipsets and WD and Maxtor hard drives (and strongly disapprove of all Seagate drives)

As far as a backup plan goes, I have a 250GB WD external hard drive conencted to the server to which I routinely copy folders.  This is not sufficient to cover my new 600GB drives but since they're RAIDed I think I can get away with it until I invest in a new, high-capacity external HDD.  Plus, I don't have 600GB of stuff to put on the new drives yet anyway.  My external drive is NTFS formatted (alot of them are Linux based) so I can map a network drive from my workstation and laptop to it.


MMX: I recommend a full drive scan (right click on the drive, choose Properties, Tools tab, Error Checking, then check both boxes.)  If it completes without bad sectors you're good to go.  If it has bad sectors its time to get a new drive.

[MMX]

I used to prefer ASUS products until I found out about that whole EPU sham that Gigabyte aired (not like Gigabyte is any less a greedy, marketing-speak-spewing twister of words) about how it can affect CPU's and explained a few of the weird stop errors I got sporadically... thankfully they were fixed in a bios update... that came out like a month before I was upgrading anyway.

Then the W90vp fiasco.  Yeah, it's probably my own fault for buying a desktop replacement, I'm a dumbass, etc.  But the way Asus conducted itself, ignoring and even outright lying about the issue that they knew damn well about.  Had to go to an Asus German site for one of th eGerman techs to take pity on us and release the BIOS update months before it was officially released.

Which also leads to my greatest complaint, that of their nonexistent customer service or tech support for anything other than their EeePCs... gfx cards, mobos, notebooks all included... oi.  And don't get me started on their support site that confusing maze of shite.  Other vendors are doing it better.  Even Dell, the company that continues to surprise me at how low they set the bar, surpasses the Asus support site.

It's kind of a combination of things, I just don't trust Asus anymore.  At least they're not Acer, though.  Or Sony *shudder*

JG00 - I've learned not to trust disk check too closely when it comes to physical shock on a spinning hard drive.  That was of course the first thing I did and found no bad sectors.  But that doesn't mean there isn't a higher risk of head crash down the road.  If this drive came with better analytics than the standard Google/WD shite surface/SMART scan I might be more prone to trust it again, but eh... been thinking about picking up SpinRite and checking it with that.  Hard not to trust SpinRite.