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OMFG - should I just give up?


Baddcog

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awhile back i had to reinstall everything. Turned out it might have just been a sata connection on my mobo. But I couldn't figure out what was up so I reinstalled windows...

 

So tonight I'm playing L4D2 with some friends. Lockup, reboot, nothing. Unplug my old HD and i get windows to start but it wants to do a restart troubleshoot/fix... 20 minutes later it starts up. Only reading my main HD.

So SVN HD and games HD gone.

 

I tried swapping sata connects, still nothing. If I plug in my Games HD (ide) I get a 'detecting 'any' HD's thing that just hangs on boot,.

 

 

Not sure if I lost my HD's or my Mobo is just pooched. On the laptop now and i can't do much on it, too hard to work on.

 

So the map I have been busting ass on, that I was going to upload to SVN this weekend for backup... gone??? not sure.

 

So tired of the computer issues, alwys losing tons of work right before I back up....

 

Maybe it's a sign.

 

I really wanted to get a lot of work done this weekend, now it looks like trying to trouble shoot and spend money I don't have.

Dark is the sway that mows like a harvest

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Sounds like a Beckett play, except in the play the computer would probably hit you with a bat and laugh at you every time you wanted to be productive, then catch on fire. Or it's just Murphy's law. Sucks though. Good luck.

What do you see when you turn out the light? I can't tell you but I know that it's mine.

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those maps were already there, I just moved them from the main folder to my own folder.. :( all old crap.

 

----

 

Beckett play sounds like the deal. I can play games 80 hours a week for 2 years, no issues. Map for two weeks, crash . gone. right when I feel like I'm getting somewhere.

----

 

Definitely something with both my spare HD's. Spent the last hour swapping connections on my sata drives and dvd player, and disconnecting my ide, My spare ide and sata never show up, and when plugged in it takes quite awhile to boot (searching for drives...). With my main HD all the sata connections seem to work.

 

So I just reinstalled my mobo drivers. Going to sleep... will try the other drives again in the morning.

 

Odd that both would go out at once. Hopefully it was some kind of driver issue.

Dark is the sway that mows like a harvest

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have you checked bios to see if it can see the hardrives. if windows/linux cant see them and bios can then something electrical on the hardrive has failed, the data might still be recoverable via a program that does that sort of thing even if windows/linux cant actually see the drives, as the program creates a virtual connection to the harddrive.

 

Had this type of failure on a harddrive once, where windows just couldn't see the drive but a data recovery program could. the fix was a new harddrive, and reloading the data stripped from the unseeable drive.

 

or it just might be a bios battery failure.

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Well, reinstalled mobo drivers.

 

plugged in one HD this morning, it was showing. I don't think I checked it last night because it is my oldest one.

 

plugged in my newest and largest hd it's not showing. :(

That's my games HD and had all my work on it.

 

Gonna restart and look in bios. Wasn't showing last night...

Dark is the sway that mows like a harvest

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Well, it's back. Guess I dodged a bullet for now.

 

Like I said a few months ago this happened to me, I thought it was one of the sata connections on the mobo, because it came back after switching connections. But reusing that connection during this whole fiasco showed that it still works.

 

I'm really thinking this HD is on it's last leg, guess I'm buying a new one today and transfering stuff over. Then probably just keep this one as a backup and unplug it. Hopefully I won't have more of these issues. Sucks that my newest and largest HD is the first to fail.

Dark is the sway that mows like a harvest

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"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)

 

"Remember: If the game lets you do it, it's not cheating." -- Xarax

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That's only 64 gigs.

 

Damn, lost the HD again. I went to get a new one, only a couple bucks more at Best Buy in town rather than mail order.

But they opened an hour later than I thought.

 

Came home, made last post. Then my mouse and keyboard were cutting out. Reboot. HD's are gone again. Guess I'll be installing a new HD here in about half hour, then hoping the old one comes back long enough to transfer stuff. Other-wise I've got a long process of reinstalls.

Dark is the sway that mows like a harvest

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Hopefully it is only your HD not your mobo, otherwise the new one will get problematic, too. How big is the new one? Was posting the SSD link as you said it is only 40 gigs :)

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)

 

"Remember: If the game lets you do it, it's not cheating." -- Xarax

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So the map I have been busting ass on, that I was going to upload to SVN this weekend for backup... gone??? not sure.

 

There are few things more useless in computing than a backup you were going to do.

 

I am paranoid about backing up, at least with anything creative that I have been working on like music or artwork. Version control on the local system (to avoid saving a dud copy and wiping out all previous work), backups to DVD and the cloud (was Dropbox, now Spideroak). I even have a DDS tape drive which I use for a larger system backup every few months.

 

Given how many threads on the internet I see about people losing data, I think I must be in a very small minority.

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I back stuff up on an old computer and an external HD. I should look into cloud storage.

I've learned about version control here with Darkmod, and it's a nice thing.

 

Edit: BTW, what's the advantage of Spideroak over other cloud storage services?

What do you see when you turn out the light? I can't tell you but I know that it's mine.

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Well the saga continues...

 

I'm quite sure it's my HD at this point and not my mobo, but tell me if I may be wrong...

 

1: If I ONLY plug in my dvd (sata) and main HD (OS - sata) to ANY of the 6 sata ports everything works fine.

 

2:If I plug in my sata (games HD - the one I think is causing issues) I get:

a: Nothing - wont detect, checks for ide drives (even though my scuzzy/ide is now completely disconnected)

b:windows needs to run window check in which it fixes nothing

c:it shows up (and so will my ide IF it is plugged in) - this seems to be rare now

 

3:If my ide is plugged in but not my 'bad' sata drive, it seems to show up. Though I haven't fully tested this because it's not that important. has some old SVN backup so would save DLing all SVN again.

 

--------------------

Also

 

I went to get a new HD (want 500 GB min, probably 1 TB is best). Online Best Buy said they had one in stock. Get there, they don't (was first one in door to the HD section), the have a 3gb that costs way too much, or a bunch of green 5400 rpm models. Not looking to go slower.

 

So I go across the way to Office Max, surprisingly they have one 500 GB seagate left and it's half price. $50, sweet! I take it to the counter, the cashier promptly drops it on the floor. :(

I ask if it's still going to work and he unboxes it and checks for visual damage managing to touch every single square inch of it. I say I'm worried about it working, not getting a 'ding' as it was packaged well. So he gives me an additional 20% and I reluctantly buy it crossing fingers.

 

So I plug it in and it does NOT register at all. I use the same cables from my working HD AND the same sata slots. Nothing. Try all sata slots. Nothing. Try my good HD, working fine. Try my HD with new dropped one. Comp starts fine, doesn't register new HD.

 

I even try booting windows disc with only the new HD in, won't boot.

 

 

Even reset CMOS.

 

So I assume it has to be broken, as it won't register alone or with another HD, it won't register on the same cables or new ones, or any Sata slots.

 

If it was the mobo my DVD and good HD wouldn't work either right? or at least some of the time. But they always work.

 

So I take the HD back, he gives me my money.

 

I check Walmart and Target (hate those places) and they only stock externals now. :(

 

There's a small repair/internet shop by my house. Closed for weekend. :(

 

Office Max has tags on the shelf, take one to register, out of stock. :(

 

Ah yeah, Radio Shack! across town, they only to external now. :(

 

The ONLY HD in town gets dropped right when I go to buy it, WTF!!!!

 

Just searched small shops on google and one guy has a 500 gb and a 1 tb. $250 for the 500 he says, OUCH!

 

Looks like i'm new egging, I can still do some modelling this weekend but without DLing anything massive that's about all I can do.

Dark is the sway that mows like a harvest

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Are your old HDs less than 500Gb? There is a problem with some mobos that they accept only less than 500GB (or 500 GB, but depending on what the HD is, it might not work). My mobo here is one of these, the max. size is 500 Gb.

 

So it might be that the new HD is simply too big.

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)

 

"Remember: If the game lets you do it, it's not cheating." -- Xarax

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I was backing stuff up on an external hard drive and the External HD actually died.... About 6 years of digital pictures, music, videos etc all gone. I think the only real way to securely back things up is on DVDs / CDs.

 

I used to back stuff up on CDs & later DVDs (then I took an arr... sorry), but then I have these big stacks of CDs taking up space and you can't update them and they get dated... Even if you wanted the stuff, it's not organized like you want it, like when you buy a new computer & want to restore everything. But it's true they're another layer of protection because I know HDs can go out. (Of course CDs get corrupted over time too). All the really important stuff for me is on CDs as well as the external HD though. The really "real" way to back things up is to be redundant and have it in a few places.

What do you see when you turn out the light? I can't tell you but I know that it's mine.

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I burned my stuff to CDs, too. Then I upgraded to DVD, and at that time about 25% of the CDs were already unreadable...

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)

 

"Remember: If the game lets you do it, it's not cheating." -- Xarax

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http://www.abit.com.tw/page/en/motherboard/motherboard_detail.php?pMODEL_NAME=IP35+Pro&fMTYPE=LGA775

 

that's my Mobo, I haven't seen any limitations on it. My HD's are 350 (bad) , 150 and 40.

 

A random search says 2 tb is max bootable.

--------

 

Yeah, I've got a huge pile of CD's too, old crap I can't bear to throw out or organize onto a smaller set of dvd's...

Dark is the sway that mows like a harvest

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Edit: BTW, what's the advantage of Spideroak over other cloud storage services?

 

SpiderOak is aimed more at backup than Dropbox which is more about effortless syncing between computers (SpiderOak does have syncing ability but I have never used it). With Dropbox you have to save anything you want to backup into the Dropbox folder, whereas SpiderOak lets you browse and choose any directories you want to backup. It also does the encryption on the clientside using the password, so SpiderOak employees physically cannot decrypt your data; Dropbox claimed to use encryption but it turned out that they could read whatever they wanted anyway.

 

I think the only real way to securely back things up is on DVDs / CDs.
I burned my stuff to CDs, too. Then I upgraded to DVD, and at that time about 25% of the CDs were already unreadable...

 

You have to be careful with brands and manufacturers; cheap media is basically worthless. I actually use the less-popular DVD-RAM format for backing up: it is expensive and slow, but supposedly can be re-written 100,000 times and will last for 30 years.

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Optical media, no matter what (besides those ~special~ 2000 year ones I guess), decay a lot faster in warmer climates, high humidity on top of that can make it pointless.

 

I do a monthly backup of my documents folder, source repos and im/mail databases, one of my bsd boxes pulls together all of the nix user directories and system source/config on the network and bundles them up nicely. I then take that and dump all of that onto 2x 32gb thumb drives(both different brands and horribly slow).

 

Online backups are pointless for home users(and more dangerous than living without them tbh).

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Thumbnail drives can fail too. -_-

I lost important stuff (like the latest draft of my thesis at the time) on one before when it got corrupted...

That said, I still use them a lot, especially for things I want to be transportable.

What do you see when you turn out the light? I can't tell you but I know that it's mine.

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I've heard of people taking the logic board off of a working hard drive and connecting it to a dead one to recover data if the original board died. Obviously these boards are very manufacturer specific though. You really should have grabbed your data off that drive the moment it came back to life. That's the first thing I would have done.

 

That part about the employee dropping the new drive cracked me up though. I can only imagine how imbarassed he must have been.

--- War does not decide who is right, war decides who is left.

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