Computer Science Canada Devasted harddrive...help? |
| Author: | Delos [ Wed Dec 22, 2004 12:36 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Devasted harddrive...help? |
[sigh] Ok, my beautiful harddrive that has served me well all semester, and was looking to take me quite some months if not years down the road has been obliterated. I'm not sure what hit it, or how, or why...etc etc. It started yesterday, everything was working fine, all smiles and sunshine. I opened Word to type up a document, went to save it...as per usual, Office automatically opens "My Documents" as the default save directory. I don't use that directory. Thus, it was a little odd to find about 7-8 files lying around in it. What was even odder, was that they had names like "[d!@éñ_|\⌐$" and the like. Though, mostly a little more interesting than that. So, I open my documents folder and check them out - each file weighing in at around 500 MB - 1.64 GB a piece. Rather odd. So were the mysterious folders that were empty, and seemed to be distant cousins of the said files. Ok, I thought. Norton will know what to do. So, select, right click, Scan With Norton. [wait] After some time, it became apparent that either Norton was having a really hard time digesting the large quantity that was those files, or it just wouldn't open. So I tried to open Norton manually. From the Start Menu -> Norton System Works. Naturally, this would not happen seeing as it was already trying to open somewhere else - and would not open a second instance. I guess my first mistake was to not wait and let Norton open. My second mistake was not to immedietly delete the confused looking files. My third mistake was to restart my computer. Apparently for the last time on that harddrive. It would not load - or even remotely detect Windows. Lucky for me, I have all sorts of CDs with Windows and such on them - and boot disks and...oh crap - those are all in my Dorm several hours away. So...I connect my harddrive (in Slave mode) to my parent's computer, switch it on - and the obligatory scan disk pops up saying that one or more of my harddrives seem to be out of synch and could it please check the for consistency. Why not, I thought. This will be good - after which I can run that antivirus software that's lying around on my parent's computer - on my harddrive! Yes. (Little did I know how pathetic 'AVG Free Edition' really is...) So, the scandisk starts - and immediatley finds a large number of oblique idiosychracies. I'm not even going to bother including '(sp?)' marks anywhere here, since I'm fully aware that I cannot spell anything that requires a grasp beyond basic phonetics. That's a bloody ironic word, isn't it? "Phonetics"...think about it. So, yes, some rather familiar (though incomprehensible) file names scroll off the screen ("{+)*▒╥ö..." and its gang) followed by the following: "Bad links in chain at cluster _____ corrected". This continues for ~15 hours - the computer humms dolely while I fall into a fitful sleep on my bed next to it. The next morning, I find that it has reached cluster 2 500 456 or so, and after a brief consultation with a half-alseep friend of mine, I find out that the average 160 GB harddrive has just over 37 million File Allocation Units. The same as 'clusters'? I didn't know at the time, and still don't - though I really doubt I'd have had the time to wait and fine out. [Let's see...2.5 million clusters in 15 hours - that works out to...about nine and a quarter days (222 hours). I don't think I'm going to be at home that long...] The compter gets restarted. Finally back in Windows (on the old comptuer), I check out the harddrive. It currently reads 150 GB used (funny...it stood at around 40 when I last checked), and 2 GB free. The files on it are another story all together. Gladly a short one. Upon the now cold harddrive were several empty folders (some hidden), all bearing some rather creative names - I'm guessing that the whole "Make-A-Name-Using-Obscure-Accented-And-Never-Before-Used-ASCII-Characters" is in style these days. There also lay about 15 files, bretheren I gathered, each occupying a rather troubling amount of space. I don't remember ever seeing files that were 3.86 GB - especially those that don't have a tangible extension to them! .avi I might accept - .ogm would be plausible...but ".&^]Ö/Ä.«" I don't think so. That's my story As you see I'm really screwed Can anyone help me. Methinks I should just get a new harddrive - though I sure would like to know what the hell happened... R.I.P....oh wait, I never did give it a name. Hmm...it seems to have done that on its own accord! R.I.P. tMÅú$#╞][7_ |
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| Author: | MihaiG [ Wed Dec 22, 2004 12:43 pm ] |
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try de-fragmenting... or formating orr stop downloading p*** *joke*.... have you tried taking ur harddisk and throwing at a passing by car becauswe if those don't work ur scre***....did you do any downloads and upgrade prior to the hardisk failure?? |
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| Author: | Maverick [ Wed Dec 22, 2004 12:49 pm ] |
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Just Format it.... |
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| Author: | MihaiG [ Wed Dec 22, 2004 1:13 pm ] |
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like i said... |
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| Author: | Mazer [ Wed Dec 22, 2004 3:32 pm ] |
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If that doesn't work, start checking for a warranty from the manufacturer. Just last summer my Maxtor drive died on me (recovered most files thanks to a live Linux distro) and I just went to their website for warranty info. They let you download a program to make a boot disk that will run tests on the hard drive to make sure that it is indeed failing and then will give you a code you can send to them with some forms and the faulty hard drive to replace. It'll probably be similar for most other companies, I guess. But that's just to get your old drive back. Here's something that could cheer you up nicely: new hard drive, yay! |
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| Author: | Drakain Zeil [ Wed Dec 22, 2004 4:16 pm ] |
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It sounds to me like you have physical problems with your drive. Somthing may have been knocked free of it's position, or some one opened the drive's house plates to "take a look." Small bits of dist, and other misc. things can cause these problems, extream temperatures I've heard too. However, there is hope for your drive yet. This would be very easy if you had the installation disks for Mandrake Linux since it has a nice, free part/format tool. Basicly, what you need to do is destroy all of anything on your harddisk, remove all partitions, make the entire drive into one, format that, remove it, then put back a windows part. Now, as for saving any data... well, you could *try* backing up some things with it loaded as a slave. I doubt this would affect your master in any way... unless some one has made some very crippeling virus not yet known.[/i] |
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| Author: | Hikaru79 [ Wed Dec 22, 2004 10:07 pm ] |
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I would grab a copy of the Knoppix-STD tool: http://www.knoppix-std.org/ Then use that to see if you can't recover most of your stuff. Perhaps one of the tools on there will even fix whatever issue you had. At the very least, you won't lose any important data. Then, reformat. And get a real OS  |
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| Author: | Delos [ Wed Dec 22, 2004 10:49 pm ] |
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Thanx for the suggestions everyone...though it appears that my little ol' harddrive has been shot a couple miles beyond hell this time. To put into perspective what I mean...currently the FAT structure is listed as "8FAT 32". Yup, you read that correctly... In retrospect, there's not much on it to recover - sure I had those ~30 GBs of animé lying around, but I had watched most of it...(Almost up to date w/ Naruto! Yay.) And since semester just finished, I won't need any of that school work...[sigh]. It's gonna take a while to put it all back together - assuming this formatting works...at last check, Norton Disk Doctor couldn't figure out what the drive was - apparently it wasn't "configured properly". As for the real OS...perhaps I will give it a try...damn Windows keeps screwing my over... |
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| Author: | Drakain Zeil [ Wed Dec 22, 2004 11:43 pm ] |
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Keep in mind that linux takes a while to get used to, it's harder to configure then windows is, but you can configure more. |
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| Author: | Hikaru79 [ Thu Dec 23, 2004 1:53 am ] |
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It's a whole different paradigm, but one that is a whole lot easier to get used to than most make it out to be. There's quite a few threads by those considering the switch to Linux. Me and wtd are currently campaigning for Ubuntu Linux, but Mandrake is also easy for a first-timer. Just stay away from Slackware or even pure Debian. Here's some GD Linux threads: http://www.compsci.ca/v2/viewtopic.php?t=7037 http://www.compsci.ca/v2/viewtopic.php?t=6367 |
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