My rant for today....

[Marcel]

Grrrr bloody PC parts.

All's been working well recently, until yesterday morning.

My son was having a morning nap, my daughter was playing in her bedroom, so I was sat in my room with a pot noodle, happily watching an episode of CSI, then *boomf*, PC hangs.

I hard reset, get back into windows, couple of minutes later...boomf does it again.

So I turn her off, open her up and it seems the fan on my Raden 9800 Pro has decided to stop playing.

I managed to get a functional PC by unhooking everything, so I could put the PC on desk, with a big B&Q fan pointing right inside it to cool the GFX down.

So today I head off to Aria, to get an Arctic Cooler as a replacement.
I fit it before tea and everything's hunky dory.

Come suppertime tonight, I've *just* finished watching Episode 1 of Eureka (ace show BTW), and all of a sudden PC slows to a crawl.
After much thumb twiddling, Task Manager manipulation and lots of strong words, windows kicks back into life.
I go to browse the folder again, where it had hung on me a few moments ago and bingo...it did the same again.

I hard reset, and uh oh, my 120 gig drive has disappeared from my BIOS
Check all cables, plug it back in, still nothing.
Its quite warm to the touch, but I've had drives that are painfully hot to touch before, so I don't think it's that.
I've got it sat on my desk and I'll try it again in the morning...when it's cooler.
I bought it in 03 when warranties for HD's were at the "1 year" phase, so it's out of warranty.

It contained two partitions, Media and Backup.
So its got all my backup utils on it, and application data (OK I backed up last month, but still).
Worse thing is, it's got all my music vids, TV episodes (incomplete series like Goodnight Sweetheart s3, On the buses etc), and also ALL my mp3's, every single one. All god-knows-how-many-gigs of em that I've collected. Some hard to find stuff too, that I've had for years.

That, and worse of all it's got some DV footage...I hope I haven't taped over the tapes again..It's footage of my kids...was waiting for a DVD full before I burnt.

GRRRRRR

 

[busterboy]

This once happened to me Marcel and thats why now I always have a DOUBLE BACK-UP for all my very important items..

There is certain file utilities that can recover you lost files but its a complete arse going through this procedure mate..

 

[Forbiddenbiker]

Frightening stuff mate, I'd be tempted to purchase another external drive on USB 2...switch on and start backing up before it crashes again....if you've got time to watch an episode...perhaps you have time enough for a full back up...? :shrug:

Good luck. I lost a hard drive a few years ago, full of personal stuff it was, very painful loss indeed. I, like BB, use two external drives for backup now....different makes too.

 

[lumpster]

^^^ yeah thats what i woul ddo if you can. I use tw harddrives, one for windows and apps and one for file storage.If i get a virus etc and i need to do a clean install, then i know my files are safe. Problem is it doesnt ave me from my hard drive dying like yours

i should back up more frequently though::nono: :bang:

 

[Marcel]

Well my Data, Misc, Photography, and Windows drives are all on other HD's so they're intact (and again, recently backed up).

As a further note, I let it cool down last night and plugged it in, and it recognised it, hurrah!
However, I only managed to copy one folder off (backed up application data), and now whenever I try and play, say, a dv camera avi, or copy a folder off, the machine hangs, then quickly reboots. I've just tried it on a different ide channel and cable and I'm going to test it in a mo, when I've caught up on the forums and todays breaking news.

The main thing, is that all teh stuff is collectable again. Some things that are going to be hard to find, like some old episodes, but not impossible.

 

[SammyC]

Try sticking it in a USB caddy and see if that makes it more reliable.

 

[CarlOgden]

It's cos you eat Pot Noodle

Carl.