wellllll, shit.

[Choofers]

My harddrive is around 2 years old, and it finally threw in the towel. Well, it's been hinting that it was throwing in the towel for a while now (random glitches/skips while playing games, system hangs, takes a long time to boot up, etc). So I figured I'd get a new harddrive and make a boot disk with some CD-Rs I bought today while backing up all my data.

Turns out that making a boot disk is impossible since it hangs at a certain percent and freezes up, forcing me to either wait for hours or turn it off using the "hold-down-power-button" trick. So I did that and went to just making a back up of all my files. That also hung around 24% or so... And then blue screen. Don't remember what it said exactly because I kinda just frowned at my screen. Then I got up and grabbed a slice of ham BUT BACK ON TOPIC.

So I went to the gateway website and bought one of those fancy eRecovery disks. $20 for the disk itself but nope that's not fucen good enough. Priority overnight shipping, bitches. 8]

Currently typing on my uncle's laptop (this laptop sucks lmfao). I plug in my external harddrive to see exactly what was saved in the 24% of my backup.

My downloads folder from Chrome and a small portion of my music library. No fl studio project files (VSTs, VSTis, flps, samples, etc), none of my steam library, none of my stepmania WIPs, some assorted military documents (BCT cert, AIT honor cert, awards, training history). Yeah. Shit sucks. )':

So hopefully I'll have the recovery disk no later than Friday. What a freakin adventure today was.

;~;

[psychoangel691]

Aj and I feel your pain

[Superfreak04]

That happened in 2 years? Wtf? Mines 7 years old and is working perfectly. ;_;

[Choofers]

In other news, I found my copy of Ocarina of Time/Master Quest the other day so that should tide me over until whenever I get my recovery disk.

On the shadow temple with no deaths. B)

[Jerry DB]

dude that sucks I feel your pain my hard drive broke back in 2008 and I was on hiatus for a while back then. When I finally got a job I bought a laptop right away haha

[00Razor00]

rip

[welsh_girl]

Oh noes. r.i.p hope it all works out for you.

[Emo_Saur_]

rip choofers.

[fido123]

**** that recovery disk. Are you sure your hardrive is what's messed up? How do you know it is? Only the errors you described? It might just be Windows clunking out and needs a reinstall. If you put your ear up to your hardrive when you JUST turn on your computer and it makes a clicking and/or quiet beeping sound, it's dead and recovery is hopeless but if your stuff is booting up, there's still a VERY good chance your hardrive is perfectly fine.


BACKING UP DATA

Back up all your data by downloading this, and burning the .iso onto a disk. For anything pre-windows 7 you'll need something like isoburn, but for anything running Windows 7 you can right click the .iso and click "Write to Disk". Plop the disk in, boot from it, run the trial/liveCD, and you'll boot up an entire OS that's not going to even touch your hardrive. From here you can simply drag and drop like how you would do it in windows. If you want a bit for bit copy of all your data, you can run the following commands in Terminal:

sudo -i
mkdir /media/external/
mount /dev/sdb1 /media/external/
dd if=/dev/sda1 /media/external/backup.img

(password = nothing, just press Enter)

This method allows for easy retreval of all your files. You can mount it very easily to see everything as in you were in My Computer --> C:\
Also if you have multiple partitions you'll want to run the dd command multiple times except using 'sda2' or 'sda3' depending on how many partitions you have. To see how many you have run 'ls /dev/ | grep sda?' With the question mark and where '|' is Shift + Backslash.


NOTE: If the hardrive is in fact messed up the 'dd' command will not work. If it does work your hardrive is FINE. The command will take quite a while to execute. If you have a 500GB hardrive give it at least an hour.

NOTE2: If it says it can't find '/dev/sdb' run the command 'ls /dev/ | grep sd*' with the question mark, and '|' being Shift + Backslash. If nothing works post the output of 'ls /dev/' although honestly it's most likley you won't have to read this note or it's 'sdc1'.



Check if your hardrive is FOOBAR'd

If you just wanna check if it's the disk, boot up your Windows CD. I'll assume it's Windows 7 since it's only 2 years old so boot into your install CD, and before you even hit the partition manager there should be something talking about repairing Windows. Go into that, then the (run as Administrator) command prompt and run 'chkdsk /F <Drive Letter>:' with the colon. Check all other partitions before you check the one that Windows runs on. When you do the one Windows is installed on, it will ask you that it can't because the volume is mounted. It will ask if you want to do it the next time you restart. Enter 'Y' then restart your computer.

ALTERNATIVE 2: In case you can't for some reason do the step above use the Ubuntu Live CD and in Terminal run 'sudo ntfsfix /dev/sda1'. If you have multiple partitions, run the command but replace 'sda1' with 'sda2' and so on for how many partitions you have.


If you would rather have step by step instructions via MSN or whatever I'd be happy to do that too.



Edit: You can do either step first, but attempting to back up your data is suggested to be first. I've heard stories of filesysten fixers to sometimes mess things up. However far more often than not, if there is a problem it'll fix it. Also running the 'dd' command successfully probably means every last bit on your hardrive is perfectly fine.

[Emo_Saur_]

Fido to the rescue!!!!!

[Choofers]

It stopped booting after the blue screen of death.

And I moved a lot after originally buying my computer. So... No idea where my windows cd is.

[flipsta_lombax]

Originally Posted by Superfreak04

That happened in 2 years? Wtf? Mines 7 years old and is working perfectly. ;_;

Same here! *hi5* But I bought a new laptop on Black Friday sooo... Who wants a Windows XP tower Intel Pentium 4 processor with 1GB DDR-RAM (lol) and a 200GB hard drive?

[fido123]

Does it say "No Boot Device!"? If not your hardrive is fine and it's just Windows. If it does say that it could still be a corrupted master boot record. Even with a recovery CD, how is any data supposed to be retrieved off a broken hardrive? It can not be done. If it can be done your hardrive more than probably is 100% fine.

[Choofers]

I bought a new harddrive lol. From what the gateway rep said, the recovery disk can install windows onto the new harddrive.

[fido123]

Well if you've done that, install your hardrive on a secondary SATA port, right click Computer --> Manage --> Disk managment. You'll then want to delete the partition by right clicking on it then make a new NTFS partition after you've backed up your data on your new HDD with methods mentioned above. You'll then have that HDD for additional storage space.

[Superfreak04]

Originally Posted by flipsta_lombax

Same here! *hi5* But I bought a new laptop on Black Friday sooo... Who wants a Windows XP tower Intel Pentium 4 processor with 1GB DDR-RAM (lol) and a 200GB hard drive?

I'll gladly take it, for free. :3

I can use it for something I've wanted to do.

[25thhour]

Same thing happened to mine but mine was only 2 months old. Lost everything grrr.

[flipsta_lombax]

Originally Posted by Superfreak04

I'll gladly take it, for free. :3

I can use it for something I've wanted to do.

It wouldn't be for free, I'll tell ya that right now.

[Superfreak04]

Originally Posted by flipsta_lombax

It wouldn't be for free, I'll tell ya that right now.

[EzExZeRo7497]

Originally Posted by 25thhour

Same thing happened to mine but mine was only 2 months old. Lost everything grrr.

This.

:/