Re: [Nolug] Non-functioning disc drives

On Sat, 23 Oct 2004 09:52:39 -0500
  Jay Latham <jlat@bellsouth.net> wrote:
> John Tiedeman wrote:
>> (1) Seagate ST380013A. Bought at BB, still under warranty so I took it
>> there to be checked. They couldn't get it to come up either. If it
>> would, they would pull data to a DVD for $90, and there is some on it
>> that had never been backed up (mostly saved e-mail) and some that
hadn't
>> been backed up as recently as usual. When I try to boot from it, it
>> hangs at GRUB. I can't get it to take a reload. Is anyone else likely
to
>> be able to extract data before I send it back to Seagate for a
>>replacement?
>>
>> (2) WD600. Has been unusable since May, when I bought (1) above to
>> replace it. Any ideas on trying to get it to do something? It doesn't
>> even get to GRUB.
>>
>> (3) ST340016A. Don't remember when bought. Was working until after the
>> above problem with (1) started. Moving it from one computer to another
>> has caused kernel panic in either computer. No data I really need here,
>> but if the disc is repairable I can always use it, if only as a spare.
>>
>> That leaves me with only a very old 3G drive, loaded with w2k and an
old
>> HP OmniBook loaded with w95 to access the internet. The OmniBook, of
>> course, is impossibly slow. I hope that Windows vulerabilities are
>> reduced to a tolerable level working through a Siemens 5360 ethernet
>> bridge, Siemens 2614 router, and Firefox 1.0PR.
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>
> Did they all go down at once? The reason I ask is this happened to me
>about a month ago. I came home from work to find that every computer I
had
>left running (3) had a crashed hd. On the boxes that had more than one hd
>only the master was crashed. Different brands too.
> 1. IBM Deskstar 20GB mfg date 22Jan02. This one seems to work but once
it
>warms up the puter locks up and if I do an immediate reboot the bios
>reports no hd installed. But if I let it cool down for a couple it boots
>right up.
>
> 2. WD Caviar 20GB mfg 30Aug01 BIOS reports at boot the the hd is
>reporting it is about to crash (?) Maybe is I disable SMART it might work
>but I'm not taking a chance.
>
> 3. Maxtor 80GB mfg 11Nov03 This one was reusable. Fdisk reported invalid
>partition table. After formatting and repartitioning it is working fine.
>It's in the box I'm using to write this.
>
>Fortunately all I lost was about 40GB of mp3's but I had all those backed
>up on a box that was not on that day. And of course all my personal
>bookmarks and settings.
>
> My first thought was that I had been hacked but the logs on my gateway
>deny this. All boxes are connected to UPS's so it wasn't a surge.
>
> I'm still scratching my head over this one.
>
> Jay
>
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What about a power surge? I now use a UPS to prevent damage, but when I
lived in San Francisco I was having a lot of HD trouble. When I moved to NC
to take care of my father, the power was even less stable so I got a UPS and
only lost a disk when IE tried to install itself and blew the disc. I have
tried hard to avoid IE ever since!
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Received on 10/23/04