HAH! I rock! (Cyber-chest-pounding included...)

[Pilgrim]

Not musically - although that happens occasionally.

Here's the deal....#2 daughter's computer has been crashing for some time.  It finally got to the place where it was unusable.  I checked it and found that booting was intermittent, and she hadn't downloaded the last two service packs.  Unfortunately she also passed up the chance to upgrade it to Win7 for $49 last fall...said that updates always messed it up for at least two days.

Dandy.

I fought it for a while and could NOT get it to boot with any consistency.  There was plenty of evidence that the hard drive was the problem.  Took it home, tried every trick I could think of to get it into safe mode so I could pull her user directory off and get another hard drive.

Fail, fail, fail...I spent a week trying different tricks with diagnostics, etc.  One mistake I made was that on one of the rare occasions when it did boot, I had tried to install a missing Windows Service Pack - and whenever it DID boot, it immediately resumed trying to install the dang service pack - I couldn't get it into safe mode.  Then it stopped booting entirely.

Finally I pulled the HD and put it in another computer - the one I'm writing on.  The HD wouldn't respond at all.  This was not good, because three years of academic papers are on this drive.

SO - I used the last trick I knew of.  Stuck the HD in the freezer for two hours. Pulled it out, connected it and HOT DAMN - it spun long enough to get all her documents off!!

Then it stopped dead.   So I stuck it in a 0 degree F deep freeze overnight, wrapped it in a towel with a pound of frozen chicken boobs pressed against it, and connected it again.  YOWZA!!  I have now transferred her entire user directory (including music, docs, photos, etc.) to a portable hard drive.  I'm currently taking a run at transferring her program files in case there's something in there that she can use.  

If the drive doesn't last (the transfer rate is slowly but steadily dropping) then the drive goes back in the deep freeze for another run this evening.

SO - now I have a new Evil Plan.

Since I don't have a way to upgrade the OS in her computer since the old OS drive has died (and she should be in Win7 anyway) I'll buy a replacement desktop from eCost.com.  Her old computer box was reasonably good in terms of processor and memory, and I have an old Sony XP computer that's grossly outdated in terms of processor and memory.  I've been trying to edit audio on it, and it's just too slow.

So - the Sony computer's hard drives will move into my daughter's HP case and get new speed and processing - I can upgrade that computer's OS to Win7 for less than $100 with my educational discount - she gets a new PC box - and we're all happy.

Just another weekend in "Dad's Repair Shop", which I know many of you also run.  Ain't it great to be "the dad who can fix anything?"

[Dave W]

Yep. Always good to be able to salvage at least something, especially the hard drives.

[TBird1958]

 I'll consume the other 5 of them in your honor Al.

The pride of Ft. Collins, Co. Hoptober!

[Pilgrim]

Thanks, and a tip of the Cougar chapeau to my Hoptober-loving friend!  Very kind of you to support our excellent local brewery!

And the Cougs are leading Cal 10-7 as I write this at the start of the second half.  If we can stay ahead, this will be one very fine Saturday indeed!

[OldManC]

Well Dad, you do rock! It's always nice when we figure out how to get from A to B in the way that we need to.

[Pilgrim]

So far I'm at A.5 and haven't made it to B. New computer is ordered for daughter (eCost.com) but drives from old Sony aren't talking properly with processor and BIOS in newer HP shell left behind by daughter's hard drive crash.  I think I'll talk this over with my network IT guy at work on Monday and get some pointers.  It's trying to boot but I can't get it into any operating mode including safe mode.  May be a matter of changing BIOS settings, at a guess.

Y'know, every time we do something like this we find out how much there STILL is to learn, don't we??

[sniper]

sounds like it could be a master / slave conflict on the hard drive jumpers or cable select system.

good luck

[Muzikman7]

Congratulations. really I never would have had the patience for that and I've never heard of freezing the hard drive.

[Pilgrim]

sounds like it could be a master / slave conflict on the hard drive jumpers or cable select system.

good luck

The BIOS sees the drives from the other computer and it tries to boot into XP but then kicks out.   I think I'll play with it - first thing to do is probably disconnect the slave drive and see if it will boot with the drive which has the OS on it.

Both drives are pre-SATA but there's a data cable and power connectors for them, so no problem there.

[Dave W]

Pay close attention to the jumpers. I know next to nothing but I know they have to be right.

If all else fails you can try buying an external USB enclosure (with IDE interface). That's how I salvaged two hard drives when my Gateway desktop went south last year.

[Pilgrim]

Thanks, Dave.  I have the original papers on the drives - that's stuff I keep in a folder for each computer.  You're right - those jumpers determine master and slave settings and they have to be correct.

I tried disconnecting the slave drive and it still doesn't want to boot.  I'm sure it can be dealt with - I may drop a call to my IT friend tomorrow and see if I can pick his brain for a minute.

[Highlander]

Hats off to the dedication of yo9ur efforts, Al...

I have a habit of hanging onto old gear... still running a 486 (DX2/66 and/or a DX100) on 98SE purely to use an AWE32 (and some old PC games) as I like the sound it produces through my midi setup... I have IDE and SATA enclosures, although you can get external multi-purpose connection units for just about any drive - if it is in an enclosure you could leave it in the freezer in a sealed bag until you finish getting what you need, just need a long enough USB or a laptop...

There are specialist recovery firms where stuff is really important to recover...

Once finally dead, strip the platters out for coasters and the magnets, which are visciously strong...

I've ended up with quite a few after destroying stuff for (security) legal reasons...

Lesson to be learnt here is BACK-UP DATA... same lesson we all ignore until we get bitten - I presently have my (research) info saved on sticks, USB drives (saved in rotation) and on a laptop that never touches the Net, ever... all my family stuff goes on the same USB rotation too, at least once a week...

[Pilgrim]

My daughter has a computer with 3.0 gig speed, 5 GB RAM (64-bit system) and 640 GB hard drive coming - and along with it, a portable 320 GB hard drive for backup.  I've learned that lesson.  I have another portable hard drive for all the stuff at home.

#1 daughter has a significant other who is enough of a geek that he runs a water-cooled computer for gaming, etc.  She and he can sort out her backup needs easily - although I'm going to jog her elbow about making sure she's covered.

[Highlander]

check it out...

http://www.asetek.com/

My first PC was an AST 286 with a 10mhz processor that could be turbo'd up to 12 mhz and had 2 meg of RAM - the hard drive was 256 meg - OS was windows 2 on 5 1/4 floppies - I bought a 3 1/2 drive, upped to win3 and eventually upped to win3.11 and DOUBLESPACED... all that memory...!!!

anyway, I could comfortably run Doom, but upped to a DX2/66 and win95 and bought 2 extra meg of RAM (something like £20 per meg) so I could play Dark Forces and a flying game called TFX (F117/F18 and carriers/early Eurofighter)

I never looked back...

This PC (Dell Inspiron 530) is not high spec'd but has 1.4TB (a 1TB sata I added - cheaper than buying a new drive and it came in an external USB - was in the last one up until the PSU failed) of storage and two external 320GB drives; my laptop is a 7 year old Dell Inspiron but that is purely used for my writing... Roshina runs a win7 Dell laptop - there are several others round here (an HP attached to the TV; a few more in the graveyard aka the loft) and an HP laptop I use for work...

The most common CCTV system around is the US make PELCO and their non IP based MATRIX system runs on DOS6.2 - you have to download/upload via floppies - their attitude is simply "If it ain't broke..."

[OldManC]

I'm not smart enough to know what I'm doing with my computers but I'm geek enough to try anyway...

I played musical chairs with hard drives a year ago when I bought a larger HD for my Powerbook and put the old 80GB drive in my mp3 player (which doubled its capacity). At the same time I put a new 1TB HD in the PC I use for office and Photoshop stuff. I'm always really careful about backing up, especially then because I was also using a program to blow out duplicate files between all the drives as I made the switch.

Things got hairy between transferring files and drives between two computers, the mp3 player (essentially another small computer), and two or three external drives. When I was done I had all the music transferred to the mp3 player and a new 250GB drive up and running in the Powerbook (biggest IDE drive I could find at the time), but I couldn't find my original backup for the PC which I had wiped and loaded with a fresh OS. After days of searching the same drives over and over, I concluded I'd lost 500GB of files including photos and videos from five years of having kids. I eventually reconstructed most of the photos and videos with the second tier of backups I had (though most of the Word files and docs were gone). Of course what I did have was scattered between other computers and drives so it took ages and I still couldn't figure out what drive I'd mistakenly blown away or how I'd been so stupid to have done it...

Fast forward to last week. I was doing homework with the office PC which I now use for school. While looking through the storage drive I mistakenly hit the 'Creative' folder which I'd created for the mp3 drive surgery last year. It didn't have the mp3s I thought would be in there because I'd blown it out when I was done with the transfer and put my PC file backup in there instead. I just never renamed the folder! So I got everything back and now I have to go through and delete duplicates. Again!