Computer go poof

[PapaXpress]

Just dropping a line to those I had promised some QA work to this weekend that I am going to be a bit delayed. My primary drive decided to suddenly stop working. Probable cause was heat as it was almost too hot to touch (interestingly the other drives were just warm).

@ Mdurdan - I have yet to test the snow textures.
@ SMM - I was testing the C39 and I will compile what I remember and send them to you tomorrow night. I did find some interesting problems, all minor.
@ MadMike - had LINC up and running (with the C39 no less). I found no additional problems from the last time we spoke.

If I am lucky I will be up and running again by Wednesday.

[jpetersjr]

Hate to hear that, usually when the computer starts to act up it's time for a new computer.

My old computer started to act up and I didn't do anything about it. One day it decided to kick the bucket all together. I had to save up and buy me a new computer from walmart.

Of course, the way work is working me now I wouldn't even be able to do that.


Hope you get the problem figured out.

[PapaXpress]

That was the problem. It was not acting up to give me a clue. I was in the middle of doing some RW stuff and the drive just stopped. Imagine yanking out your primary hard drive while browsing the web. Same thing "poof".

Anyway, I was hoping that perhaps after cooling off overnight it would start working again. No luck. It spins, but I don't hear the heads moving. A chip must have fried.

[arizonachris]

How old this PC/ drive, Papa? Could be the power supply, not the drive. What error message are you getting? Something like "boot drive not found"? Can you hear the drive spinning up? Take the side cover off and make sure all the connectors are "connected" .

[PapaXpress]

Its about 2 years old. I don't think its the power supply for a few reasons. The other drives seem to work fine (booting into my Ubuntu drive). None of the peripherals were fries or behaved strangely.

The biggest clue is that this drive no long shows up in the BIOS even if I unplug all the other drives and try different channels.

[arizonachris]

The biggest clue is that this drive no long shows up in the BIOS even if I unplug all the other drives and try different channels.

Ugh, not good. This is why I have a second, backup drive, internal. I do a weekly "Incremental" backup using Acronis. Just add the new stuff, not a total new backup.

Then again, we are never 100% safe, are we?

[PapaXpress]

indeed we are not.

I have the more important stuff double archived (raid 1 and network drive). Then I think of the stuff I did not backup. Like save games. Partially done projects on the desktop.

**sigh**

[PapaXpress]

You have to love this...

I install Win 7, start downloading, updating, customizing. Reboot some time later...

Poof.... no internet.

I can see the network. I can ping all the machines on my network. I can access my network drive. All the other machines can see the internet.

I want to move to Australia.

Update:
Safe mode is your friend. Was able to get outbound, download the latest drivers for the NIC and fixed the problem.

[arizonachris]

Reinstalling Windows always means reinstalling all the drivers, even if Windows says it's already installed them I don't trust Windows for anything. Thinks it knows it all, and I know more than Windows does (which is scary! )

[PapaXpress]

Oh I hear you. Its a cat and mouse game with drivers (even on Linux). I am on the way to recovery. Just wish it didn't take so long.

The new drive is a dream. Can store twice as much and weighs half as much. Must be a single platter TB. And I swear it's even half as loud. I need to read up a bit on how the buffer is used these days but 64mb sounds like it could read/write quite a bit faster than my old 500GB 16mb.

[Cardinal51]

What harddisk did you choose PX, and why ?

[arizonachris]

A 64Mb buffer? Holy crap! That alone is bigger than an entire hard drive 10 years ago! Wow! My 500Gb has 16Mb buffer. Sounds like a nice upgrade, Papa. One can never have too much hard drive space. If I keep buying games in this sale that Steam has, I could run out of space pretty quick! Oh, Gosh, more new specials this morning. I need to go to Gaming Anonymous for treatment soon.

Just checked for the heck of it, 290 used of 465 available (Win 7 takes up the rest to the 500Gb)

[PapaXpress]

I bought a Seagate 1TB SATA3 7200 rpm 64mb cache. $103 out the door.

The reason for picking this drive was simple. It was on sale at the local mom and pops (been a customer for 20 years? oy vey). It was a dollar less than Newegg.

If I had the money I would upgrade my whole machine and get SSD drives.

[arizonachris]

New Egg is usually a lot less than the local store, but I like to support Alltech. I can walk two blocks and buy all kinds of stuff that I need. I've been a customer there since the days I was buying Phenom I's. Camille also has a lot of used stuff. I got a Dell laptop with the power brick and Win XP Pro for $150. Just for a new toy. Hey, I may be 55 on August 3rd, but I still like toys!

[PapaXpress]

Thanks. I have found a few holes in my backup routine. As a result about half a dozen project will need to be restarted from scratch. This includes the P40DC superdetail. SP Caboose, SP Tanker, and the source for the new v20 SafeTran signals I was working on.

I've decided to take some time and work on my route before tackling all of that. Its been too long as it is, and its the first project I started.