Hard drive death

The Incredible... · Post by **The Incredible...** » January 5th, 2008, 19:02

After rescuing my hard drive from corruption a while ago, it seems to have died again

when i try to turn it on it gets stuck on the windows xp loading screen

if i try it in safe mode i get a BSOD with the following info

kernel_data_inpage_error

stop 0x0000007A (0xE1998710, 0xC0000185, 0x BF8F6A93, 0x12C32860)

win32k.sys - address BF856A93 base at BF80000 Datestamp 45F013FG

i think basically the whole drive is corrupt and every now and then it loses something and has to check disck, only now its gone and lost something major.

is it worth trying to format it or should i just get a new disk?

i really want to get a new computer anyway, as i'm stuck with one with AGP graphics at the moment, and i want a shiney powerful beast that will run crysis, but i really can't afford it at the moment. A friend has just ordered one on finance from Mesh, but i don't trust myself to have it paid off before the interest kicks in and makes it cost an extra £800

theres one i've had my eye on on overclockers (antec 900 case, Q6600, 8800GTS, 4 gig ram) thats about £800 at the moment but i'm not sure if A)its all that good and B)if it is a good price http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showprodu ... =FS-048-OK

spoodie · Post by **spoodie** » January 5th, 2008, 19:35

Get a new disk and try to recover your important files from the old one. A faulty HD is not worth putting up with.

Have you considered building a PC yourself? It's not hard and you may be able to save some money if you can reuse any parts from your current PC, HD excluded obviously. I'm sure people here would be willing and able to answer any questions you have.

/edit
Have a look at this: http://www.5punk.co.uk/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=14074

Sheriff Fatman · Post by **Sheriff Fatman** » January 5th, 2008, 19:43

If you already done as much in-house healthcare as you can on the drive after the last crash, I'd suggest binning it. If it's a physical fault on the platters you are wasting your time re-installing.

I was looking at that same deal on OcUK. After some deliberation (OK, asking Berk) I ended going for this. Slightly more expensive but with most of the same components, and a little future-proofing thrown in.

The Incredible... · Post by **The Incredible...** » January 5th, 2008, 19:54

yea well i was going to build one when i can afford it. i basicall had a play around on ebuyer and sorted what i thought i wanted, and then found they had pretty much EXACTLY what i picked out as a complete system on overclockers. although i can probabl get it cheaper elsewhere and can probably get something better now any way, cos i think that ones been on there a few months

The Incredible... · Post by **The Incredible...** » January 5th, 2008, 20:23

is it possible for me to download a linux live cd of some kind, just so i can use my pc while i'm waiting for the new HDD so i don't have to hog my parents computer?

if so is it possible to use something approximating windows live messenger and firefox?

Post by **FatherJack** » January 5th, 2008, 20:34

The Incredible... wrote:is it possible for me to download a linux live cd of some kind, just so i can use my pc while i'm waiting for the new HDD so i don't have to hog my parents computer?

if so is it possible to use something approximating windows live messenger and firefox?

Yeah something like Ubuntu has a run-off-CD option. GAIM (now Pidgin) is a IM client which does all sorts of messenger progs and Firefox was on *nix before Windows users had even heard of it. You might need some writeable disk to install prgrams which aren't part of the distribution, though.

The Incredible... · Post by **The Incredible...** » January 5th, 2008, 20:36

that shouldn't be a problem
should still have a few gigs free on my porn drive
and i have a 120gb external drive with nothing on it

The Incredible... · Post by **The Incredible...** » January 5th, 2008, 21:17

just to check, if i get ubuntu and run it from the cd and install extra software, its not going to do it over the top of stuff thats already on the disc or anything is it?

Post by **FatherJack** » January 5th, 2008, 22:18

The Incredible... wrote:just to check, if i get ubuntu and run it from the cd and install extra software, its not going to do it over the top of stuff thats already on the disc or anything is it?

The Live CD version shouldn't use any disk you don't tell it to, but will typically need it's own formatted spare bit of disk to write to, rather than NTFS/FAT32 Windows-created disk.

When you're actually installing it to a hard drive you can tell it to shrink the existing partition to create it's own free space (http://img379.imageshack.us/my.php?imag ... l06rw5.png) or do it manually where you tell it to use a clean disk (http://img379.imageshack.us/my.php?imag ... l10ea7.png) - so I expect the options to create some working space for the Live CD are similar to those pictures. Make sure you know which disk is which if you get something like the second screen, and don't make any changes in the partitioner if you're not sure.

It's been a while since I used it, so can't really describe what it looks like now - to be on the safe side avoid anything to do with installing it to disk, partitioning or bootloading until you've tested it out.

It should come with Firefox, or at least some browser - so if you want to be completely safe, just use that, and the web-based version of Messenger (http://webmessenger.msn.com/) , so you won't need any disk for it at all.

The Incredible... · Post by **The Incredible...** » January 5th, 2008, 23:07

ok well i have ubuntu live running now, and i have firefox and pidgin. i thin thats all i REALLY need now, until i get my new disk delivered

then i guess i swap the new disk for my media disk and install windows on it and then use get back data on my old disk, then bin the old disk and put my media one back in its place

i actually kind of like this, and i might be able to get used to it, so maybe i won't even bother with windows

The Incredible... · Post by **The Incredible...** » January 5th, 2008, 23:15

oh yea one thing i wondered about, if i try to access my windows drive or my other hard drive (both NTFS) it says unable to mount

is there any way i can access the files on those drives?

it would be really handy if i could get to them so i could get anything on the c drive off and then i can just chuck it away when i get the new drive

also, if i'm just using it live, does that mean any settings i make will be lost if i turn off and on again

Post by **FatherJack** » January 5th, 2008, 23:43

The Incredible... wrote:oh yea one thing i wondered about, if i try to access my windows drive or my other hard drive (both NTFS) it says unable to mount

is there any way i can access the files on those drives?

it would be really handy if i could get to them so i could get anything on the c drive off and then i can just chuck it away when i get the new drive

also, if i'm just using it live, does that mean any settings i make will be lost if i turn off and on again

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=217009 has some info on accessing NTFS drives.

Without a disk area, I guess settings would be lost when restarting - maybe there's an option to save settings to a USB stick or something? Or, just leave it on.

The Incredible... · Post by **The Incredible...** » January 5th, 2008, 23:48

that looks a bit fiddly for me, especially when i am concerned about doing anything to damage the files on the disks

i think its best i just wait and make do with a minimal system until i get my new disk and can get windows on that

unless someone wants to be REALLY nice and simplify it down for an idiot

had a little look at it and can't seem to get it to work any advice would as always be greatly appreciated

Post by **HereComesPete** » January 6th, 2008, 1:30

FJ has pretty much simplified it as far as possible. A step by step guide wouldn't work.