5punk

I've been given quite a peculiar little computer to take a look at, looks like an early version of a shuttle PC, long and thin weighing at about 20kg.

Anyway, the problem lies with the hard drive. She works fine till the OS tries to load, then i get big fat errors. Same with safemode etc, so i'd say its fairly obvious that the hard drive is either fried completely, or the OS is just corrupted.

Now my original idea was to stick one of my own HDD's into it and try to just nuke it and start fresh, but being the easily confused shit that i am i get quite stumped with slaves and masters and the like.

So basically, (idealy) is there a nice simple way to format a hard drive without having to load any form of OS? Or should i just bite the bullet and learn how to hook it up to an existing HDD like my original plan? Or should i just hit it with hammers and say it died in its sleep?

You could stick Ubuntu on a Live CD and do formatting and/or diagnostics from there.
Probably.

cashy wrote:I've been given quite a peculiar little computer to take a look at, looks like an early version of a shuttle PC, long and thin weighing at about 20kg.

Anyway, the problem lies with the hard drive. She works fine till the OS tries to load, then i get big fat errors. Same with safemode etc, so i'd say its fairly obvious that the hard drive is either fried completely, or the OS is just corrupted.

Now my original idea was to stick one of my own HDD's into it and try to just nuke it and start fresh, but being the easily confused shit that i am i get quite stumped with slaves and masters and the like.

So basically, (idealy) is there a nice simple way to format a hard drive without having to load any form of OS? Or should i just bite the bullet and learn how to hook it up to an existing HDD like my original plan? Or should i just hit it with hammers and say it died in its sleep?

What end result do you want? If the original hard drive is fuct, then you're going to have to put a new drive in there anyway. If you just want to format the drive that's in there at the moment, well, you're going to want an operating system on there at some point so you may as well format the drive from within the installation process.

If you want to put one of your old hard drives in there and install Windows on to that, then you're going to have to learn the whole slave and master thing (which is seriously not difficult), or get a 15 year old to help you (a 10 year old is no help, kids nowadays are brought up on SATA).

Stoat wrote:You could stick Ubuntu on a Live CD and do formatting and/or diagnostics from there.
Probably.

For this sort of thing, Knoppix is your friend, assuming you don't have an irrational dislike for Linux.

eion wrote:For this sort of thing, Knoppix is your friend, assuming you don't have an irrational dislike for Linux.

Fair enough. I've tried both LiveCDs and not really noticed what the difference was. I'll take your word on it.
However, there's no such thing as an irrational dislike for Linux

Well im all out of 15 year olds (10 year olds are much easier to abduct you see) so i figure i'll give the linux thing a go. I have a feeling this is going to end in me getting bored and just making something up about a plume of smoke, but we shall see

Thanks for the help guys

Nuke it from orbit, it's the only way to be sure.*

*Stick an XP install disk, boot from CD, format from the install options like Eion says, reinstall Windows. If that doesn't work you've got a duff HDD. If it's not and they want their data off it you'd better work out how to do the master/slave thing (just the jumpers on the back of the HDD).

I'd just like to take this moment to ask:

Do you wan't to keep anything on the drive?

If so, whack the drive into your own pc as a slave, it'll be the easiest thing. Copy what you need to keep, then just run a format on the drive from there (using a program like partition magic, I don't trust windows to do it properly, cus it's all ghey like). Copy the stuffs back, then wack the drive back in the shuttle as a master and do the install then.


If you don't want to keep anything, like mentioned, boot with an OS CD (like XP or 2000) then just run the format from the cd.

Boot into the Recovery console from the Windows XP boot CD.

Do a
chkdsk drive /r

This'll do an exhaustive check of the drive and corrects any errors, locate bad sectors and recovers readable information.

If it survives then you have a drive you can use.Although until it's been thoroughly used it for a while I'd be careful about keeping any data on it you wouldn't want to lose. (But of course everyone backs up their personal/important data anyway)

Smash it with a hammar then install windowz

I was about to post something similar, cos I've done a reinstall of windows and really fucked things up. Fistly, utter school-boy error, I formatted the wrong drive and lost a few backups of stuff. Nothing major, just irritating.

However, since the reinstall windows isn't recognising the ethernet port on the motherboard, and so I can't connect to the internet. I'm posting this from the missus' Mac. Its showing a 1394 connection which is on the soundcard, which I installed since the previous reformat. It also showing the wireless card, but my router is setup for wired only and in addition to my other fuckups, I've lost the username and password for the router so can't reconfigure it from this computer. The device manager isn't showing anything networky as broken, and I can't seem to find drivers to download for it either. The mobo is an asus a8n-e by the way.

I'm totally at a loss for what to do, and fucking annoyed as well. I'm sure i wouldn't be nearly as pissed off if I hadn't fucked up in the first place, but with this on top of it I'm at a loss for what to do. I thought this would be the opportunity to tidy my PC up and sort things out, but I can't do much without the internet on it! Help me, please!

Lateralus wrote:I was about to post something similar, cos I've done a reinstall of windows and really fucked things up. Fistly, utter school-boy error, I formatted the wrong drive and lost a few backups of stuff. Nothing major, just irritating.

However, since the reinstall windows isn't recognising the ethernet port on the motherboard, and so I can't connect to the internet. I'm posting this from the missus' Mac. Its showing a 1394 connection which is on the soundcard, which I installed since the previous reformat. It also showing the wireless card, but my router is setup for wired only and in addition to my other fuckups, I've lost the username and password for the router so can't reconfigure it from this computer. The device manager isn't showing anything networky as broken, and I can't seem to find drivers to download for it either. The mobo is an asus a8n-e by the way.

I'm totally at a loss for what to do, and fucking annoyed as well. I'm sure i wouldn't be nearly as pissed off if I hadn't fucked up in the first place, but with this on top of it I'm at a loss for what to do. I thought this would be the opportunity to tidy my PC up and sort things out, but I can't do much without the internet on it! Help me, please!

Where to start...

Factory-reset the router so the username and password go back to defaults.

Make sure the onboard LAN is enabled in the BIOS.

And remember... better pissed off than pissed on.

Router is now factory reset, so wireless is working ok. I'll have a further fetter around and swear at it a bit more and see how it goes from there.

Hurrah. It just required an update of the chipset drivers and all is wired and well again. Now I just need to rectify the earlier human error in reformating.

8 whole minutes, and no useful information? Berks sliping again...

the only correct answer is Nuke it from orbit, it's the only way to be sure.



bonus points to dog pants for getting it right

Realisation has dawned that I've lost any photos I put on here since last April, and all job applications from the last year. These were dead useful as templates for future ones, and I had applications for a wide range of jobs. I really need to prepare properly before I next reformat, this has been a fucking farce.

Lateralus wrote:Realisation has dawned that I've lost any photos I put on here since last April, and all job applications from the last year. These were dead useful as templates for future ones, and I had applications for a wide range of jobs. I really need to prepare properly before I next reformat, this has been a fucking farce.

You might be able to get the stuff back using (seriously) GetDataBack.

Also, DVD backups FTW.

eion wrote:You might be able to get the stuff back using (seriously) GetDataBack.

That

GDB will save you, try not to use the drive in question for anything, then use GDB to recover stuff to your not-fucked up drive.

if needs be, work in batches to dvd. just don't write to the drive you're recovering from