Bad Drive Blues - AVERTED!

[Black Aeronaut]

S'why I've been quiet lately.
I came back to my barracks room one day to find that my install of Windows refused to boot up - to the point where not even the recovery console worked.  Right then I suspected the worse.
Unable to figure out what the hell happened, I booted a copy of Ubuntu I had been wanting to reinstall (iDeneb OS-X had borked GRUB and I haven't been able get the damn Hackintosh to work since) and wiped the partition.  No big deal since all the important stuff, like my documents, is on another partition.
Windows 7 reinstalled without a hitch, but to be sure I scheduled a full blown surface scan with chkdsk.  Bingo!  Four files in the System folders were occupying bad sectors.  Chkdsk fixed the problem, but the drive was making that ominous clicking sound that precedes a drive failure.  That made up my mind for me.  The next day I went to Yodobashi's Camera in Yokohama and picked up a 500 GB SATA drive and a new eSATA enclosure.
With that, I prepped the new drive in Ubuntu (new versions come with some robust drive management software) and then shuffled my documents on over.  Then, in goes the new drive and the OS Installation goes off without a hitch.  So now I'm just putting on the finishing touches and getting things settled once more.  I'm just happy I averted the worst of the woes.  (^_^)

[Dartz]

I shake my fist at you, you lucky person you. Last time that happened to me, was the time I learned the importance of backing stuff up.

And also, Gparted is that awesome at handling disks, and being pretty easy to use aswell. Last time I formatted a disk from the Windows install disk, it ruined the partition table somehow, and I had to reinstall everything.
________________________________
--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?

[HoagieOfDoom]

Good catch! I've only ever lost data to, ironically, a fault in some backup software I was using. That bit of experience has made me extra careful with my setup.

[Black Aeronaut]

It was a good excuse to upgrade from 320 GB to 500. I would have gone as far as 1TB if I could have found one, but apparently they were sold out. I needed a drive though, so 500 GB it was.

[Rod.H]

Luckily for you you caught it time, unfortunately for an acquaintance of mine they didn't. For their rig's power supply failed and autopsying the remains has led me to the opinion it took everything else with it. An opinion made clearer once I pulled the PCBs from both drives - chips on both drives have released their magic smoke!

So now I've got the fun task of tracking down replacement boards for five year-old Western Digital HDDs or finding someone who can pull data off 'em, cheep!

--Rod.H

[robkelk]

So now I've got the fun task of tracking down replacement boards for five year-old Western Digital HDDs

http://www.tte.ca/index.php?main_page=i ... h=28_29_96]If any of these would help, let me know and I'll pick one up for you.
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

[Rod.H]

So now I've got the fun task of tracking down replacement boards for five year-old Western Digital HDDs

http://www.tte.ca/index.php?main_page=i ... h=28_29_96]If any of these would help, let me know and I'll pick one up for you.

Hmm, only one of those drives appear to be of the model I'm after and it's the one for which I've a probable line on a getting a replacement PCB. Still, I've yet to tell how bad the problems got, aside from the fact I've had to assemble a completely new PC. To then tell 'em "Oh, the drives got fried too, had to outsource 'em out to a specialist for help. They want a grand before they'll even touch 'em. Probably find out more next Tuesday."