Members Derek5272 Posted April 15, 2009 Members Share Posted April 15, 2009 So, my computer's been booting up really slowly lately. Figured I probably just needed to clean up the drives. Then, I found out today when I went looking for an install file on my backup drive that Windows couldn't see the drive. The hard drive has mysteriously died, and taken all of my pictures, music, and videos with it. To add to this, I decided today to put XP on my laptop. Apparently, Windows XP setup can't detect a drive that has Windows 7 or Windows Vista installed on it. I'm so pissed off at my computers today that I'm seriously considering buying a Mac Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Bluescout Posted April 15, 2009 Members Share Posted April 15, 2009 You'll lose just as much data off a crashed Mac if it isn't backed up. Don't blame the OS for that one. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Derek5272 Posted April 15, 2009 Author Members Share Posted April 15, 2009 You'll lose just as much data off a crashed Mac if it isn't backed up. Don't blame the OS for that one. Not blaming the OS. I'm blaming the {censored}ty customer service of the company that manufactured the hard drive that's telling me it'll cost $1700 to recover data from it even though the drive is only 5 months old. And the drive that died is where the data was backed up to. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members King Kashue Posted April 15, 2009 Members Share Posted April 15, 2009 To add to this, I decided today to put XP on my laptop. Apparently, Windows XP setup can't detect a drive that has Windows 7 or Windows Vista installed on it. Is there something preventing you from refortmatting the drive and doing a clean install (like you should be doing anyway)? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Bluescout Posted April 15, 2009 Members Share Posted April 15, 2009 Not blaming the OS. I'm blaming the {censored}ty customer service of the company that manufactured the hard drive that's telling me it'll cost $1700 to recover data from it even though the drive is only 5 months old. And the drive that died is where the data was backed up to. *SOMETIMES* the problem with these is the power supply, either the external piece or the circuit inside, or the USB controller chip in the external drive. I would carefully remove the hard drive from the external case and plug it internally into another PC and see if you get lucky. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members wades_keys Posted April 15, 2009 Members Share Posted April 15, 2009 Not blaming the OS. I'm blaming the {censored}ty customer service of the company that manufactured the hard drive that's telling me it'll cost $1700 to recover data from it even though the drive is only 5 months old. And the drive that died is where the data was backed up to. If you bump your computer around while it's running, any hard drive will crash. If it's a tower, don't put it on the floor, put it up on the desk. On the floor, you're gonna bump into it and seriously shorten the life of the hard drive. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members King Kashue Posted April 16, 2009 Members Share Posted April 16, 2009 And the drive that died is where the data was backed up to. If that's the case, then you have the primary drive still around? How did you lose any data if it's just the backup that died? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members King Kashue Posted April 16, 2009 Members Share Posted April 16, 2009 If you bump your computer around while it's running, any hard drive will crash.If it's a tower, don't put it on the floor, put it up on the desk.On the floor, you're gonna bump into it and seriously shorten the life of the hard drive. Is there a reason to assume he bumped it (or even that his comp is on the floor)? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Derek5272 Posted April 16, 2009 Author Members Share Posted April 16, 2009 If that's the case, then you have the primary drive still around? How did you lose any data if it's just the backup that died? I have most of the music on my iPod, so that would just take a few hours to get back on the computer, but the pictures were on a memory card which also got wiped because my camera was on the fritz. The pictures might be on a CD somewhere, but we have lots of backup CDs floating around. I'm going to buy a $50 drive tonight and try taking the controller off of it and put it on the dead drive. Hopefully that's the part that died. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members King Kashue Posted April 16, 2009 Members Share Posted April 16, 2009 Yeah. Windows setup doesn't see the drive. Makes it hard to reformat it Only if you're using Windows setup Can you not find it when using the command line utility? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members wades_keys Posted April 16, 2009 Members Share Posted April 16, 2009 Is there a reason to assume he bumped it (or even that his comp is on the floor)? No - that's why I said "if". Hard drive crashes are almost always a result of physical shock of some kind. See my post below.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members wades_keys Posted April 16, 2009 Members Share Posted April 16, 2009 It's on the floor between my desk and nightstand where I do not walk. It does not get bumped. It'd be more at risk on top of my cluttered desk. And the 5 month old drive died. I'm telling you - put it on the desk. Scientific proof: no. Empirical evidence: lots and lots. Floors transmit vibrations too.... Over a 19 year period, I've seen more premature hard drive failures associated with tower computers on the floor than in any other scenario except laptops. Had a funny one at work about a year ago: co-worker had his brand new laptop on a folding table; I saw him bump into that table as he was sitting down so I made a comment about how that might crash the drive. Not 10 minutes later: (BEEP) BSOD - drive crash. No {censored}, I'm not making this up. It's easy to spot a physical drive crash if you run the russian recovery utility (can't remember the name offhand; got a copy at work). The patterns of dead sectors are very symettrical; it's easy to see the "streaks" where the head scraped oxide off of the platters. Drives almost never "just fail" prematurely; well, not after the initial burn-in period. Physical shock causing a head crash is almost always the reason why. All of this said: I'm not so sure from his post that the drive has actually crashed - not enough information. "Booting up slowly" could be ANYTHING. Dude, defrag your drive occasionally. And don't think you can put 1/2 million files in one directory and not have performance problems; I posted a lot of (known good) info for you on how to fix some of these performance issues you were having. If you ignored it, then you get what you get. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Bluescout Posted April 16, 2009 Members Share Posted April 16, 2009 No {censored}, I'm not making this up. Oh, you're making it up allright... :poke: Just kidding.... The reason setup can't find your hard drive COULD be that windows needs device specific drivers for the hard disk controller to work on setup. I've seen it before. You may have to dig up the drivers and put them on a floppy and get a USB floppy drive. You don't need DOS drivers, just the regular Windows XP drivers. When you boot to the CD, press F6 to load the drivers. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Derek5272 Posted April 16, 2009 Author Members Share Posted April 16, 2009 And the 5 month old drive died. And the 2 year old drive is still in perfect working order. All of this said: I'm not so sure from his post that the drive has actually crashed - not enough information. "Booting up slowly" could be ANYTHING. Dude, defrag your drive occasionally. And don't think you can put 1/2 million files in one directory and not have performance problems; I posted a lot of (known good) info for you on how to fix some of these performance issues you were having. If you ignored it, then you get what you get. It gets defragged every month/month and a half. It was only booting slowly for the last 2 days, displaying the BIOS screen for 15-20 seconds longer than it used to. I'm assuming it could tell there was a SATA drive plugged in, and was waiting for a response that never came. What makes you think I'm putting huge amounts of files in one directory? And I'm not having performance issues, I'm having hardware failure issues. There's a difference there. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Derek5272 Posted April 16, 2009 Author Members Share Posted April 16, 2009 The reason setup can't find your hard drive COULD be that windows needs device specific drivers for the hard disk controller to work on setup. I've seen it before. You may have to dig up the drivers and put them on a floppy and get a USB floppy drive. You don't need DOS drivers, just the regular Windows XP drivers. When you boot to the CD, press F6 to load the drivers. I'm suspecting this. A USB floppy drive is as much as a new hard drive, and I'm suspecting a new hard drive should work just fine with XP. It sees new desktop drives just fine, so I'm thinking it should see a new laptop drive from the same manufacturer... EDIT: The Hitachi website says that their hard drives are supported by Windows XP, so I'm thinking that the BIOS may be locking Windows XP out, because HP sucks like that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Bluescout Posted April 16, 2009 Members Share Posted April 16, 2009 Nope. Recovery console only sees the CD drive.I'm suspecting this. A USB floppy drive is as much as a new hard drive, and I'm suspecting a new hard drive should work just fine with XP. It sees new desktop drives just fine, so I'm thinking it should see a new laptop drive from the same manufacturer...EDIT: The Hitachi website says that their hard drives are supported by Windows XP, so I'm thinking that the BIOS may be locking Windows XP out, because HP sucks like that. The problem isn't the drive, it's the drive controller. XP already has drivers for dozens and dozens of controllers but if you have a newer one, like a new SATA controller, and XP doesn't have the driver, it won't be able to use it, and won't be able to see the hard drive. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Incubitabus Posted April 16, 2009 Members Share Posted April 16, 2009 I'm so pissed off at my computers today that I'm seriously considering buying a Mac I would be happy to help you pick one out! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Derek5272 Posted April 16, 2009 Author Members Share Posted April 16, 2009 I would be happy to help you pick one out! I'm sure you would I just knew you'd zero in on that line and comment on it Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members irishstu Posted April 16, 2009 Members Share Posted April 16, 2009 Have you tried running a live version of Ubuntu or something to try and recover this stuff? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Derek5272 Posted April 16, 2009 Author Members Share Posted April 16, 2009 Have you tried running a live version of Ubuntu or something to try and recover this stuff? No. I doubt Linux would see my hard drive when the BIOS doesn't. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Bluescout Posted April 16, 2009 Members Share Posted April 16, 2009 No. I doubt Linux would see my hard drive when the BIOS doesn't. Your hard drive doesn't appear in the bios? If that's the case, that's a hardware problem, different than what we were talking about. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Derek5272 Posted April 16, 2009 Author Members Share Posted April 16, 2009 Your hard drive doesn't appear in the bios? If that's the case, that's a hardware problem, different than what we were talking about. 2 computers. The laptop BIOS sees its hard drive. I can install Vista on the hard drive, partition it with gparted, but XP can't see it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Incubitabus Posted April 16, 2009 Members Share Posted April 16, 2009 I'm sure you would I just knew you'd zero in on that line and comment on it Truth is, people decide to buy a Mac before I ever talk to them. I just make them confident in their decision. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members irishstu Posted April 16, 2009 Members Share Posted April 16, 2009 2 computers. The laptop BIOS sees its hard drive. I can install Vista on the hard drive, partition it with gparted, but XP can't see it. You're giving a lot of confusing information here. If that hard drive isn't showing up in the BIOS, then try plugging it into a different IDE slot, and also try a different IDE cable. Actually, try it on another computer if you can. Other than that, I'm out of ideas. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members King Kashue Posted April 16, 2009 Members Share Posted April 16, 2009 Unfortunately, I need a floppy drive, so it'll cost me $70 to put XP on my laptop. *Sigh* No, it won't Download DBAN, burn it to a CD, boot from the CD and format the drive. Then install XP from CD normally. As always, be sure to backup your data before formatting. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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