MY computer pawned me.. HARD
 

Internal hard disk fail.

Had to reinstall Windows with a new hard disk[I had alot lying around ^^]. Problem is.. the Dell Windows XP cd DID NOT come with its own driver cd. T__T

So I installed what I can and..

I I tried hooking it up to the dsl line but it wouldn't recognize the connection. Luckily, I also have a wireless card and to my dismay, my wireless network [from the dsl] doesn't show up in the list of networks. Drats!

But then again I got lucky, some goof have an unencrypted network. I had to go to their webbie to get some of the hardware drivers. After installing the network drivers [broadcom.. etc etc]

To my dismay, its still not working. I know my wireless routers ip addie and I can configure it IF I CAN SOMEHOW connect to it. Right now, its running but without any outlet computers in it. I can't connect to it so I can't fix it. Tried plugging and unplugging the darn thing. Tried to use a network cable [via broadcom right?] to no avail.

Any suggestions?

Lesson of the day: BACK UP your damn files. T___T Seriously, I never thought that my computer would pawn me this way. I was expecting it to die from viruses and whatnot since I don't have any virus prot and firewall running ^^

Notes: My wireless router has a network name and custom password. But its not even showing up anymore. Darn Darn Darn. Thank you for reading this.

[edit] Finally fixed it. I had to manually set up a new connection via 'Networks Connections' ; My modem/wireless router changed settings on its own, it unchecked SSID which kinda makes it hard for me to access w/o [sheesh.. when you have 10 or more active wireless networks who uses the same router/modem as yours, its kinda hard to determine what is yours among the crowd ^^] ; Reconfigured and I was all set to use it wirelessly again. Woo. Too bad I lost my 80gb hard disk but oh well.. stuff happens.

Sorry to hear that you lost all your data same thing happened to me once before and after that I learnt my lesson and bough a hard drive and enclosure to backup any important data which mostly is anime, music mostly anime though lol

Good to hear that you got your internet fixed but do you have any idea why your hard drive might have crashed? You should try doing diagnostics on it depending on your HD brand such as seagate or WD have the programs on their site just too make sure your hard drive in okay condition.

my comp was running for a month. It was just overstrained. Combination of javazureus, firefox, winamp, ym and uh snes emulator (i was playing it at 5x speed the internal fan was roaring) also had mplayer with a 720p x264 ep on it. Then boom. Lock up then when i restarted hd fail (the disk made some noise that keeps on repeating like its stuck on something) then i smelled the unit and it smell like something is burning

Get some FANS, man! If you really overuse your PC that much, get the biggest fans you can!

Wow I can relate to this but i think you can still salvage your files in the hard drive but It's just my opinion....
NOT RELATED:But your lucky your reasons are valid and pretty wise mine is so f#ckin dumb I just reformatted the wrong drive and poof Bye bye files but i Manage to save some luckily the important files is still intact like installer and manga ^^... But I feel bad for my other stuff Its just because that damn product is so expensive to buy and I just got the crack version(SORRY IM JUST POOR AND A MINOR) of the lower version which can't read files like to newer one...


side topic: CAN I ASK HOW CAN A HARD DRIVE DIE??

SIDE TOpic: What if I have 2 hard drives and they have both os installed and I only want 1 drive for os and 1 for data storage and I deleted 1 harddrive's OS and formatted it is that bad for the harddrives?

Edit: How can I test my harddrive's life span?? Can it be seen?

Hmmm. Not sure about the side topic. Can some experts out there clarify?

Did a google search and saw that the average lifespan is 2 to 5 years.

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/hardware/0,1...2135031,00.htm

Obviously a bit late since you already got your computer back up, but you should download the latest drivers from the manufacturer's web site and burn them to a CD so that you have them available for the next time you need to reformat. If you don't know what drivers you need, you can use a program like UnknownDevices to find out what devices are in your PC.

Side topic: OK thanks well I still get go over what I lost.. hehehe Oh no Im using. Im sorry Im using some else's topic...sorry.

That doesn't always help. If there is constant use of the hdds, they will malfunction very soon. The usual desktop hard drives are often not even build to handle 3 hours of sustained reading/writing from/to disk. I'ld suggest using as much RAM buffer as possible for torrent applications (minimizing disk access).

Or buying very expensive hdds, that are meant to be used in servers.

E.g. http://www.wdc.com/en/products/Products.asp?DriveID=238 (basically every known desktop hdd brand, has also a server-class segment - its usually just more expensive).

But... days and days of constant usage to my PC have never done anything wrong to it (and I even reached two months of constant usage). The only time I totaled a HDD was when it had a power failure (due to lack of supply--I had recently changed my graphics card and my power supply wasn't enough to handle it).

And I don't have a corporative version HDD, I have some run-of-the-mill Seagate HDDs.

Please, read exactly. "3 hours of sustained reading/writing from/to disk" is not equal to "days and days of constant usage to my PC". Btw. though it is inadvisable to run a hdd stress test tool on your hdds for the same amount of days (you ran your PC), you might want to try it out with an old hdd (which you don't use anymore). (you can consider yourself lucky if no permanent hardware error occurs. But thats due to a different aspect... just because the possibility is high, that an hw error occurs, doesn't mean it has to occur).

Excuse me how about if you formatted, installed windows, reformatted your hdd 4 times in a weekend will it cause a bad sector??

Well full (not quick) formatting is purely sequential writing a disk from start to end, thats not too stressy. I'ld be more concerned with "random" read/writes, that let the actuator arm move long distances across the disk very often.
Imo installing Windows on a completely empty disk is fairly sequential too (NTFS locates files on both ends of the disk/partition, growing to the middle, while the disk becomes filled with data).
Permanent errors, like bad sectors caused by heap crashes (or other physically damaging errors), can be caused anytime the disk is used. The chance that it is going to happen in sustained usage over a long period of time is just much higher (server-class disks will be more robust regarding sustained stress).
The actuator arm flies in approx. 50nm height over the platters. That means it is almost touching it (finest human hair is approx. 50000 − 90000 nm in diameter).
If there is only minimal abrasion in the components and the arm starts to actually touch the platter in the process, there will be a permanent problem, which will become only worse from there on.

There's a story on eWeek today about hard drive reliability figures. While most of it is targeted at enterprise users with large storage arrays, there were a couple of amusing observations that might pertain to desktop users:

"One of the best methods to predict the failure of any device, storage or otherwise, is to simply count 30 days after its warranty. When the warranty is up, the product will fail. Or fall off your workbench onto the hard floor, warping the battery housing. Or a cup of coffee will be spilled on your desk and the liquid will drip down into the open vent and blow the power supply of the system stored below.

Such events rarely seem to happen under warranty."

"...this meant replacing most disk subsystems every three years.

But when it comes to PC drives, he said that all bets are off as to reliability.

'The treatment in the field is ridiculous. The average person doesn't have a clue how delicate the drives are. I regularly see people ruining systems,' he said.

He then related a story about dealing with a friend over an 'Ethernet cable problem,' or so it was described over the phone. It turned out that Weinhoeft's friend had pushed the networking card completely out of the slot.

'When I got there she still had the system powered on, was slamming the box left and right about 24 degrees each way trying to shake the card back in place and was fishing around in the live box with an oversize, unbent paper clip. And people wonder why their systems fail,' he said."


I can't seem to get the BBcode to attach this URL to a phrase in the message text (perhaps it's the comma?), so here it is: http://www.eweek.com/print_article2/...=203461,00.asp.

I read an interesting report (it was either on Slashdot or Neowin) which stated that, lifetime-wise, there was no difference between consumer-grade drives and enterprise-grade drives. I don't recall the report that they cited.

That doesn't mean that Jinto Lin's statement about drive endurance (capability to perform sustained activity) may not hold true, however.

The other HD health study was put out by Google, and I believe it was cited here. It basically stated that HD failures were highest with new drives and very old drives (failures within 60 days, and after some number of years - or something to that extent). More interestingly, it stated that the temperature that the drives are kept at is not important in their lifespan, but what is important is the temperature fluctuations that the drive is exposed to. If your drive is held at a relatively constant temperature, it will be more healthy than a drive that is exposed to wide fluctuations.

Sounds very plausible to me. Btw. Google basically introduced the idea of using low cost computer hardware (commodity systems) on enterprise level server cluster architectures. They rely more on robust software instead of robust hardware.
However, the so called Google Filesystem uses chunks (approx. 100Mbyte size per chunk). And what each machine does with data in such chunks, is basically sequential reading/writing. Therefore, this is not quite a good comparison to extremely random reading/writing applications like bittorrent (especially if the files are not preallocated and randomly scattered over the disk in the process of downloading).

Excuse me with all the post I'm Once again lost....Um you said that when you format a drive it's not stressy is that still true? And if you format install windows reformat its still not stressy?

And you also said that [The chance that it is going to happen in sustained usage over a long period of time is just much higher (server-class disks will be more robust regarding sustained stress).] does that mean that your hard drive is in the line even if your downloading bittorrent 24hrs?

One more thing does disk defragment prevent your drive from getting a bad sector and make the files stable so that the arm does not move too much

One more thing when you format a disk and install a windows in it does the arm move fast or slow?

Oh yeah after I did the format thing I need to transfer the files back to c to d is it still safe to do so?

Thats basically sequential writing. Usually very uncommon on desktop systems. However in this case (formating, installing windows on a fresh formated drive) it is sequential writing. Since sequential reading/writing is far less stressy for the hdd, its okay for longer periods of time (however, a bad sector you can get everytime, its just the chances that differ. If you use your hdd seldom, and never sustained, you can still get a bad sector, chances are just much much lower that this happens)

I don't understand that part. When I download bittorrent I use 800Mbyte RAM cache and disk space preallocation (utorrent).

Basically yes. However, what do you think will the process of defragmenting your disk do? Its a very stressy thing for you hdd. And if defragmenting at all, than I'ld suggest a clever one. Like placing all those files physically nearby, that are often used together. E.g. all the Windows start-up load files sequentially one after the other (that would not only cause less stress on the disk, but also improve Windows start up time)

Well, on a NTFS drive it will move sometimes fast, when writing the Windows files to the disk (because NTFS partitions are written from both ends to the middle). But that is not as bad as disk totally fragmented by torrents (which were not preallocated... well sort of a natural fragmentation also happens with preallocated torrents if you download very much, but it is much less fragmenting). I'ld use a separate partition for torrent downloads, one that can be completely cleaned at times.

I think so... (yet there exists no absolute safety).