Computer Jargon

[writeoff]

Ok IT gurus. I need your help.

My 1TB Seagate AV c: drive has died. My mobo will not recognise its existence and neither will my mates PC.

Story goes I bought a 2nd hand 1TB HDD off of a mate. He installed the new HDD and moved one of the older 320GB ones (I have 5 HDDs in the PC now). The first time I shut the PC down after the new HDD had been installed and then started it up the next day a message appeared stating a problem with hardware. I just selected 'close' or 'ok' and everything worked fine. A few days later another friend came around to reinstall the 320GB HDD that hadn't been installed correctly (the mounting brackets were upside down so they didn't lock into the case) and move the box which holds 4 HDDs in front of the fan into the correct position (about an inch forward). All 5 drives were working fine until we shut the PC down to make these changes - then the bios wouldn't recognise the c: drive.

The Seagate HDD was purchased in May 2008 and is an audio/video one with a 5 year warranty. It contains about 750-800GB of data including all of my photos. Please do not make comments about backing up data as they will not be appreciated.

Any suggestions as to how I may be able to retrieve the data? I especially want the photos and gaming data.

[nicr4wks]

Does the drive spin up or make any noise at all?

I had the same thing happen with a 40gb seagate a few years ago, something on the PCB went faulty and nothing would recognise the drive anymore. Swapping with circuit from another drive allowed me to get off what i needed.

[Normsta]

Have you tried turning the computer on and then restarting it as soon as Windows has loaded?

What are the interfaces for the HDDs?

How old is your motherboard and can it support all the hard drive space you have on there? Try removing the 320GB HDD and see if it works, if it does, you have too much cumulative space.

[Aberax]

Ok IT gurus. I need your help.

My 1TB Seagate AV c: drive has died. My mobo will not recognise its existence and neither will my mates PC.

Story goes I bought a 2nd hand 1TB HDD off of a mate. He installed the new HDD and moved one of the older 320GB ones (I have 5 HDDs in the PC now). The first time I shut the PC down after the new HDD had been installed and then started it up the next day a message appeared stating a problem with hardware. I just selected 'close' or 'ok' and everything worked fine. A few days later another friend came around to reinstall the 320GB HDD that hadn't been installed correctly (the mounting brackets were upside down so they didn't lock into the case) and move the box which holds 4 HDDs in front of the fan into the correct position (about an inch forward). All 5 drives were working fine until we shut the PC down to make these changes - then the bios wouldn't recognise the c: drive.

The Seagate HDD was purchased in May 2008 and is an audio/video one with a 5 year warranty. It contains about 750-800GB of data including all of my photos. Please do not make comments about backing up data as they will not be appreciated.

Any suggestions as to how I may be able to retrieve the data? I especially want the photos and gaming data.

1. What Firmware is it running? Should be printed on the top...pray to god it isnt the faulty batch of SD15 drives - they shouldnt have been released in Australia anyway, but grey importers, etc bring them in.

2. Have you tried a different SATA cable and SATA port?

3. Have you tried resetting the BIOS.

4. +1 Does the drive spin up at all, or make any weird noises?

Nothing too much you can really do with hard drives. Sometimes you can change the controller card, but you need one from a working exact same model and firmware drive, even then it isn't guaranteed to work. You can try a data retrieval place, if the data means that much too you, but be prepared to pay ~$1000 or more - They take the drive apart in a special chamber, take the spindle out, and place it into a spindle reader.

Have you tried turning the computer on and then restarting it as soon as Windows has loaded?

What are the interfaces for the HDDs?

How old is your motherboard and can it support all the hard drive space you have on there? Try removing the 320GB HDD and see if it works, if it does, you have too much cumulative space.

He cant get into Windows as the 1tb drive is his C: Drive - The drive Windows is on, and the Bios doesn't see it.

[Normsta]

He cant get into Windows as the 1tb drive is his C: Drive - The drive Windows is on, and the Bios doesn't see it.

Hmm, should have reworded that... what happened with my old hard drive is that it wouldn't spin up fast enough or be recognised by the BIOS initially, so you had to reset the computer after it was running for a few seconds. It'd then work as per normal.

[PREISS]

I was getting blue screened a fair bit. So I went and got a new 860watt PSU. I have a 9800gt gpu and m audio soundcard . Why does it still happen ? Surely not the vid card itself ?

Very annoying.

I have two fans inside the case. and a big 25cm fan on the side of the case. Plenty of air getting in there.

GPU sits at around 59-60degrees. once playing a game it can climb to around 75 or so.

Mb is sitting at 35c

CPU = 35c

+12 = 12.04v

vcore = 1.11v

cpu fan = 2109rpm

[TALBO]

Have you run memtest86, I assume you're on XP?

[Normsta]

Also try checking that all hardware drivers are up-to-date.

[Aberax]

Also try checking that all hardware drivers are up-to-date.

+1 For that...except stay away from the latest Nvidia Drivers...they have some issues, from what i hear.

Also maybe update your bios, or chipset drivers, as i have seen out of date chipset drivers do this before.

+1 for also Running Memtest86+, maybe also run Seatools over your hard drive to see if it is the drive.

[PREISS]

cheers, Will do that.

Will get onto it tomorrow.

Yes the drivers would be old.Only just reformatted with old drivers. will stuff around with the bios too.

I know the two main cases would be either heat or hardware drivers. So will get onto em. cheers.

[jrm]

You know, completely curious question (sorta prompted by earlier post) - who does and doesn't have a backup strategy for their data, and if you have one, what do you do?

I personally use a combination of RAID5 for protection against drive failure to keep my data online with a number of external eSATA drives for backup (backed up weekly, they auto-power down when not in use). I have my most valuable data on another external drive that only gets backed up every coupla months (mostly photos, documents that dont change much) and kept seperate in a fire-proof safe. I used to use a SCSI tape drive many years ago, but found it too unreliable when it came time to restore.

[Normsta]

I keep my data on seperate hard drives, Windows and recorded TV on C, Documents, Pictures and Music on D, Main Storage (TV shows, movies, disc images, etc) on E and general downloads on F. That way, if Windows fails, I don't lose too much data if there is a need to reformat.

[TALBO]

I do a similar thing, but spanned across 5 (other than C) drives where anything valuable is on at least 2 of those drives.

I know the two main cases would be either heat or hardware drivers. So will get onto em. cheers.

On XP it's usually RAM that causes BSOD's in my experience

[TALBO]

I do a similar thing, but spanned across 5 (other than C) drives where anything valuable is on at least 2 of those drives.

I know the two main cases would be either heat or hardware drivers. So will get onto em. cheers.

On XP it's usually RAM that causes BSOD's in my experience

[Aberax]

I keep my data on seperate hard drives, Windows and recorded TV on C, Documents, Pictures and Music on D, Main Storage (TV shows, movies, disc images, etc) on E and general downloads on F. That way, if Windows fails, I don't lose too much data if there is a need to reformat.

Pretty much what i do too. I have a 160gb for C Drive, 1tb for Video/Torrents/ Program Installs, Etc, a 500gb drive for Music/Ebooks/PC Games, and i also have another 1tb drive that i will soon be organizing for more torrents/videos/etc, as i do a lot of anime and TV episode downloading.

[skylineguy19]

ok this should be an easy one for you guys, i have some photos and i need to increase the file size of them, they are currently around 90-100kb and i need them to be minimum 200kb, is there a way to do this on the standard photo programmes that come with windows?

[Aberax]

Why do you want to go bigger in filesize for? You wont get any extra quality in the picture...once you have lost the quality, no way of getting it back.

[skylineguy19]

nah nah not for anything like that, needed to upload them to a site and200kb is the minimum size they needed to be, is all good, changed them through paint to a png format and its done the trick.

[scandyflick]

fixed. firefox 3.6 caught me out for a sec there, lol.

Edited March 21, 2010 by scandyflick

[CRoNic...]

Lol what the f**k? Since when does Firefox come with background music?