Bad sectors are at the firmware level. The drive decided that those sectors were unreliable physically, and stopped using them. Drives have spare sectors to remap when this happens, but once those run out, you start to have serious issues.
New HD is here, installed it, now trying to install software. This is my virgin voyage into putting something as important as a HD in. I'll keep you guys posted.
EDIT: XP installed, got the internet working, updating every got-damn ting to recent drivers and versions.
Success! New HD is working beautifully, and way more quietly than my old one. Now it's just a matter of installing drivers and software.
So the old one was loud? Was it making clicking noises? That's normally a sign of a dying HD.
No, but you know that rapid chug sound of a HD searching for something? It did that...a lot. Sometimes when I wasn't asking it to do anything at all. This new drive makes absolutely no sound at all.
So far, the hardest thing was to get the drivers to install properly. For some reason, Windows dedicated the letter "F" to the Hard Drive and it will not let me change the designation, so some software that assumes C: is the hard disk gets confused and I have to point it in the right direction.
To finally determine if it's a hardware or software issue causing the bad sectors (when I'm done fixing Kate's laptop) I plan to wipe the drive and install only Ubuntu and have it run diagnostics again. If I'm stupid lucky, the drive will just have bad software sectors and will still be able to be used as a secondary storage/Ubuntu drive, but the fact that I got the system in '03 (which makes the old HD almost 7 years old) leads me to believe it will be the hardware that's the problem.
So far, the hardest thing was to get the drivers to install properly. For some reason, Windows dedicated the letter "F" to the Hard Drive and it will not let me change the designation, so some software that assumes C: is the hard disk gets confused and I have to point it in the right direction.
Have you tried using the Windows Disk management thing?
Right click on My Computer->Manage->Storage->Disk Management
Then, right click on your hard drive space shown (Part where it shows the Volume label followed by the drive letter) and click Change drive letter or paths...
Okay, so our house has a ubuntu-based samba fileserver. It's the only linux computer in the house and is used regularly by everyone. However, As of late, I've been getting complaints that when trying to rename a folder through our paperless-office system, paperport, that they are not able to. I haven't been able to duplicate the situation, but I have to assume they are telling the truth.
That being the case, I need to switch to a more reliable or simple file server OS. Windows home server would be nice, but I cant afford a copy right now. And known good Linux options? or should I just go ahead and install XP?
Is it still safe to be running Windows 2k? It was my favourite Windows but surely it can't be getting the same quality of security updates as XP by now.
Is it still safe to be running Windows 2k? It was my favourite Windows but surely it can't be getting the same quality of security updates as XP by now.
Security-wise, it doesn't matter. This server is for use on the internal network only, and it won't be accessing the internet at all. If you were to use 2k-tan as a primary OS for your personal use computer, then no, it's not really safe. XP would be much safer.
You know, I wanted to try freeNAS, but then I thought, "This server has to be back up ASAP. I already have Windows 2000 right here and at least I know what I'm getting into." Besides, I know Win2k like the back of my hand. In the end, I got the server setup from tabula rasa to active and in place in less than 3 hours.
I can't see why anyone would try and change the letter of their system partition. That's just dumb.
So far, the hardest thing was to get the drivers to install properly. For some reason, Windows dedicated the letter "F" to the Hard Drive and it will not let me change the designation, so some software that assumes C: is the hard disk gets confused and I have to point it in the right direction.
My wife has a Dell Latitude D620 laptop. Beginning last night, when she turns it on, the "on" light comes on but nothing else happens. We've tried replacing the battery, but that didn't help. I think I can hear the HD trying to di something, but that might just be wishful thinking. Does anyone have any suggestions (and please - so far it's been a sad holiday for us. We've had a death in tje family. If you have a "suggestion" like "You shouldn't have bought a Dell in the first place, LOL", or "Time to buy a new computer, LOL", keep it to yourself.)?
My wife has a Dell Latitude D620 laptop. Beginning last night, when she turns it on, the "on" light comes on but nothing else happens. We've tried replacing the battery, but that didn't help. I think I can hear the HD trying to di something, but that might just be wishful thinking. Does anyone have any suggestions (and please - so far it's been a sad holiday for us. We've had a death in tje family. If you have a "suggestion" like "You shouldn't have bought a Dell in the first place, LOL", or "Time to buy a new computer, LOL", keep it to yourself.)?
Sadly you probably will have to buy a new one if the warranty is over. If it was the drive something would happen with the bios at least. Nothing happening means it's the power supply or motherboard. Since it's a laptop you can't just get a replacement part. However, you CAN remove the hard drive and connect it to another computer to save your data.
You know, I wanted to try freeNAS, but then I thought, "This server has to be back up ASAP. I already have Windows 2000 right here and at least I know what I'm getting into." Besides, I know Win2k like the back of my hand. In the end, I got the server setup from tabula rasa to active and in place in less than 3 hours.
The thing is FreeNAS comes with a snazzy web interface that abstracts away all the tedious config files and command prompts. These days I can set one up in about 20 minutes.
Dropbox and Jungle disk. Also in-case of Dropbox or Amazon shutting down (or losing my data, god forbid), I have my home server sync my data to my grandparents house (over a leafnetwork connection and Karen's Replicator) onto a dinky Linux SSD box I hacked together. I also copy my school documents from time to time to my USB stick.
My MP3's, school work and save games live on dropbox and my home server. School work is also synced to jungle disk and grandparents. Since I now have paid Spotify, I care nont as much about my MP3's but keep em safe anyway.
I can suffer my laptop being broken/stolen, my house burning down and dropbox breaking at very little inconvenience to me.
Alright, so a few days ago my power supply starting buzzing loudly when I booted up the computer. After having a look I decided that it was either dead or dying, so I ordered another power supply over Newegg (quite cheap; $20 with a discount). It's the exact same manufacturer and model number, but there are slight differences in the connectors. Most pertinent is the hard drive connector, as everything else seems to be working; it is perfectly identical to the my previous power supply save for the fact that it is almost imperceptibly wider. I solved this by shaving a tiny bit of plastic off of the outside, and it slid in perfectly fine. Unfortunately it doesn't seem to be powered at all; the computer won't boot to the HD, and when I boot to Ubuntu through my USB drive, "C:" isn't listed anywhere. So I'm left with two options: Either there's something wrong with the power supply, or my HD is dead. Which is more likely, and what is the best way to test either one of them?
Scratch that; it's the hard drive. I've lost a good bit of music, I'll have to re-download many gigs of Steam games, and I don't have Vista instillation disk because the computer came with it installed. Is there any way to prove I have a license and get a free disk, or should I just get Windows 7?
Scratch that; it's the hard drive. I've lost a good bit of music, I'll have to re-download many gigs of Steam games, and I don't have Vista instillation disk because the computer came with it installed. Is there any way to prove I have a license and get a free disk, or should I just get Windows 7?
Usually computers that come with Windows pre-installed come with a recovery disk of some sort.
I don't think this one did, and even if it did it wouldn't do much good. I don't think a recovery disk can un-brick a bricked hard drive.
So replace the hard drive and then use the disc. If you don't have one, your options are to buy Windows, use Linux, or try piracy with a slight chance of viruses built-in.
My wife has a Dell Latitude D620 laptop. Beginning last night, when she turns it on, the "on" light comes on but nothing else happens. We've tried replacing the battery, but that didn't help. I think I can hear the HD trying to di something, but that might just be wishful thinking. Does anyone have any suggestions (and please - so far it's been a sad holiday for us. We've had a death in tje family. If you have a "suggestion" like "You shouldn't have bought a Dell in the first place, LOL", or "Time to buy a new computer, LOL", keep it to yourself.)?
You could try to connect your laptop to a regular monitor to see if it's just the monitor's flat cable that has gone bad.
So, my iTunes crashed earlier with a weird error message saying that it had not been installed correctly and needed to be reinstalled. Since the program wouldn't open back up, I redownloaded and reinstalled, but the error message prevailed. I restarted the computer and was forced through a disk repairing process, which was repeated several times until it told me I must do a system restore/rollback to fix the corrupted files. Now my computer starts, but iTunes, Digsby, Firefox and a few others no longer work. The really important stuff is all on JungleDisk, but I'd rather not have to do a clean reinstall if it can be helped. But everything seems super fucked.
[Edit] I'm getting a lot of errors similar to these but with different file names for each program. Trying to reinatall any of these programs still doesn't help.
Your hard drive is probably dying slowly. All the files needed to boot are probably still in good condition, but you are getting bad sectors in other files causing these errors.
Also, I think this thread is no longer necessary because superuser.com exists.
Comments
EDIT: XP installed, got the internet working, updating every got-damn ting to recent drivers and versions.
So far, the hardest thing was to get the drivers to install properly. For some reason, Windows dedicated the letter "F" to the Hard Drive and it will not let me change the designation, so some software that assumes C: is the hard disk gets confused and I have to point it in the right direction.
To finally determine if it's a hardware or software issue causing the bad sectors (when I'm done fixing Kate's laptop) I plan to wipe the drive and install only Ubuntu and have it run diagnostics again. If I'm stupid lucky, the drive will just have bad software sectors and will still be able to be used as a secondary storage/Ubuntu drive, but the fact that I got the system in '03 (which makes the old HD almost 7 years old) leads me to believe it will be the hardware that's the problem.
Right click on My Computer->Manage->Storage->Disk Management
Then, right click on your hard drive space shown (Part where it shows the Volume label followed by the drive letter) and click Change drive letter or paths...
Hope that helps!
That being the case, I need to switch to a more reliable or simple file server OS. Windows home server would be nice, but I cant afford a copy right now. And known good Linux options? or should I just go ahead and install XP?
Actually, I was looking at the minimum specs for 2k, get this:
- 133mhz pentium processor
- 32MB of ram
- 650MB free hard drive space
This is the computer I'm putting it in:- 2.00GHZ Pentium 4
- 768MB of ram
- 4GB system partition, 32GB Storage partition
Oh yeah, this baby's a screamer!That's exactly what I tried.
Anyways, I figured it out.
WARNING: This can make your drive unbootable.
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;Q223188
My MP3's, school work and save games live on dropbox and my home server. School work is also synced to jungle disk and grandparents. Since I now have paid Spotify, I care nont as much about my MP3's but keep em safe anyway.
I can suffer my laptop being broken/stolen, my house burning down and dropbox breaking at very little inconvenience to me.
Scratch that; it's the hard drive. I've lost a good bit of music, I'll have to re-download many gigs of Steam games, and I don't have Vista instillation disk because the computer came with it installed. Is there any way to prove I have a license and get a free disk, or should I just get Windows 7?
[Edit] I'm getting a lot of errors similar to these but with different file names for each program. Trying to reinatall any of these programs still doesn't help.
Also, I think this thread is no longer necessary because superuser.com exists.