99.99...% Recovered from Hard Drive Failure?

[Guest Watty]

See my other recent posts on my difficulty in getting my system squared

away after a drive failure. So far unstoppable copier hasn't quite done,

it but I may know why. Possibly I missed a setting. However, I tried the

old drive again. The shop had gotten it up once long enough to copy just

about everything off of it, so I thought I'd give it a try.

 

It came up but needed to do a chkdsk, which took 10-15 minutes of

sorting out orphans and such. It now seems pretty much up and intact.

I'm about to make an image copy and save off to an external drive. I may

explore unstoppable again, but first to get the image saved. It's been

up for 2 hours.

 

My guess is the power supply hiccuped originally. When I brought it up

here, I removed the second and third hard drives.

[Guest Daave]

Re: 99.99...% Recovered from Hard Drive Failure?

 

"Watty" <notvalid@sbcglobal.net> wrote in message

news:A3PGk.2$%11.1@flpi144.ffdc.sbc.com...

> See my other recent posts on my difficulty in getting my system

> squared away after a drive failure.

 

Watty, please don't start new threads for the same issue. It makes it

*very* difficult for those who are trying to help you.

> So far unstoppable copier hasn't quite done, it but I may know why.

> Possibly I missed a setting.

 

I had never heard of this program before, but it seems interesting. At

any rate, it does not have imaging capabilities.

> However, I tried the old drive again. The shop had gotten it up once

> long enough to copy just about everything off of it, so I thought I'd

> give it a try.

 

I don't believe you ever told us what was wrong with this drive. (Then

again, with seven or so simultaneous threads, it's possible you did, but

I never saw the description.) Is the drive *physically* bad? Or is it

just that the Windows installation became corrupt?

> It came up but needed to do a chkdsk, which took 10-15 minutes of

> sorting out orphans and such. It now seems pretty much up and intact.

> I'm about to make an image copy and save off to an external drive. I

> may explore unstoppable again, but first to get the image saved. It's

> been up for 2 hours.

 

What program are you going to use to image the hard drive? There is a

free trial version of Acronis True Image available for download. If you

want something totally free, DriveImageXML is very good.

 

Then again, if your Windows installation is/was riddled with malware,

you should consider a clean installation of Windows; that's what I would

do. Note that you would not be able to copy your original Program Files

folder to the new hard drive; that won't work. Programs, unfortunately,

need to be *reinstalled*.

> My guess is the power supply hiccuped originally. When I brought it up

> here, I removed the second and third hard drives.

 

In the future, if your hard drive is physically healthy, but you need to

reinstall Windows, consider a Repair installation. This will keep all

your programs and data intact. See:

 

http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm

[Guest Daave]

Re: 99.99...% Recovered from Hard Drive Failure?

 

Other thoughts... Replies are inline.

 

"Watty" <notvalid@sbcglobal.net> wrote in message

news:A3PGk.2$%11.1@flpi144.ffdc.sbc.com...

> See my other recent posts on my difficulty in getting my system

> squared away after a drive failure. So far unstoppable copier hasn't

> quite done, it but I may know why. Possibly I missed a setting.

> However, I tried the old drive again. The shop had gotten it up once

> long enough to copy just about everything off of it, so I thought I'd

> give it a try.

>

> It came up but needed to do a chkdsk, which took 10-15 minutes of

> sorting out orphans and such. It now seems pretty much up and intact.

 

If your hard drive is physically healthy (is it?) and if all you needed

to do to fix your original problem was to run chkdsk (if so, I'm stumped

as to why the shop you took your PC to was unable to do the same), then

you may very well have fixed your problem! But it's important to let us

know in detail what's been going on.

> I'm about to make an image copy and save off to an external drive. I

> may explore unstoppable again, but first to get the image saved. It's

> been up for 2 hours.

 

In my other post, I mentioned two imaging programs. However, the new

hard drive you purchased has its own cloning program. So, just follow

the instructions and you will be able to successfully clone your old

hard drive to the new one. Once you have your system the way you want

it, *then* image the hard drive. And it would be good to get into the

habit of regularly imaging your hard drive. This way, if you have any

serious problems with Windows in the future, you can easily and quickly

restore the most recent image and you'll be back in business. If you

don't create frequent images, make sure that at the very least you

frequently back up your data.

[Guest Watty]

Re: 99.99...% Recovered from Hard Drive Failure?

 

Daave wrote:

> "Watty" <notvalid@sbcglobal.net> wrote in message

> news:A3PGk.2$%11.1@flpi144.ffdc.sbc.com...

>> See my other recent posts on my difficulty in getting my system

>> squared away after a drive failure.

>

> Watty, please don't start new threads for the same issue. It makes it

> *very* difficult for those who are trying to help you.

>

>> So far unstoppable copier hasn't quite done, it but I may know why.

>> Possibly I missed a setting.

>

> I had never heard of this program before, but it seems interesting. At

> any rate, it does not have imaging capabilities.

>

>> However, I tried the old drive again. The shop had gotten it up once

>> long enough to copy just about everything off of it, so I thought I'd

>> give it a try.

>

> I don't believe you ever told us what was wrong with this drive. (Then

> again, with seven or so simultaneous threads, it's possible you did, but

> I never saw the description.) Is the drive *physically* bad? Or is it

> just that the Windows installation became corrupt?

>

>> It came up but needed to do a chkdsk, which took 10-15 minutes of

>> sorting out orphans and such. It now seems pretty much up and intact.

>> I'm about to make an image copy and save off to an external drive. I

>> may explore unstoppable again, but first to get the image saved. It's

>> been up for 2 hours.

>

> What program are you going to use to image the hard drive? There is a

> free trial version of Acronis True Image available for download. If you

> want something totally free, DriveImageXML is very good.

>

> Then again, if your Windows installation is/was riddled with malware,

> you should consider a clean installation of Windows; that's what I would

> do. Note that you would not be able to copy your original Program Files

> folder to the new hard drive; that won't work. Programs, unfortunately,

> need to be *reinstalled*.

>

>> My guess is the power supply hiccuped originally. When I brought it up

>> here, I removed the second and third hard drives.

>

> In the future, if your hard drive is physically healthy, but you need to

> reinstall Windows, consider a Repair installation. This will keep all

> your programs and data intact. See:

>

> http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm

>

>

Perhaps. I find it something of the other way around. People give

incomplete answers, and I have to back out of a long thread to find what

I'm looking for. My experience is after threads get 4-5 msgs deep, they

are hard to follow. Additionally, people often dive into the middle and

start offering suggestions that are of now help. Furthermore, as the

posts become separate, new issues are available as topics that may

really profit others. In any case, I think this topic is over, and

thanks to all who participated.

[Guest Watty]

Re: 99.99...% Recovered from Hard Drive Failure?

 

No problem. I'll give it a try. See mixed comments below.

Daave wrote:

> Other thoughts... Replies are inline.

>

> "Watty" <notvalid@sbcglobal.net> wrote in message

> news:A3PGk.2$%11.1@flpi144.ffdc.sbc.com...

>> See my other recent posts on my difficulty in getting my system

>> squared away after a drive failure. So far unstoppable copier hasn't

>> quite done, it but I may know why. Possibly I missed a setting.

>> However, I tried the old drive again. The shop had gotten it up once

>> long enough to copy just about everything off of it, so I thought I'd

>> give it a try.

>>

>> It came up but needed to do a chkdsk, which took 10-15 minutes of

>> sorting out orphans and such. It now seems pretty much up and intact.

>

> If your hard drive is physically healthy (is it?) and if all you needed

> to do to fix your original problem was to run chkdsk (if so, I'm stumped

> as to why the shop you took your PC to was unable to do the same), then

> you may very well have fixed your problem! But it's important to let us

> know in detail what's been going on.

Yes, it seems to be fine; however, it died a week ago with Disk Boot

Failure Insert System Disk. (I had no idea what the sys disk was, but

figured it was the install CD. That didn't help, so I started checking

other ways.) I tried to start it repeatedly under different conditions.

For example, turn all off and wait. Zippo. I then put it on another

machine. Zippo. Posted msgs. All declared it dead.

 

A friend had good luck with a local shop with an XP problem, so I called

them. Yes, they might be able to help. They have several hardware tricks

they can use. $75 for a shot at it, and if they got it up they'd dump

everything to my external 500G drive, FreeAgent, Seagate, usb.

Surprisingly it came up immediately for them, so rather than take a

chance with it suddenly dying, they dumped the contents. I decided that

was the end of the story. I now had all my data, but asked if could

perhaps get the PC rolling with a new drive. He said, yes, try

unstoppable copier, a freebie. Install XP onto the new drive, and

useunstoppable to transfer the recovered files. So what do I have to

lose? Yes, I could have continued with them, but I thought I'd give it a

try. BTW, I happened into another shop afterwards, and just asked if

they do such things, save data from a bad drive. Yes, $100. He also shot

said if it didn't spin up, it would be $500 to get it off. The low

figure surprised me, but he reiterated it. $500? No thanks.

 

That never quite did it. My first attempt went awry. I had made a simple

mistake, so I tried again. This time it looked OK except there were a

few anomalies. Chief among them were the Start menu was titled the same

as the new install. How could that be I asked myself? I talked to the

tech guy at the shop, and he said I needed change some options in

unstoppable. BTW, I had another XP machine that I could work out copies,

etc., independent of the broken machine-drive.

 

After thinking about this, and he'd mentioned that it might be a power

supply problem, I thought why not just try the old drive again on my

semi-bonkered machine. Further why power all drives, so I disconnected

the others. Viola! It worked. Lots of chkdsk message, but it was now

working. Still is right now.

 

It might fail if I put the other two drives back, so right now I'm

setting things up now to copy the image using a Seagate DiscWizard,

which is a stripped down version of acronis. I plan to copy the c-drive

image of the semi-bonkered machine over to the new 320G disk drive. It's

320G, and I can use the space. The old drive only used 58G.

 

It doesn't look like I'm going to get to further plow into the use of

unstoppable, so I really don't know if it'll do the job. The tech guy

thought it would, but I really don't know if had done it before.

 

Any other questions?

 

 

 

 

 

>

>> I'm about to make an image copy and save off to an external drive. I

>> may explore unstoppable again, but first to get the image saved. It's

>> been up for 2 hours.

>

> In my other post, I mentioned two imaging programs. However, the new

> hard drive you purchased has its own cloning program. So, just follow

> the instructions and you will be able to successfully clone your old

> hard drive to the new one. Once you have your system the way you want

> it, *then* image the hard drive. And it would be good to get into the

> habit of regularly imaging your hard drive. This way, if you have any

> serious problems with Windows in the future, you can easily and quickly

> restore the most recent image and you'll be back in business. If you

> don't create frequent images, make sure that at the very least you

> frequently back up your data.

>

>

[Guest Watty]

Re: 99.99...% Recovered from Hard Drive Failure?

 

I've now recovered fully to where I was pre-wreck, and my bootable drive

is now 320G instead of the old 80G.

 

Done.