it's been ailing severely--crashing and restarting on its own many times per day--and it did it at an inopportune time yesterday. i slapped the hell out of the tower as it was restarting on its own accord--at which point it restarted again, but failed to boot (did the ol' DISC BOOT FAIL--INSERT SYSTEM DISC AND PRESS ENTER trick).

so i bitchslapped it again...with, ummm, significant force.



i really don't care what i fucked up, because it's old, runs like shit on its best day, and needed to be replaced a year ago. i would, however, like to recover stuff like music and pictures (particularly some pictures of my daughter).

When I built the computer, I included dual hard drives and mirrored them with RAID. anyone wanna guess as to whether or not i likely damaged both hard drives?

would damaging one hard drive in a setup like this cause it to do this? what about other stuff? any ideas what I broke?


(by the way, it's done this once or maybe twice before within the last year or so, including about a month or two ago...after a day or two, it mysteriously started working again and didn't give any more trouble than normal afterwards).

12/6/2007 1:47:10 AM

not sure, but at least dell has some silly stacking coupons good till today so you picked a good time for it

12/6/2007 1:55:29 AM

these coupons

show me them


although i really home i can recover the stuff from my old computer

12/6/2007 2:06:10 AM

Make sure everything is seated correctly. Assuming that the concussive forced didn't damage the harddrives, you may have knocked loose a cable, card, RAM, or CPU.

There are plenty of software options out there for recovering data. Since you're drives were mirrored, you have a good shot at recovering all your data assuming that you haven't physically damaged the drives to the point they don't physically function. If you have done this, data recover would have to be done by a lab which costs thousands.

12/6/2007 2:16:08 AM

Quote :

"Make sure everything is seated correctly"

durrrr, i don't know why i haven't already done this.


i know that HDs don't really like that sort of beating, but i wonder how much it takes to really fuck them up and make the data irrecoverable (without shipping it off to a recovery service)? the good part is that i don't hear the heads crashing or anything.

you think that my computer would behave as i'm describing if i did destroy one (but not both) of the mirrored drives, or would it just go on about its business with its one good drive?

12/6/2007 2:22:27 AM

hit it one more time reaaaallly reaaalllyy hard. that should fix it.

12/6/2007 11:01:14 AM

Quote :

"i know that HDs don't really like that sort of beating, but i wonder how much it takes to really fuck them up and make the data irrecoverable (without shipping it off to a recovery service)? the good part is that i don't hear the heads crashing or anything. you think that my computer would behave as i'm describing if i did destroy one (but not both) of the mirrored drives, or would it just go on about its business with its one good drive?"

like 200g if the heads were parked, yes that is what RAID 1 was designed to do

[Edited on December 6, 2007 at 11:33 AM. Reason : 

12/6/2007 11:32:44 AM

ha. I got pissed at something and kicked the desk, knocking my external hard drive on the ground in the process. Now it goes click...click...click and then powers down.

oh and just take a sledge hammer to that bitch and bash the hell out of it. Don't forget to take pics or a video.

[Edited on December 6, 2007 at 1:19 PM. Reason : ]

12/6/2007 1:16:29 PM

shot guns are fun for their destruction too

12/6/2007 1:23:14 PM

Thought it was like 60g's of tolerance. Also, those new SSD can take up to 1600g's before hardware failure...

12/6/2007 1:48:04 PM

thank you theduke666

this thread made me lol a little

12/6/2007 5:29:00 PM

hmmm... so you can't control your temper and break your inanimate computer because I guess it makes you feel better to punch something that holds valuable data? i dunno, seems funny to me that you'd get on here crying about how you want pics of your kid, though, when all it took was you not breaking the device that held them.


[Edited on December 6, 2007 at 7:38 PM. Reason : s]

12/6/2007 7:36:25 PM

hahahaha


well you have two chances at getting your data!

12/6/2007 11:51:15 PM

i've punched computers before. I feel your pain

12/7/2007 8:41:13 AM

^ Same here, but I was like 13.

12/7/2007 8:43:35 AM

yeah, here's a thought, don't hit your machine....

12/7/2007 1:57:05 PM

id say one of your harddrive cables got loose (power or IDE)

12/9/2007 9:23:28 AM

I remember one time in leazar back in like '97 I was working on a CSC210 program and it was about 4a.m. and I could not get my fucking program to compile without segfaulting and no matter how many times i went through the code, i couldn't find anything wrong.

I took a break, walked around outside, went back in, combed through it again, found a couple of minor errors, and recompiled..... SEGFAULT.

I lost it and bitchslapped the monitor, which promptly blinked out and wouldn't come back on. So i power cycled the computer, and moved over to a new station. the mouthbreathing lab TA never noticed.

12/9/2007 9:34:48 AM

yea thats a little different though, considering your data was on a filesystem and not the goddamn hard drive of the computer you slapped.

pwn to thee, duke. control your temper next time.

12/9/2007 11:15:57 AM

if you cant get the HDD to recover via normal means, try the "freezer trick"

i've never done it, but i've heard from several different sources that it has worked for some situations.

(1) pull out the hard drive
(2) connect an IDE - USB cable to the hard drive
(3) put the hard drive (with IDE cable end connected) in a freezer bag
(4) put hard drive in freezer for >30 mins, with USB end of cable coming out of the freezer
(5) connect USB end to different (working) windows computer
(6) try to recover the data -- time is critical. it may not work for long.

let me know if it works. i have a crashed HDD i want to recover pics off as well.




[Edited on December 9, 2007 at 7:31 PM. Reason : ]

12/9/2007 7:28:22 PM

Quote :

"the good part is that i don't hear the heads crashing or anything."

If the heads are impinging on the disk you may (or may not) hear a faint sound of it dragging along the disk surface.

If the head is damaged but does not impinge on the disk you probably won't hear anything.

If the bearing is damaged you will hear a click click click sound.


If the disk is not reading or writing when impacted it is pretty hard to cause damage to the heads without actually dropping the drive. Unless you hit it hard enough to leave a hand print in the case, at least one of your drives probably survived ok.

12/9/2007 8:04:29 PM

I thought seg faults were run time only events? Been awhile since I have done anything in C/C++

12/9/2007 9:13:07 PM

i assume it compiled fine, but had an error with a pointer and seg faulted during run time

12/9/2007 11:34:34 PM

Quote :

"pwn to thee, duke. control your temper next time. "

yeah, yeah, i know. it obviously wasn't something i thought through and weighed the options on. it was more like "Goddammit, fuck this computer, I don't really care if I break it anyway. WHHHHHACK!"

which was true, strictly speaking. it wouldn't have been any significant loss from a hardware perspective.

It's a handful of things that are saved on the HDs that I'd really like to get back. I'll have to dig into it one day this week and check all the connections.

Quote :

"if you cant get the HDD to recover via normal means, try the "freezer trick" i've never done it, but i've heard from several different sources that it has worked for some situations"

Yeah, I'm holding that one as a pair of aces in the hole, because you probably will only get one last gasp out of a drive by that method...I'm waiting until I have another computer to put the stuff on.

Quote :

"If the disk is not reading or writing when impacted it is pretty hard to cause damage to the heads without actually dropping the drive. Unless you hit it hard enough to leave a hand print in the case, at least one of your drives probably survived ok. "

I hit it pretty hard. I doubt I dented the case in, because I hit it with an open hand instead of a fist...but it was a pretty substantial smack. Two of them, actually.

But yeah, I'm with you...I don't know what I fucked up, but I feel like the odds that I trashed BOTH drives aren't too high. I'm trying to remember for sure, but I'm pretty sure they weren't reading or writing when I hit it.

12/10/2007 2:33:52 AM

yea sounds like you're in denial that you have a problem.

let me tell you, hitting something fragile that holds valuable data is not "cool" or "normal" or anything other than indicative of someone who's got an anger management problem

and i have to say, now, could you really be any more of a stereotype? get a grip on yourself.


[Edited on December 10, 2007 at 7:44 AM. Reason : s]

12/10/2007 7:44:01 AM

Quote :

"i assume it compiled fine, but had an error with a pointer and seg faulted during run time"

yes

12/10/2007 10:49:37 AM

I've sent my n64 controller flying across the room once when one of my neighbors remote detonated a mine in Goldeneye for the fifteen thousand time causing me to instantly lose.

12/10/2007 11:00:22 AM

yea, and how old were ya when you did that?

12/10/2007 11:16:57 AM

freezer trick doesn't work btw.

12/12/2007 3:52:14 AM

^^^

I used to have a friend who'd flip you over backwards in your couch, throw computer chairs out the window, punch you in the stomach, etc after you've beaten him at some game. I've never played with him, but I've heard hahahaaa

12/12/2007 9:33:15 AM

Quote :

"freezer trick doesn't work btw."

sometimes it does, I'VE SEEN IT OK!!1!

12/12/2007 12:14:58 PM

bump

3/22/2008 9:21:30 AM

lot of duke hatin' in this thread like y'all never resorted to percussive maintenance

not sure what ever came of this but I'd image both disks to the same image w/ ddrescue and probably that'll yield a full image, if not hopefully enough to perform data recovery on

[Edited on March 22, 2008 at 4:39 PM. Reason : .]

3/22/2008 4:38:34 PM

freezer trick worked for me

what the fuck would it be so well known for then

[Edited on March 22, 2008 at 10:00 PM. Reason : .]

3/22/2008 9:56:31 PM

so i took my old desktop to a PC repair shop in town, and they recovered the data for me and transferred it to my laptop for $35. he said all that had happened was that my build was so old that the hard drives (mirrored in RAID) no longer physically operated at exactly the same RPM, and this is why it wouldn't boot up (and almost certainly why it liked to spontaneously restart without warning). he said the drives still work individually, but they can't be used in a RAID array anymore.

whatever. i'll keep them as a secondary backup for that data, then sell the rest of the computer for whatever anyone wants to give me for it on craigslist.

3/23/2008 1:10:44 AM

Quote :

"so i took my old desktop to a PC repair shop in town, and they recovered the data for me and transferred it to my laptop for $35"

Sounds like a nice guy. Most places call using an ata to usb adapter to copy files form a harddrive "data recovery services" and start at 50 bucks + time and parts.

3/23/2008 9:17:10 AM

Yep, I woulda started at at least $50... I'd keep going to that place.

3/23/2008 9:22:38 AM