Why I am unhappy today

[dr4b]

This morning at 6:17am I remember being woken up by the click-clack click-clack of the unhappiness of my hard drive or something. Turned off the computer to make it stop; went back to sleep.

At 10:30am I woke up for real and tried to reboot the thing. It booted but was slow as shit. Tried powercycling; now it wouldn't boot at all and complained about a corrupted kernel file.

Inbetween showering and changing and all I attempted twice to reinstall Windows 2000 on it... which only succeeded in creating additional installations which couldn't access my data.

Actually, inbetween trying to install, I drove to campus, had lunch outside with Christina, Kevin M, Nick, and Drew. Talked about movies a whole lot and ended up not going to Eli's practice talk but rather coming back here to play some DDR and watch Singin' in the Rain off and on with Nick and Christina. I felt bad for Eli, but I'd have just been sitting in the talk thinking "aaaack! my poor computer is dead!" Nick told me it's probably the hard drive, which makes me sad sad sad. I haven't backed it up since, oh, October or so.

Around 5ish I called HP to tell them what was up. They said "Oh, you installed a new OS? You've pretty much voided the warranty then... hmm... oh a dead hard drive, that sucks, you can take it to one of our service providers in the area and they'll look at it and probably just give you a new empty one." So that still doesn't solve my problem of trying to get the data off my old drive.

I think tomorrow I will go buy a new hard drive and try to use it to see if I can access my data... and then if I still can't, I guess I'll cry, and then move on. Blah.

I made Eli hug me for a while because I was pretty depressed over the whole computer thing, plus I still have a stuffy nose, and I just feel sort of blah. After that I drove to Boston Market and got dinner food, which I took to Mike's house for D&D. I guess D&D worked out well... we managed to not die, and we even accomplished our goal of releasing all the trapped souls from the evil fortress on the astral plane, so that was good.

The other unhappy thing was that when I drove to Mike's and parked on the right side of the street I think I hit the curb with the right front tire, and since Cedar Point I am way paranoid about that sort of thing. I was able to move the car up more, and I drove home okay, and the tire doesn't *seem* to be flat, but how would I be able to tell if it was losing air until it actually goes flat? I guess I'll check it out tomorrow before I go harddrive-and-camping-supply shopping.

Blah, I say. Blah.

Comments

tires

[nickjong.livejournal.com]

I've hit the curb with my tires a gajillion times without any apparent problems. I remember when I hit the curb of the ticket station at Cedar Point I heard a loud unhappy sound coming from the tire, which I usually don't get parking. If you're worried, though, set your mind at ease and check your tires' air pressure. The tire in question should have about the same pressure as the other one.

hard drive

[cellio]

I had a problem with similar symptoms a few years back. I bought a new hard drive and installed my old drive as a secondary drive. After installing the OS on the new drive, I was able to pull almost everything off of the old drive. There were a few corrupted files, but I got most of it.

What is your usual backup mechanism? Most of the time when people don't do backups it's because it's inconvenient -- for example, your data doesn't fit on one of whatever media you're using, and swapping CDs etc is a pain. I solved that problem by buying a large external USB drive. I still need to remember to launch backups, but once I do I can ignore until done. (And yes, I then unplug the USB connection so that drive wouldn't be taken out by a virus or attack or whatever.)

[indigodove.livejournal.com]

I have hit quite a few curbs in my time, and have had only one flat tire that I suspect was a direct result. Most of the flats I've had have had a more direct cause -- like a nail in the tire :-(

I haven't had as many nails in my tire since I left social work...in fact, I haven't had a flat since then...these are probably related.

Hope you feel better!!!

[meerkat299.livejournal.com]

if the hard drive is less than three years old, you can usually get the manufacturer to replace it for free. It does depend on the manufacturer, but most do this. Granted, you would also just be getting a new, empty one. At least it would be an empty one that is no longer failing.

You could try going to one of the "area service providers", but they may charge you for the service of taking out your bad drive and putting in a new one. You or one of your handy friends should be able to do this for free.

I know that at least one hard drive manufacturer (Maxtor) has the policy that if the drive is less than three years old, they will send you a new, empty drive within a few days. You then put your failing drive in the same box and ship it back to them within 30 days. (if they don't get it within 30 days, they charge you for the hard drive.) Other manufacturers probably have similar policies.

Re: tires

[rmitz.livejournal.com]

She should check the tire pressure for more reasons than that. Make sure that *all* the tires are at the recommended inflation pressure.

[nstrom.livejournal.com]

Gah, the clickety-clack of a dead or dying hard drive is my least favourite sound, and I've heard it far too many times before. Since you've already tried to reinstall, I'm assuming that you've attempted to format so your data is already toast... Sorry. If the drive is relatively new, you can probably get a replacement for free -- most HDD manufacturers have a 3 year warranty. I've returned Maxtor and Western Digital drives before. Check the website for the manufacturer - there's typically a web form where you can enter the serial number of the drive to check for warranty status.

Actually, there's a worse sound I've heard than a clickety hard drive. When my old old hard drive died, it went clickety-SPROING

[rmitz.livejournal.com]

Let me know if you need any help recovering data off the drive. As long as it's still spinning up, we should be able to deal with it one way or another.

About the tires, unless you hit them with some significant force, it really isn't going to do anything. At Barb's place we park up on the curb a lot since the road is so narrow. And most people use the curb as a guide for parallel parking.

[nstrom.livejournal.com]

Upon second reading of what you posted, you said you called HP ... If this was a prebuilt system from them, then the drive *might* not fall under the manufacturer's warranty but under HP's instead -- I've run into this problem with hard drives from a Dell system before. Your best bet is to try the serial number search on the HDD manufacturer's web page to see if it falls under the manufacturer's warranty.

[dr4b]

so I tried doing the reinstall in a way that it didn't reformat the drive, but rather installed the OS on top of the old one (Windows does this...) as far as I can tell my data is still there, since I could use the win2k CD to drop down to a dos-like prompt and view stuff. It wasn't accessible though... I guess I'll see what happens later today.

[dr4b]

yeah... I'll hopefully have a new drive sometime today and be able to figure out what needs to be done to it, and I know you're really good with this sort of stuff so I was probably going to ask anyway.

[bk1e.livejournal.com]

Brushing against a curb while parking is usually okay unless you're a crazy maniac parallel parker who drifts into their spaces. But hitting the curb while moving faster than a couple of miles per hour can bend the rim or cause a bubble to form in the tire, both of which lead to leaking and/or failure :)

I agree with Roman about checking inflation pressure, because many cars have underinflated tires, which makes the tires perform worse and wear faster. Overinflation is also really really bad, BTW.