Hard Drive Woes

[NiteFox]

Inevitably, the time comes when my hard drive decides to call it a day. I have had a 120GB IDE drive split into four partitions (10, 10, 50 and 50) since building this machine over a year ago, and wouldn't you know it the C: drive gets corrupted and I'm also having problems with the D: partition.

Well, deciding that since my motherboard (Asus ABit-AV8) has support for SATA drives that my next drive purchase should be such a drive - So I plumped for a 200GB Maxtor drive (the only brand my local computer shop carries), with plans to split it up into four partitions (50 gigs apiece) and use the first partition of that to boot from and the rest as normal. If I could salvage the 120GB drive... Oh, I'd probably reconsolidate the partitions and use it as a Linux drive to goof around with.

That, or a huge honking big swap drive.

So I plug the drive in, try to get the BIOS to acknowledge it aaaand... Nope. No luck. Risking it, I manage to reformat the C: partition on my old drive and get a workable Windows install on its legs, which is the only reason I'm here, frankly. Broadband set up, I manage to download Maxtor's MaxBlast software, make a bootable disk and CD, and use that to try and get the disk up and running. The CD works fine, was able to see my new drive, repartition and format, and even copy the C: drive off the old disk onto a partition on the new.

Reboot, no joy. Still boots off the old drive, and the new one still doesn't show up in the BIOS as a candidate for booting nor as logical drives in Windows.

I've downloaded a couple of drivers and updates for my motherboard, particulary a SATA RAID driver (Which, since the BIOS controller setup cheerfully tells me I need two SATA drives to set up a RAID controller, is likely to be a futile waste of bytes), I've stopped short from an absolute BIOS flash, as it's something I've never done before, though that might probably have to be my next step.

If anyone has any advice (Except for "return the drive") it would be thankfully received.

Edit: Okay, so the SATA RAID controller did allow the hard drive to appear in Windows. Go fig. Hopefully, I'll be able to boot of that shizzle by the end of the day.

[NiteFox]

Okay, minor update post.

I can't have the two drives as bootables. It simply won't work. I can enable both drives, have the IDE drive as a priority for boot, and it all works fine (I'm currently shifting all my important stuff over the new drive).

However: If I set the Onboard SATA Raid Chip as the priority boot device, booting stalls in an infinate loop as both drives decide to let the other boot ("You first." "No, you." "No, I insist.")

Disable the IDE channel that my old hard drive is on... SATA drive boots up perfectly fine, though I naturally can't see my old partitions.

Bingo. So, lord knows, perhaps all I have to do is format my old drive (Once I've shifted all the crap I need from my salvaged partitions) and let things work themselves out.

I hope to God for once it's simple.

[Roland]

Good luck. I could have told you you can't mix SATA with IDE for booting. I also could have told you you'll need the RAID drivers before even attempting to load Windows onto the thing. But, you figured it all out on your own. Good for you.:)

I dunno if you can mix SATA and IDE when only one is bootable, but it will probably work. You'll find out soon enough, right? Let us know how it goes.

[Zippyy]

You might try checking your motherboard's BIOS for a SATA RAID option. On some motherboards, you must turn this option off in order to recognize just one SATA drive — I had this problem on my last motherboard.

[NiteFox]

Final update, so perhaps this thread could live out its short life.

Yep, it works. Formatting the original drive meant that the SATA could take over and I'm now enjoying the bliss that can only come with a fresh operating system install.

As for the 120GB disk, I've decided to dump as much of my CD collection as I care for onto it for a big ol' random playlist. Looking at it, it's probably too unreliable to hold any critical data, so it seems to be a good use of it.

That reminds me, I should download CDEx again.

[Wyrm]

I stopped buying Maxtor drives when my 120 went bad just after the 1 year warranty ran out. I'm still trying to figure out why I even bought a drive with only a 1 year warranty. I replaced it with a 120 Seagate that has a 5 year warranty and, even better, is quieter.

[NiteFox]

The ugly side of recovering from a hard drive bust:

Dear Customer,

This email contains important information regarding your broadband account.

Your broadband Internet usage has been highlighted as exceptionally high
during peak periods and is affecting the service that we provide to other
customers.

All of our users have the right to an acceptable quality of service, and
to ensure this Tiscali employs a Fair Use Policy
(http://www.tiscali.co.uk/fup). This gives Tiscali
the right to manage customers whose usage adversely affects our network
and the service of other customers. This is referred to in clause 8.4 of
the Terms and Conditions of our Broadband service (note clauses 5.9 in
the old Terms and Conditions if you registered before 2005) and
detailed in our Fair Use Policy (http://www.tiscali.co.uk/fup).

You may upload and download as you wish outside the peak hours;
however we ask that you are considerate when using the internet
during the peak period. Peak hours are from 6pm to 11pm Monday to
Sunday. To avoid any further heavy use warnings
we strongly recommend you adhere to the following guidelines:

o) Do not download large files during the peak periods

o) Do not use Peer-to-Peer file sharing software during peak
periods (e.g. Kazaa, BitTorrent)

o) Try and keep internet use to email and web browsing during these times.


If you do not reduce your usage during these peak times we
will manage your usage. This means that you will share
bandwidth with other heavy users during peak times instead of
sharing bandwidth with normal users. Your service will continue
to be unlimited, but by sharing bandwidth with other heavy users
you are likely to experience slower speeds during peak times.

If you have a query regarding this letter then you can
email broadbandservices@uk.tiscali.com

Important Note: When emailing please use your Tiscali email
address (username@tiscali.co.uk) and use the following reference
in the subject line "FUP Warning1". It may prove difficult for us
to process any queries or requests without this information.

Yours Sincerely


Tiscali Broadband Team

This landed in my inbox this morning:unsure:

The fact of the matter is this: Yeah, I've hit my connection pretty hard since recovering on Friday. There was a lot of things, typicall game-related, I never bothered to transfer over and had to download again from the respective suppliers. This stuff includes:

Galactic Civilizations II
Half Life 2, + Episode 1
Sin Episodes: Emergence
God Know How Much Guild Wars Related Files. I think that capped out at about 120 megs.
And other stuff™, drivers, Windows Update (No time to slipstream an install disk), and whatnot.

So since Friday, I have downloaded a fair amount of giggage. Probably about two or three gigs or so. When I first started with this ISP, there was a two gig monthly cap which was later removed not long after I signed up, so I suppose their grievence with me is pretty justified.

Hey, at least they remember me, right?:w00t:

[Raelynn]

The ugly side of recovering from a hard drive bust:
This landed in my inbox this morning:unsure:

The fact of the matter is this: Yeah, I've hit my connection pretty hard since recovering on Friday. There was a lot of things, typicall game-related, I never bothered to transfer over and had to download again from the respective suppliers. This stuff includes:

Galactic Civilizations II
Half Life 2, + Episode 1
Sin Episodes: Emergence
God Know How Much Guild Wars Related Files. I think that capped out at about 120 megs.
And other stuff™, drivers, Windows Update (No time to slipstream an install disk), and whatnot.

So since Friday, I have downloaded a fair amount of giggage. Probably about two or three gigs or so. When I first started with this ISP, there was a two gig monthly cap which was later removed not long after I signed up, so I suppose their grievence with me is pretty justified.

Hey, at least they remember me, right?:w00t:

Kinda funny that since I picked up my new 300gig drive about 2 weeks ago, I've downloaded over 13 gigs, and I haven't seen anything like that (yet...). Some 2 gigs of that was the first day and a half. I have heard that Comcast does cause problems when you do this kind of thing, so I'm slowing the downloads a bit for now.

[--Pete]

Hi,

Kinda funny that since I picked up my new 300gig drive about 2 weeks ago, I've downloaded over 13 gigs, and I haven't seen anything like that (yet...). Some 2 gigs of that was the first day and a half. I have heard that Comcast does cause problems when you do this kind of thing, so I'm slowing the downloads a bit for now.

Comcast has a limit on downloads from Usenet newsgroups of (in my area) 2GB per month. Plenty for discussion groups, but not enough for digital image groups. AFAIK, there is no limit (yet) on non-Usenet traffic.

I'm kinda glad for the limit, since I live in an area where a lot of people are sharing the cable bandwidth. I could log onto five or six wireless networks from my condo at almost any time -- people are totally clueless about security. And I'm tempted to send a joke print job to some of the WiFi printers that I have access to:) But, on the bandwidth limitation, there seemed to be a few people that felt it was their duty to download all of the posts to all of the newsgroups. That's gotten somewhat better. I still only get about 800 kbps of the 2, 4, 8 Mbps that Comcast advertises. I suspect that a lot of P2P file sharing is going on, lot's of school age kids in this complex.

I guess bandwidth is like money and youth. You never can have too much;)

--Pete

EDIT: Wish I did get 800 Mbps;)

[Drasca]

EDIT: Wish I did get 800 Mbps;)

Then you'd want another order of magnitude, and a computer that can handle all that data;)