Well, wish me luck...

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Well, I'm logging in from Kuemper's computer as I stop buy to purchase that extra hard drive they got for her computer (I think it was the power supply or graphics card, according to small talk - I canna remember exactly).

I'm doing this because I'd been having some foreshadowing of hard-drive failure (suddenly missing files so that a game crashes to desktop; monthly scandisk's starting actually finding file and index errors, etc). When hearing that they didn't need the HD they bought, I thought it'd be simpler to pay them what they bought the thing for than go shopping myself, but I hadn't gambled on how quickly the drive was corrupting.

I booted fine this morning, and was able to check my mail and read my comics, then I got a hankering to check the PC's innards. Powering down and taking the case off, I confirmed that my current setup doesn't have any free power plugs to set a second hard drive up; I'd have to just replace the bum disk for the new one.

Replacing the cover and connecting all the cords, I tried booting up with the intent on starting to burn off all my 'personal' stuff (save games, bookmarks, stories and text I'd written but never got around to saving on a floppy/CD or posting anywhere, ad nauseam)...

...but it kept BSOD'ing on me - apparently the defect or wear or whatever that was corrupting data on the drive had spread to the boot sector or Windoz' start-up 'stuff' or whatever. "He's dead, Jim."

So now it's doubly important that I get that replacement hard drive from Kuemper & co. Because unlike this couple my wife isn't at all computer-oriented; she occasionally plays FreeCell or pinball or maybe surfs a little to check something specific. I.E. I don't have a second PC to 'lean' on while I'm trying to get mine resucitated!

So now I get to dig out my WinXP install disk, and set it up on a never-partitioned fresh hard drive; my first time at this, so wish me luck!


(Oh, and I still have nagging suspicions that Kuemper 'infected' my PC with whatever 'bad luck' she has when she stopped by to login here through my computer! )

 

Or for about $20-$40 you can buy an external enclosure and turn the drive in to a USB drive that you can take with you.

 

Um, no. It's dead - it's more dead than the parrot.

It was starting to show some signs of wearing out maybe a week or two ago, but just before 'The Crash,' I was finding maybe a quarter of the directories I'd check would suddenly be 'empty', and attempting to look inside would bring up a dialog window:

"C: is not formated.
Would you like to format now?
[Yes] [No]"



Basically it was degrading too quickly at the end to be at ALL safe to put anything on - even as a 'supplementary' drive; a floppy would be more reliable (!) It was three years old, and had been 'rode hard' in that time. (Plus it was a Maxtor - I've always had a (irrational?) preference for Western Digital)

So now it's a nice, oblong paperweight - as soon as I secure a 'hex-driver' we're gonna disassemble the thing; the wife's curious as all get out what the inside looks like, and I profess to some hankering to see the platters and read/write heads first-hand myself...

Heck, I know there's services to recover data from such misfortunes, but I'm too cheap (and poor) to shell out for that when I can just start over from scratch...even though I did have some unique stories/monologues/etc saved that people had posted on newsgroups & fora over the years; one guy did a hilariously scathing review of ST:RotS that I'm gonna miss. And then there's my long-term Morrowind character; I hadn't played in months, but I'd been slowly husbanding this custom char steadily into perfection for a couple of years now. *wistful sigh*

Ah well, c'est la vie - I get to start all over now; even better!

(Oh, that reminds me, I still haven't put Acrobat Reader back on here yet...)

 

The moral of this story? Maxtor sucks.