Hard Drive Backup

Off Topic
21

[quote]Curzon wrote:
KBCThird wrote:
a lot of this is over my head, but I’m appreciating the time everyone’s putting in anyway. I was in the process of copying a lot of my files to another computer when I got the blue screen of death. now not only do i need to learn about backing up my new computer, i need to learn about making a boot disk or doing something to somehow salvage the data on my old one

First of all we need to determine why you got the BSOD. Can you boot normally now or is it stuck in a loop? Can you boot into Safe Mode? [/quote]

When I turn it on it just prompts me to insert a boot disk. I believe I tried booting in safe mode, but I’ll try again when I get home

22

[quote]KBCThird wrote:
Curzon wrote:
KBCThird wrote:
a lot of this is over my head, but I’m appreciating the time everyone’s putting in anyway. I was in the process of copying a lot of my files to another computer when I got the blue screen of death. now not only do i need to learn about backing up my new computer, i need to learn about making a boot disk or doing something to somehow salvage the data on my old one

First of all we need to determine why you got the BSOD. Can you boot normally now or is it stuck in a loop? Can you boot into Safe Mode?

When I turn it on it just prompts me to insert a boot disk. I believe I tried booting in safe mode, but I’ll try again when I get home[/quote]

A couple of things to check first. Go into the system BIOS (usually F2 or Delete) and make sure that the BIOS sees your hard drive.

If hard drive is there, a couple of things may have happened.

  • Hard drive could have bad sectors, causing the system not to read the boot files because it can’t (possible that you won’t recover from this one)
  • Corrupt OS boot files (usually fixable)
  • virus (should be able to remove it)

Since you said this happened when you were copying a large number of files, I would tend to think that the hard drive has some bad sectors, but I could be wrong. A good disk recovery utility is Spinrite. It’s not cheap($80) but it is possible to read data from bad sectors and repair the disk. In the absence of that, I would attempt a repair install of Windows. I could go into extreme detail with this since I’ve done it a thousand times, but here’s a link that will explain it: http://michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm

If a repair install is NOT successful, all is not lost. As long as the drive can be read, it is possible, even likely maybe that you will be able to pull the drive out, and using a USB hard drive adapter plug it into your other computer and just copy the data off manually. With the other drive attached, you could also attempt to repair the disk using the standard Disk utility(My Computer, right-click the drive, Properties, Tools, Check Now…, Select Options, Start.) This might flag the bad sectors and allow you to get past the errors. Hope this helps!

23

[quote]Curzon wrote:
<<< If a repair install is NOT successful, all is not lost. As long as the drive can be read, it is possible, even likely maybe that you will be able to pull the drive out, and using a USB hard drive adapter plug it into your other computer and just copy the data off manually. With the other drive attached, you could also attempt to repair the disk using the standard Disk utility(My Computer, right-click the drive, Properties, Tools, Check Now…, Select Options, Start.) This might flag the bad sectors and allow you to get past the errors. Hope this helps![/quote]

I would do this first before anything else further risks what’s left of the file system. Also, he couldn’t be getting a stop error/blue screen if the drive wasn’t detected in the bios =]

24

[quote]Tiribulus wrote:
Curzon wrote:
<<< If a repair install is NOT successful, all is not lost. As long as the drive can be read, it is possible, even likely maybe that you will be able to pull the drive out, and using a USB hard drive adapter plug it into your other computer and just copy the data off manually. With the other drive attached, you could also attempt to repair the disk using the standard Disk utility(My Computer, right-click the drive, Properties, Tools, Check Now…, Select Options, Start.) This might flag the bad sectors and allow you to get past the errors. Hope this helps!

I would do this first before anything else further risks what’s left of the file system. Also, he couldn’t be getting a stop error/blue screen if the drive wasn’t detected in the bios =][/quote]

Well, he did say that now it says “Insert boot disk”. So yes, he should check the BIOS to be absolutely sure.

25

[quote]Tiribulus wrote:
Curzon wrote:
<<< If a repair install is NOT successful, all is not lost. As long as the drive can be read, it is possible, even likely maybe that you will be able to pull the drive out, and using a USB hard drive adapter plug it into your other computer and just copy the data off manually. With the other drive attached, you could also attempt to repair the disk using the standard Disk utility(My Computer, right-click the drive, Properties, Tools, Check Now…, Select Options, Start.) This might flag the bad sectors and allow you to get past the errors. Hope this helps!

I would do this first before anything else further risks what’s left of the file system. Also, he couldn’t be getting a stop error/blue screen if the drive wasn’t detected in the bios =][/quote]

Unfortunately any disk activity can further risk damage to the drive, that’s just the risk you have to take.

KBC, another thing you could do is boot from the Windows CD and select “R” when it gives you the option. From here you will be in a limited DOS mode where you can run chkdsk c: /F /R and it will attempt a repair.

26

[quote]Curzon wrote:
KBCThird wrote:
Curzon wrote:
KBCThird wrote:
a lot of this is over my head, but I’m appreciating the time everyone’s putting in anyway. I was in the process of copying a lot of my files to another computer when I got the blue screen of death. now not only do i need to learn about backing up my new computer, i need to learn about making a boot disk or doing something to somehow salvage the data on my old one

First of all we need to determine why you got the BSOD. Can you boot normally now or is it stuck in a loop? Can you boot into Safe Mode?

When I turn it on it just prompts me to insert a boot disk. I believe I tried booting in safe mode, but I’ll try again when I get home

A couple of things to check first. Go into the system BIOS (usually F2 or Delete) and make sure that the BIOS sees your hard drive.

If hard drive is there, a couple of things may have happened.

  • Hard drive could have bad sectors, causing the system not to read the boot files because it can’t (possible that you won’t recover from this one)
  • Corrupt OS boot files (usually fixable)
  • virus (should be able to remove it)

Since you said this happened when you were copying a large number of files, I would tend to think that the hard drive has some bad sectors, but I could be wrong. A good disk recovery utility is Spinrite. It’s not cheap($80) but it is possible to read data from bad sectors and repair the disk. In the absence of that, I would attempt a repair install of Windows. I could go into extreme detail with this since I’ve done it a thousand times, but here’s a link that will explain it: http://michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm

If a repair install is NOT successful, all is not lost. As long as the drive can be read, it is possible, even likely maybe that you will be able to pull the drive out, and using a USB hard drive adapter plug it into your other computer and just copy the data off manually. With the other drive attached, you could also attempt to repair the disk using the standard Disk utility(My Computer, right-click the drive, Properties, Tools, Check Now…, Select Options, Start.) This might flag the bad sectors and allow you to get past the errors. Hope this helps![/quote]

I restarted and entered into BIOS. I noticed that the HDD was listed as teh 4th boot device, while teh CD-ROM was listed as the first. There was a lot that I didnt understand, that I wanted to copy down to post up here, but I was exhausted (long day) so I just decided to go to bed there, and I’d copy everything down in the morning. Well, BIOS froze. I didnt even know BIOS could do that. couldnt even turn the copmputer off by pressing a button, i had to pull the plug, which reminded me that I’d had to do that several times when windows froze. Since I’ve pretty much given up on the machine, it sounds like either spinrite or the usb hard drive adapter are my two best options … i think? Which of these is SIMPLER? I can afford the $80-90 for the spinrite, nobody likes paying that, but I have a lot of songs, word docs, etc that I’d like to save. Are tehre any professional services that do this type of thing? Thanks again guys

Also, for clarification, I was not actually in the act of copying my files when the BSOD hit. Copying them was a longer-term project, I just put that in to note that if it had crashed a month or 2 later i probably wouldnt care as I’d have all my data

27

[quote]KBCThird wrote:

I restarted and entered into BIOS. I noticed that the HDD was listed as teh 4th boot device, while teh CD-ROM was listed as the first. There was a lot that I didnt understand, that I wanted to copy down to post up here, but I was exhausted (long day) so I just decided to go to bed there, and I’d copy everything down in the morning. Well, BIOS froze. I didnt even know BIOS could do that. couldnt even turn the copmputer off by pressing a button, i had to pull the plug, which reminded me that I’d had to do that several times when windows froze. Since I’ve pretty much given up on the machine, it sounds like either spinrite or the usb hard drive adapter are my two best options … i think? Which of these is SIMPLER? I can afford the $80-90 for the spinrite, nobody likes paying that, but I have a lot of songs, word docs, etc that I’d like to save. Are tehre any professional services that do this type of thing? Thanks again guys

Also, for clarification, I was not actually in the act of copying my files when the BSOD hit. Copying them was a longer-term project, I just put that in to note that if it had crashed a month or 2 later i probably wouldnt care as I’d have all my data[/quote]

I think it’s possible nothing is in fact wrong with your actual hard drive but it’s may be your motherboard dying(could also be CPU or RAM). Get the USB hard drive connector. If you don’t have one, here’s a link to order one Rosewill RCW-608 USB2.0 Adapter For IDE/SATA Device (Include Protection case) - Newegg.com .

This sounds like very encouraging news though, if your hard drive is OK, then you should have no trouble grabbing your data off it onto another computer.

28

[quote]Curzon wrote:
Tiribulus wrote:
Curzon wrote:
<<< If a repair install is NOT successful, all is not lost. As long as the drive can be read, it is possible, even likely maybe that you will be able to pull the drive out, and using a USB hard drive adapter plug it into your other computer and just copy the data off manually. With the other drive attached, you could also attempt to repair the disk using the standard Disk utility(My Computer, right-click the drive, Properties, Tools, Check Now…, Select Options, Start.) This might flag the bad sectors and allow you to get past the errors. Hope this helps!

I would do this first before anything else further risks what’s left of the file system. Also, he couldn’t be getting a stop error/blue screen if the drive wasn’t detected in the bios =]

Well, he did say that now it says “Insert boot disk”. So yes, he should check the BIOS to be absolutely sure.[/quote]

That a good point, I didn’t see that. However, if it were my machine and the only instance of my vital data were on that drive I’d try to copy it slaved in a different machine before any else, Failing that I’d try spinrite or ontrack or something similar to retrieve that data. Running a repair install or chkdsk first is more likely to compromise the data in my experience. He says he has an image of the drive which solves that, I’m just speaking generally and don’t get me wrong. I don’t know everything and we’re all on the same side here.

At this point if it’s freezing in the cmos settings that is very bad as you know. Could be heat or memory or MB as you say. Processors do go bad, but not very often though it could be that too. A simple step he could take would be to take out the drive, which it could also be and see if it still freezes in the bios. If not then everything he’s described to this point could have been the drive all along.

The fact that it seems to be deteriorating as we go lends credence to this, but not necessarily. The controller on the board could be eating the drive which also doesn’t happen too often, but isn’t unheard of. I do agree that in most cases that at least start with blue screen errors on bootup the drive itself is fine and the OS is corrupted which is solved by a reload.