Computer SOS!

[marooko]

i knocked my external hard rive over last night and now it wont show up as plugged in. any suggestions as to what i can do to retrieve my data? besides paying someone else to do it.

[shakermaker113]

sacrifice small animals.

[Monklish]

i knocked my external hard rive over last night and now it wont show up as plugged in. any suggestions as to what i can do to retrieve my data? besides paying someone else to do it.

Try moving it around from one USB port to another. Keep trying all of them until hopefully it gets recognized.

[marooko]

i think it stops spinning after a couple minutes. ive already sacrificed 2 cats and one USB port. also tried the rest of the ports. im gonna go look to see if i could find one at a good price and throw mine in the freezer and see if that works. this fucking sucks.

[Monklish]

Well there's a good chance you just need a new hard drive enclosure. If you can open that one up, you can take the drive out and swap it into a new enclosure. That would work if, hopefully, it's just the electrical controls that got damaged. Basically, the symptoms you're describing--namely that it stops spinning--either point towards the circuit board on the drive itself being dead (in which case you're straight fucked) or just the enclosure being fucked.

[marooko]

thank you. im pretty sure im fucked. it makes a beep/screech type sound every few seconds. im gonna leave it unplugged till i get a new one. im hoping its a crash and the freezer will work, it has before. ill try another enclosure as well.

[Barbara, the ninja]

This isn't exactly a computer problem, but it's related enough..

I need a laptop backpack. I carried my lappy in a regular one and now the backpack is ripped. I'm using safety pins to keep it together. Does anyone have any recommendations of laptop backpacks that are not hideous and maybe affordable?

[Monklish]

www.newegg.com

[kreutz2112]

[menikmati]

[Barbara, the ninja]

Garg, I should have checked there first, Randy.

You know I already have that one, kreutz. C'mon now.

Erik, I'm going to put my kids in there.

[marooko]

my computer just turned off, this has happened before. any idea what might cause this?


I had jet audio playing, I had AutoCAD open and was working on it. I had 3 different windows explorer windows open, one of them was connected to another PC on the network(nothing happened to that one), and I had firefox open.

[Monklish]

Replace the power supply.

[marooko]

anything other than that?

forgot to mention something BIG. An error report came up and said that i should send it to microsoft. A serious error has occurred.

[marooko]

and i cant remember exactly if the error report came up the last time it happened. i wanna say it didnt, but im not sure.

[Monklish]

Well that's different. Right-click My Computer, click Manage, go into the Event Viewer and find the error (either in Application or System logs) that caused that crash. Should be in System.

[marooko]

did you wanna see it, or just saying thats where i can find the problem?

[Monklish]

Just PM me, no reason to take up board space with it.

[marooko]

gimme a sec. this IS the comp SOS thread.

[marooko]

is it safe for me to assume my laptop HDD is as easy to change as my desktop HDD?

[shakermaker113]

if your laptop manufacturer has a step-by-step guide online then yes, it's about as easy.

if they don't then you have a greater chance of breaking something in the process.

[marooko]

well, im having a much more difficult time finding a suitable ATA hard drive for the job. I have a 100GB and 120GB in my laptop now, best i can find at a decent price is 160. i want at least 250, pref. 320. but thank you for the info.

[Monklish]

IDE drives are really expensive now that they're outmoded technology, especially large ones. Are you talking desktop or laptop?

[chiapet]

is it safe for me to assume my laptop HDD is as easy to change as my desktop HDD?

Easier. Should be a cover on either the side or back of the laptop for the drive, if you can't find it, your manual (or manufacturer's website) should show where it is. You'll need a small screwdriver. The drive should either slide out (if on the side) or lift out.

It's easy enough that when my work gives out laptop replacements/upgrades, they expect everyone -- even sales people and secretaries -- to install their own drives.

[dorkfish]

Realistically, he's much better off just buying a cheap 2.5" SATA drive and getting a cheap USB 2.0 enclosure (to avoid having a power cable). It's probably just for storage, anyways, so it's best to avoid the headache of spending $300 for an old hard drive.

[marooko]

the reason i want an internal, is because my external hit the floor pretty hard. basically, i wanna try to avoid that happening again. yeah, i can just not kick it, but that didnt work well the first time. also, i dont want all kinds of shit attached. kinda starts to make it a desktop.

[chiapet]

marooko, what exactly are you looking for? ATA-6/ultra-ata 100? Is this going to be your only/primary drive, or do you have a secondary bay you're putting this into?

Both newegg & tigerdirect have > 250GB drives for reasonable prices (such as 500gb for under $100). The western digital ones are really cheap. I'm wondering what I'm missing, spec wise they look similar to the more expensive ones *shrug*.

[dorkfish]

the reason i want an internal, is because my external hit the floor pretty hard. basically, i wanna try to avoid that happening again. yeah, i can just not kick it, but that didnt work well the first time. also, i dont want all kinds of shit attached. kinda starts to make it a desktop.

buy a laptop SATA drive and turn it into a mini external drive. Duct tape it to the top of your laptop. problem solved.

[marooko]

but then it wont look cool.

and im not sure exactly about what ATA i need. i need to figure that out tomorrow.

[chiapet]

You can always shut down and take a look at the drive that's in there now. Should have a label. I'm assuming it's ATA-6, you should be able to find something between 250-500GB for under $150.