Another Dead Computer.....

Stuart Ablett

Member
Messages
15,917
Location
Tokyo Japan
Well, the Windows 2K computer at the house has bit the dust :doh: Seems to be a drive failure, I can't complain, we got this computer about 5+ years ago, and while it is NOT anything to write home about, it has served well as an at home computer, for the basics. It is a Pentium 4 CPU 1.60GhHz. I went to buy a new drive for it, as well as a new graphics card, while I was at it I bought a new DVD-R internal drive, and a PCI USB card for it, giving me 5 more USB ports (Only had 2 stock). I got some deals and I had a lot of "points" on my membership card, so for all of that stuff, I paid about $30, well worth it for resurrecting this at home computer. One funny thing, this computer had a 40GB drive which was FULL when it failed, I went to buy a new drive, I'd like to put something larger in, but we checked the mother board, and it can only handle a 120Gb drive, unless I upgraded the BIOS, but then it was not a sure thing that a larger than 120Gb drive would work, they said it "should" work :doh:I ended up just buying an 80Gb drive, and it was more expensive than the 500Gb external USB drive I bought as well :D Supply and demand I guess, not much call for them small :rolleyes: 80Gb drives anymore :rofl::rofl::rofl:

All we really do with it right now is surf the net, e-mail and a little picture editing, nothing high power at all.

We would have loved to buy another Mac, but right now, just before Christmas, we decided to just fix this one up :dunno:

I do have a full Win XP Pro SP2 legal disk, so I installed that, and I hope the XP runs better on this machine. Oh well, there went another morning of work :rolleyes: :wave:

I've yet to get everything installed, all the mail and such.

One very bright spot is I bought this cable adapter thing, it hooks up to the busted HDD with an AC adapter, and a cable that goes onto the IDE connection and then into the computer with a USB cable, it comes with some Data Recovery software, and right now, it looks like I can get most, if not all of the data from the busted drive. :thumb:

package_ud303sm_big.jpg
This is the unit I bought, it is really slick.

img_ud303sm_05.gif
For the 3.5" regular desktop computer drives, you need the cable and the AC adapter.

img_ud303sm_01.gif
For the 2.5" drives, like from a notebook or laptop computer, you don't need the AC adapter, just the cable.

I was also able to copy all the data from the laptop in the shop that died, which was replaced by the MacMini.

The cable cost all of $15, not bad indeed. :thumb:

I'm sure this kind of cable is common or popular in the US as well, but I'd not seen or heard of one before.

Cheers!
 
Those little IDE-USB adaptors are VERY usefull if you are workign on PCs a lot.

Haul the old hard disk out of a dead laptop or a machine with broken windows and you can often get the users files off then test the drive. If the drive is physically healthy, format it, reload windows and put the users files back.

Use mine all the time :)

Ian
 
Thanks Stu for that info. I could use one of those too. Maybe I'll look at ordering one from somewhere. I've got 2 drives I'd like to get the data off of.

Aloha, Tony

Ian, is there anything I should be aware of in trying one of those? I'm really not all that computer savy but I do some work on mine at times. Thanks.
 
Tony, there are two kinds of Hard Disk Drives (HDD) out there:

IDE or Parallel ATA (older, now on the way out)
Serial ATA (SATA)
cables.jpg
Here is a comparison of the two cables, the larger one is the IDE cable, that most of us are very familiar with.

h16.jpg
This is the back of an IDE drive, without the cables installed.

h15.jpg
This is the back of the SATA drive, with cables installed

For the SATA drives, there is only one kind of connection, for both laptop and desktop drives, but for the IDE drives, there are two connectors, one for the 3.5" desktop drive size and one for the 2.5" laptop sized drives.

For a few dollars more, you can get a cable adapter that will do all three kinds.

>> Here << is a review of one such set up, should be all you need to know about this stuff.

The 40Gb HDD from the just dead laptop is fine, so I'm able to use it to transfer large file from one computer to another, that are not on a network.

Cheers!
 
Very true Rob, but the one I got, has a "Data Recovery" piece of software as well, at first, the drive was not readable, but after running the software recovery tool, I was able to get the data back, no problem. :thumb:
 
I'd like to put something larger in, but we checked the mother board, and it can only handle a 120Gb drive,

I remember my first large drive, it came with software that made the drive usable even though the mother board didn't support large drives.
 
Seem to have a lot of problems with computers Stu. Have you tried using a power conditioner? Nothing is harder on electronics than dirty power. Even a basic UPS can help with this.
 
Seem to have a lot of problems with computers Stu. Have you tried using a power conditioner? Nothing is harder on electronics than dirty power. Even a basic UPS can help with this.

Yep, I have good quality units on all of my computers.

The problems are not really a surprise, like I said, the computer at the house, that just had a problem is at least 5 years old, it may be older than that :dunno:

The laptop that died and got replaced by the MacMini was bought used, as a stop gap, when another old computer went poof. That laptop we had for 3 or 4 years, and we only paid about $500 for it, so it was also of good value. We really have tried to stretch the computer budget, and most of our computers were all long in the tooth. I do effective back ups, and the cheap large USB external HDD have made that even easier.

Now that I have XP Pro at home, I'm going to buy Carbonite to back it up online, and I'm also going to get that for Mac when it comes out next year. Next up I'm going to upgrade the main computer in the L shop to XP, it is still on Win 2K (I know, I know) but I have a XP Pro upgrade disk I'll use for that, then I'll put that one on Carbonite as well. It also has a large external HDD and a raid array, but it houses the vast majority of our files, pics etc, so I want to be extra careful with that one.

About 8 years ago, no, maybe 10 years ago, I lost a HDD with everything on it, data recovery did not save even 1%, I was gutted. Since then I've tried to mitigate such possible losses the best I can (anyone want an old tape back up drive?).

Cheers!
 
I stick with Win2K on my older Pentium laptops (512MB maximum). XP just ground them into the dirt, the poor little fellas; CPU at close to 100% all the time, memory paging to disk like crazy, that sort of thing. I just mention this in case you have similar problems.

I do run XP Pro on my more capable machines (2GB) and prefer it but Win2K is more than adequate for the Pentium machines and actually runs better if you keep the bells-n-whistles to a minimum. YMMV.
 
Thank you Stu. The drives I will be trying to work on are all IDE. I'll be checking that out.

Thanks Rob. I'll look at them too.

Aloha, Tony

Update:

Looks like the ones offered here don't come with the recovery software Stu. You wouldn't happen to know where a guy could get a copy of what you have, would you?

(Boy, if that wasn't a delicate hint, I've never seen one)

ALOHA
 
Last edited:
There are various disk recovery utilities out there, and even built into windows.

Often it's just the directory structure or an important windows system file that gets fouled up and the PC wont boot any more. By plugging the disk into a working PC and doing a check/repair on the disk it is magically fixed, or at least readable to recover the users files.

If that doesn't work becasue the File Allocation Table is totally toasted then you can dig deeper and recover files by scanning the actual data blocks on the drive and rebuilding the indexes again.

But if the drive has a mechanical problem and just goes whir click. click click.. silence. Then you are stuck.

I dont think Stu is having any unusual problems, 5 year old disk drives just die at random from wear and old age. He's just like me (and many others) who keep old PCs around if they are still doing the job. If you buy new gear evey few years you have less problems, but a lighter wallet :rolleyes:

The adpator kit I have supports normal IDE, laptop IDE and SATA and came with the various adaptors needs. So you are covered for most options.

Ian
 
That laptop we had for 3 or 4 years, and we only paid about $500 for it, so it was also of good value.

Cheers!

Now heres a thought that I often wonder about. Stu, you and I for that matter have accepted the built in obsolecence that we have all been brainwashed into accepting with the IT industry. As woodworkers we go about buying using and restoring machines that in many cases are older than the person doing the using, we buy new machines for $500 and expect and they do last for a lifetime. Yet we rationalise $500 for a computer that lasts as you say 3 to 4 years if we are lucky. I would like to see us begin to rebel against this type of pure waste and consumtion. Hey if we spent $500 on wood and build a good piece of furniture out of it, it would potetially last a lifetime and still be usable.


I do run XP Pro on my more capable machines (2GB) and prefer it but Win2K is more than adequate for the Pentium machines and actually runs better if you keep the bells-n-whistles to a minimum. YMMV.

Glenn you make a very valid point about win2k. There was never anything wrong with it and it is still a good os. What huge benefit have we gained between that and where we are today with Vista. Just made it less managable.
 
Now heres a thought that I often wonder about. Stu, you and I for that matter have accepted the built in obsolecence that we have all been brainwashed into accepting with the IT industry. As woodworkers we go about buying using and restoring machines that in many cases are older than the person doing the using, we buy new machines for $500 and expect and they do last for a lifetime. Yet we rationalise $500 for a computer that lasts as you say 3 to 4 years if we are lucky. I would like to see us begin to rebel against this type of pure waste and consumtion. Hey if we spent $500 on wood and build a good piece of furniture out of it, it would potetially last a lifetime and still be usable.

Just about anything mechanical wears out, some wear out quicker than others. I don't put a new chain on my chainsaw and expect it to last for years and years of cutting firewood, but I would expect the saw to last that long, with maintenance.

I think that the computer vs quality power tools comparison is a bit of a stretch, a better comparison, for me, would be between a computer and a car/truck.

I personally know of several guys that have good old cars/trucks still on the road. My mom's cousin has a wonderful 56 Chevy Bel Air.

You can keep an older car/truck on the road for a long time, with constant maintenance, just ask Tod, I think he runs an older van, but eventually, the problem of parts comes along. For example, I very much doubt that you can still get certain critical parts for the old Chevy, from Chevy, maybe from some aftermarket maker, but not from Chevy. The same is with computers, for example, I have an older laptop, (even older than the one that recently died) that the HDD is a whopping 4 GB. I doubt it will take even a 40 Gb drive, too big, but that is all that is available new, so the computer is just a paper weight. I just had another thought (hey two in one day!!) that is if you had an old Model "A" Ford, they are still good cars to drive around town etc, but I would not be trying to take one on an expressway, in fact, they may not be legal on some expressways, if they cannot maintain a speed of at least 60 mph, the same with most older computers, what use is a computer that is so slow, it would take a very long time to load this page, or would not be able to watch any video of any size etc, the use of computers have changed, drastically, so accepting the built in obsolescence is just going to be part of owning a computer, as it is a tool, but the work it is required to do, changes, so must the tool.

If you started out doing bandsaw boxes, with a little benchtop C-man bandsaw, one of them 9" units, then worked up to some minor resawing, you would then jump to a 14" saw, and then a riser block, at this point, you could resaw fairly well but decide to put a 2 Hp motor on the saw, with a resaw blade. Next you end up doing a LOT of resawing, and cash in the 14" saw and get a dedicated resaw machine. As the work changes, the tool must change too.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for wringing the last ounce of value out of a tool be it woodworking, or a computer, but the thing is with woodworking, the basics are not going to change much. There is honestly very little difference between the Rockwell/Beaver cabinet table saw my grandfather had, and the saw stop saw I'm buying, (the saw stop technology aside)

But the difference between an Apple IIc+ and a Mac Pro with the Quad-Core Intel Xeon “Harpertown” processors, is astounding. :D


Rob Keeble said:
Glenn you make a very valid point about win2k. There was never anything wrong with it and it is still a good os. What huge benefit have we gained between that and where we are today with Vista. Just made it less managable.

Win 2K was a constant problem for me, running it in the bilingual mode, I was always having driver issues, for example, buying a printer here in Japan, has really become a hassle with Win 2K, often I end up with a work around to get it working, and it is not fun to deal with. With XP, I've not had this problem, as most makers still suppor XP, but not everyone does so with 2K.

Another big thing for me is the fact that Carbonite works with XP, but does not work with 2K. I think Carbonite, or somehting similar, is money well spent, it is just about the best insurance you can buy for your data on a computer, real time daily back ups, and it is accesible worldwide, but offsite too.

Cheers!
 
...Win 2K was a constant problem for me, running it in the bilingual mode, I was always having driver issues, for example, buying a printer here in Japan, has really become a hassle with Win 2K, often I end up with a work around to get it working, and it is not fun to deal with. With XP, I've not had this problem, as most makers still suppor XP, but not everyone does so with 2K...
I agree. XP handles multiple languages much better than Win2K.

Also, from a software perspective, I can see why developers are cutting back or dropping support for Win2K, since there things that can be done natively in XP (and above) that can't be done easily in Win2K. In the case of the software we make, there are components in XP and higher that our products can use to their advantage, but they are not present in Win2K, so our engineers have to develop special workarounds for that OS.

As far as how long computers last compared to how long tools last...if tool technology was growing at the rate that computer and software technology was growing, I suspect we would be replacing our tools much more often. Tools don't really follow Moore's Law. Keep in mind that tools (especially hand tools) have been under development for a few centuries. Computers (as we use them) have only been around for a few decades.
 
Ah, I see I live in a narrow world of my own (read with sarcastic voice). . . Stu's in Japan. . . he might need different things than I do . . . :doh: Doh! Just tryingto help; sometimes I miss ;)
 
Top