Funny stories (hardware related).

[Obsidian]

So a few months ago, my WD mybook essential drive failed. This morning, I decided to open the enclosure and see what was going on because the drive is a decent one to have for backups and the drive failed when it was way out of WD's warranty. After an hour of trying to pry the case off, because WD chose to use a screw-less plastic case for the newer external units and the mybook essentials aren't user-serviceable, I finally got the shell off. Apparently, the passive cooling only works so well because the daughter board was charred in a few places around the main chip. In this case, that chip allows the computer to properly see the partitions on the drive. Without it, the computer will recognize the drive, but see it as unallocated space.

 

So, my data is lost, but the drive itself is saved and I'm testing it in reads and writes to make sure it's stable for backup use.

[BTGBullseye]

Have you checked to see if you can get a replacement controller board for the drive? I've seen them for as little as $5 including S&H for non-SSD drives...

[Humin]

I bought an NAS for my laptop.

As it turns out, Winderp 7 Premiere doesn't support any sort of network backup whatsoever. You need Winderp 7 Promethium or higher. The software shipped with it didn't help one bit either.

Luckily, I was able to find the receipt in my full garbage can that I was about to throw away. I didn't even know I threw it away. I got lucky there.

Gonna return it tomorrow and get my $180 back.

Now then, onto the problem where I can't seem to get my system to see my other hard drive.

 

Edit: Fix it.

I finally got around to copying over my steam files over to my other drive. Is it normal for the transfer speed to drop down to 200KB/s?

 

Edit of Edit: It seems that a lot of tiny files can really slow down transfer rates.

[Obsidian]

Have you checked to see if you can get a replacement controller board for the drive? I've seen them for as little as $5 including S&H for non-SSD drives...

 

The drive itself is fine. It was the daughterboard between the drive and the USB interface that was fried. I could get another one, I'm sure, but the case the drive was in can't be reused anyway. My computer situation has changed since I bought the external drive, so I'm just using it internally now for backups.

[BTGBullseye]

Ah, ok... That makes sense.

 

I bought an NAS for my laptop.

As it turns out, Winderp 7 Premiere doesn't support any sort of network backup whatsoever. You need Winderp 7 Promethium or higher. The software shipped with it didn't help one bit either.

Luckily, I was able to find the receipt in my full garbage can that I was about to throw away. I didn't even know I threw it away. I got lucky there.

Gonna return it tomorrow and get my $180 back.

Now then, onto the problem where I can't seem to get my system to see my other hard drive.

Do you want a code that will upgrade your version to Ultimate? I can get one for you... Perfectly legit too.

[Humin]

Do you want a code that will upgrade your version to Ultimate? I can get one for you... Perfectly legit too.

Would I need the disk too?

[BTGBullseye]

No, just need a legit installation of Win 7. (it's a code for the 'Anytime Upgrade' system that's built into the Windows 7 update system)

 

All the 'upgrade' does is unlock a few features, (it's possible to do so without 'upgrading') enable some things that help with stability, (just a few hundred settings changes in the registry) change all the labels to say "Ultimate", (really this is the part that costs the extra $80 when you purchase it normally) and allow you to install multiple UI language packs that can be switched to and from on the fly. (very few people use this capability)

 

Basically the code just takes about 6 days worth of messing with your system out of the equation. (and cuts it down to 15 minutes of 'updating')

[Humin]

Sounds like a system exploit... I'll do it.

[BTGBullseye]

I'll PM you.

[Humin]

After getting Winderp 7 Ultimogeniture (thank you very much) I took my "old" 1TB external hard drive and attached it to my wireless router via usb 3.0 (my wireless router has a usb port, go figure) and I am currently backing up on it. I ran into no problems doing this.

I then created a new repair disk. No problem there either.

Then I ran into a problem. As it turns out, Winderp 7 software RAID can't include the disk the OS is on, even if the disk has all the other files. So eventually, I ended up turning it into a mirrored drive.

I've finally found a use for my second drive! HURRAY!

Wait, mirroring is RAID 1, isn't it... So I can use RAID, just not RAID 0. No... I can't use RAID 0 for now unless I were to find a high speed high capacity SD Card.

Edited February 2, 2013 by Guest (see edit history)

[BTGBullseye]

Congrats... lol

[Humin]

Backups now take, according to my calculations, approximately 25 hours to complete now that I have my drive hooked up over my network. I don't think my laptop's little transceiver can do more than 30Mbps as it isn't hitting any higher speeds.

[BTGBullseye]

Or it could just be because there are a lot of little files that are being transferred, and that will slow down the transfer speed. (overhead, file info writing, error checking, etc.) If it was all just 1 big file, I'm sure it would be going faster.

[GordonFreeman]

My very first laptop was a really old IBM thinkpad, massive, had no charge-holding since it was a hand-me-down from my mother's office assistant.. But the really funny part is that the harddrive, one New Years night, fell -out- of the slot! I was shocked, but it turns out all you have to do is jam the motherfucker in (not "jam" literally) And it works "fine". Then, eventually my dad fixed it with a screwdriver.

[Meelis13]

Not many funny stories about harddrive from me.

Though i must say my old (about 8-10 years old) PC is like weaker version of nokia- bloody indestructible!

it has:

got its power button surroundings (center of front panel) smashed in, creating nice triangle only attaced to rest of front panel plastic by bottom line

been forgotten in the rain- was cleaning it, someone called me to do something and later i forgot about it. only remembered it when i wanted to play GTA SA, which was few hours later. It got clean alright XD

Fallen from aprox 1,1 meter table not once, but at least 3 times, which i can recall right now, all times because of cat- had it placed one side being bit higher up, otherwise it was too loud and i preferred to leave it on. Cat liked to sit on it and watch outside and when he jumped off of it.... One time was even so (i also kept its lid off, so air could get in- system kept overheating otherwise), that it landed on top of hammer (it was there due to ongoing renovation), big one, so that it even hit motherboard and RAM-s. This is why i started to call it indestructible.

gotten squirted on by my 2 cats (yeah, nasty, i know...), including all over hardware. Resulting this, i have at least once washed it with water hose (this was when it started to become too old to be of any use)

and its kept in moist room pretty much entire time, which has resulted in some case rusting.

 

Despite all this, believe it or not, it still works and despite beaten up looks (like, literally- its case is bent), only problem now is related with software, as it had some virus which caused win xp to go haywire (luckily i never had any really important info there) and i just dont find any point of clearing it up, so right now, its sitting unplugged in corner.

[Bugthing]

Two days ago I was just minding my own business on the couch with the laptop on my lap. Suddenly I started smelling this faint shortcircuit smell. I seemed to be coming out of the heat exhaust. Looked inside, didn't see anything wrong with it. Then I notice the adaptor cable plug hanging out of the laptop a bit, so I pushed it back in. Big deal.

 

The next day I try to remove the cable, but it was stuck in the laptop! Never happened before. I gave it a good yank and it came loose. Get this: the entire tip of the plug had a large scorch mark on it. WTF!?

 

Since then I've been a bit on edge, hoping my laptop won't spontaneously combust while I'm working. >_>

[BTGBullseye]

Two days ago I was just minding my own business on the couch with the laptop on my lap. Suddenly I started smelling this faint shortcircuit smell. I seemed to be coming out of the heat exhaust. Looked inside, didn't see anything wrong with it. Then I notice the adaptor cable plug hanging out of the laptop a bit, so I pushed it back in. Big deal.

 

The next day I try to remove the cable, but it was stuck in the laptop! Never happened before. I gave it a good yank and it came loose. Get this: the entire tip of the plug had a large scorch mark on it. WTF!?

 

Since then I've been a bit on edge, hoping my laptop won't spontaneously combust while I'm working. >_>

Sounds like it welded itself... I've had that happen before, just a loose connection, no risk of fire if you make sure it's all the way in from now on.

[Obsidian]

So this week I finally bought a little adapter that would convert my spare USB 2.0 header on my motherboard into two USB 2.0 A female slots. It freed up two ports on the motherboard (kinda) because now I can plug my bluetooth adapter and logitech wireless adapter internally and not worry about them.

 

A cool little thing, except it's quite bulky, and when I got it I realized it was covering/blocking the tail end of my bottom PCI-E slot on the board because it's tall and the USB 2.0 header is just in that inconvenient spot. Anyway, since that lane is only wired for 4x speeds anyway, I decided to move my Wifi card down to that slot, freeing up the top PCI-E 1x slot for a sound card or a tuner card in the future.

 

On another note, anyone here have any ideas for useful PCI (regular, not express) cards? I have a legacy connector on my board and am trying to figure out what to do with it.

[BTGBullseye]

Network card, TV tuner card, extra USB and firewire ports, PCI-to-ISA slot converter...

[Collective Foal]

My dad insisted on buying a cheaper, prebuilt computer rather than the one I wanted, so of course my PC comes and I find out 3 months later that the hard drive physically skips like a broken record, causing unexpected freezes and almost daily blue screens.