Dead hard drive!

[ezekiel]

My hard drive died on my (very old)laptop...sortof, makes clicking sounds instead of starting up though today its working by miracle, I've already scheduled an appointment tomorrow with a local dealer for a new hard drive. Either that or a dirt cheap desktop. I'll use my good luck to burn whatever I haven't backed up already on my drive, especially characters sheets 'n emails 'n stuff and check if there's any chance it could be a virus instead of total HD failure. The clicking noises aren't encouraging though...

Its definitely the hard drive. Last friday (when it went caput) I tried using the repair console (by booting with an xp cd). The console told me 4643 of of 4644mb (yes, barely over 4GB, old laptop) were free but I couldn't access the partition. I even tried formatting the drive but couldn't (luckily considering today). So...being zen I didn't even swear once, put it down, walked to a local dealer and asked him about HD, said he'd call IBM for a HD monday and that's that, I went to the mountains. Came back, turned on my comp, still clicking noises damn, had a crap, came back to the comp and it was loading windows! So, lucky for now I guess. I'll still go tomorrow to see about a new HD. Hopefully its not the CPU. I don't think so since I could access the BIOS with no problems...Gonna backup the IPWeT files now...

P.S. Oh, and the virus scan just finished, no virus.

[ConcreteDragon]

::shocked ---------- ::cry ---------- ::nervous --------- ::smiley4

Good Luck!

p.s. It must be you're new Avatar ::tongue

[ProfPotts]

Hah - the Galactic Empire has fecked your hard drive! ::tongue ::biggrin

[ezekiel]

Wow, I wonder if my next incarnation will get this much attention. The feisty platypus barely got noticed..

Anyhoo, the update. Monday I turned up she said it took 7 days to order a drive, come here on Wednesday, my engineer will install it. (Yeah, I was confused too)

Now I know why, I went, the engineer said the laptop is too old, they've got to try various drives on it. They won't send a drive in 7 days, my computer will be shipped to some place in Taipei for 7 days... ::smiley4 Kinda annoying considering my drive magically resurrected this weekend...oh well, at least I'll have more space and a clean drive.

So yeah, that means I'll be offline for 7 days unless I get antsy and decide to go to an internet café.

ciao... ::smiley5

[SnakeEyes]

You see, this where mulitple hd drives come in handy. One main, on backup, just in case. When my next loan installment comes through, I'll be getting an 80Gig external for my laptop, so I can install all my games on it, and completely backup my 40Gig internal. That way if mine goes, I won't be without the use of my laptop.

Of the course, the alternative (if you have the cash- we're talking expensive here), is to get a new laptop (chances are, if your hd goes, the rest won't take long to follow, and you said yourself your laptop is old) with a large quantity of spare external hdd's.

On that topic, I had a look at custom pcs (not notebooks) from the greats (like alienware, demonite and voodoo), with 4 400gig internals, I don't think you'd worry about losing one of them.

Of course, winning the lottery would help. ::smile

May the force be with you,

SnakeEyes

::jedi

[ezekiel]

Being old, my laptop only has one USB port which means that if I use an external drive I can't use my cd burner (which is pretty essential with a small drive when you're taking plenty of 5MP pictures while travelling).

I am saving for a new laptop (160GB HD in RAID 0) but I don't want to buy it now. There's a good chance I'll be doing the Sahara on camel back in May or June followed by some sailing in the mediterranean. I don't want to carry an expensive notebook while doing that. So now I'm just breathing a bit more life into my crap laptop before I finally decide to add it to the e-waste mound.

Btw, the computer place lent me a laptop which is how I'm connected now. So yay, I'm gonna have to buy them a small gift or something for the use of their laptop. Chinese OS, but works fine..

P.S. Yes, that means there's a good chance I'll be away from EON this summer. Its not confirmed yet, but I just checked ticket prices from Hong Kong to Cairo...740USD return, I might be able to find a bit cheaper considering I don't want to return...so yeah, I might disappear.

[Alex Green]

<<I might disappear>>

::smiley4

Well, I hope you come back. But if that's just a vacation, then have fun. ::wink

[ezekiel]

It'll probably be like two summers ago when I sailed the atlantic. No connection in the desert or on the boat for sure and in net cafes I probably won't have time to post in games while there. Right now I'm trying to find the cheapest/most interesting way of getting to Tunis since the boat is there. Flights Hong Kong to Tunis seem to be about 1200 or 1300 USD so I'm better off going elsewhere and hitchhiking or whatever to get there I think...anyway, nothing's confirmed, its still very much in the mulling over stage.

[ezekiel]

Note, I'm confined to Internet Cafes until further notice..snif...

But hopefully I'll get another computer soon... ::smile

I'll try to post in games sometime this week but I can't promise anything. Bye ::smiley5