LurveTech Dot Com
Sharing and Caring
Posts tagged Hard
10 Ways to Revive a Hard Drive
Nov 26th
1. One trick I have learned as a technician, when the problem is data-read errors off the platters themselves, is to freeze the hard drive overnight. It makes the data more ‘readable,’ but for a one-shot deal. If this data is critical, and you have a replacement hard drive (which, if it’s a drive failure, you probably do), then you can hook up your frozen hard drive and immediately fetch the data off before it warms up.
2. If the problem is heat related, I put the drive in the freezer for about 15 minutes to cool it down…sometimes this gets the drive up long enough to copy any critical files.
3. Put the drive in a waterproof sealed bag, put it in the fridge for an hour or so, then have another go.
4. Well, I won’t start playing with your specific situation, too many steps or possible solutions where everything starts “If that last thing didn’t work try…” But I’ll give you one for free that was a nice hero moment for me. Had a drive where it sounded like the drive motor was engaging but not getting anywhere, so we stuck it in the office freezer for an hour!. I’ll be darned if it didn’t work. The drive was up long enough to get the data ghosted to another drive and we turfed it, even though it sounded fine at that point. I can’t really take credit for it though—I had heard it in some geek bull session but I thought it was some jedi-geek urban myth. Goes to show you that you know you’re really screwed when you say something to the effect of “Okay, hold on tight, I’m gonna try something I saw in a cartoon once but I’m pretty sure I can do it”
5. If this drive isn’t spinning up, putting it in the freezer for about an hour will usually get the drive spinning again so you can copy needed files before the drive warms up again. The first thing you want to do is run a disk utility like Norton disk doctor or wddiag (if it’s a western digital drive) to verify whether the drive is working mechanically or not. If it is a master boot record problem, sometimes running Fdisk/mbr will correct the problem. It could also be a virus, and a program like F-prot will look at the drive as a physical unit. As an A+ PC technician I have seen this problem many times. Usually if the drive is not making a clicking sound I am successful in recovering the data.
6. I’ve run into this scenario numerous times. One time it involved the main Novell SYS volume on our HP File Server. I was really sweating as the server would not boot. I took the drive out and put it in a freezer for 30 minutes. I then reinstalled it into the file server and Presto! I was up and running. Need less to say I quickly mirrored the drive onto another and got rid of the bad drive. In stand alone client systems, the method I’ve had the most luck with reviving drives from death has been removing the drive, firmly tapping the top of its case several times, and then re-installing it making sure all cables are secure. I’ve had a better than 60 percent success rate with this method.
7. If the drive is spinning and you are experiencing these kinds of errors, my experience has been that you are out of luck. If the drive is not spinning, I have been able to remove it from the computer and ’spin’ the drive on a flat smooth surface (much like spin the bottle). This will usually free the drive and when placed back in the machine, it will boot. You should immediately back up you data after a successful boot, because the problem will return. The next ‘fix’ was actually given to me by a Compaq technician several years ago. I had a drive that would not spin and he told me to put the drive in a plastic bag in the freezer overnight and then install back in the computer. Believe it or not, the drive booted. I have only tried this the one time.
8. In the past, when a drive has failed after it has been running for a short period, I have removed it from the machine and placed it in a freezer for a couple of hours, then hooked it up again. It sometimes will run long enough to remove the data to another safe storage medium.
9. One of the methods I have used before (sometimes even successfully) is to actually remove the drive from the PC, place it in the freezer for a day, then quickly put it back in the machine and try to access it. Why does this work? Who knows, but I heard about this tactic years ago, and it has saved my behind on a couple of occasions. (Of course, if it comes back up, back up the data immediately…. Guess that should go without saying.)
10. Hard drive revival: A technique I have learned is if you bring the temperature of the hard drive down to the freezing point by putting it in a freezer first and then taking it back out, somehow the condensation from bringing it back to room temperature helps revive it for about 20 minutes. It can be repeated about 5-6 times tops. Long enough to get out any important files that need to be backed up. It has been proven to work a number of times.
Using an External Hard Drive to Keep your Data Safe
Nov 26th
If you want to keep your data completely safe, you should look into types of data backup that do not require constant power supplies. While discs such as CDs and DVDs are a good way to make a smaller, permanent backup, external hard drives are another great way to back up your data safely. Just make sure that the drives do not stay connected to your computer and on – otherwise they’ll be as at risk as your normal internal drives. You don’t want your backup to be damaged in the same disaster that takes out your computer!
External hard drives are not actually new technology. In fact, these drives work in much the same way as a normal hard drive. Before external drives were affordable, there are some computer users who made external drives by setting internal drives into an outer casing. These worked fairly well, but they did not stand up to being moved around as much.
Over the last several years, external drives have become affordable, small, and easy to use. There are even some compact USB hard drives that can fit in a pocket. These drives are also much faster than they used to be, something that is being helped by the switch from serial and parallel connections to USB and firewire.
How much data can an external hard drive store? Most external hard drives are about the same size as a normal hard disk inside of your computer. In fact, one of the smallest capacities is just 60GB . However, there are many other disk sizes available at this point in time. Recently, external hard drives with as much as 1000GB of space have begun to appear on the market. It won’t be long before we move into true Terabyte territory. These huge storage capacities are the main reason why external hard drives are rapidly becoming the most popular form of computer backup for the normal computer user.
If you do not want to pick and choose through the files on your computer to determine which ones you want to save, don’t worry! Most of the hard drives will come with a CD that has drivers and some basic backup software on it. In most cases all you have to do is install the software, plug in the drive, and click “backup” and the software takes care of protecing your email, My Documents folder and all the most commonly backed up items.
Once again, if you are using an external hard disk for computer backup, do not leave the external drive connected to your computer. Additionally, you should also have more than one backup of your important information. You can do this by using an online backup service, or by burning your most important files to a DVD or five.
The best hard drives out there are going to be the ones built by major name brands. Maxtor, Iomega and Western Digital drives are known to be high quality and will last a long time. Purchasing a cheap, no-name external hard drive will save you money up front, but it is very likely that you will end up regretting it when it breaks down and you find out that your warranty is worthless.
Wanna know what the best external hard drives are? Why not visit BackupAdvice dot com for more information on external hard drives and computer backups.
Backup Hard Disks With Bad Sectors
Nov 25th
What are bad sectors
Heard of bad sectors? Or course you have. It’s commonly referenced as one of the causes of computer slowdown, or hard disk crash.
And rightfully so. A bad sector is a permanent damage to the hard disk platter, which by the way, is where your data is stored. If any data is written to the bad sector, that piece of data cannot be accessed anymore.
Causes of bad sectors
Since bad sectors are a physical anomaly of the hard drive, the causes are also of physical nature.
Hard drives, by default, have bad sectors already fresh out of the box. Although hard disk manufacturers can eliminate the bad sectors totally, the procedures and the resources consumed will make it impossible to market hard disks at its current low price.
Physical shocks to the computer (dropping of laptop, kicking, etc.) can affect the hard disk. When this happens, there is a possibility that damages to the platter of the hard disk can occur, which causes bad sectors to form. This kind of damage can literally cause a head crash when the hard drive is in operation.
Heat, resulting from extensive use, bad ventilation or poor housekeeping of your computer system, can also cause bad sectors to occur. This is due to the fact that hard disks work on the principles of magnetism.
Or, the bad sectors could simply form over time, as hard disks lose their magnetic properties. This is a “natural” degradation of the hard disk and users should be aware of this, and replace their hard disks once it has been in use over a period of time.
Superparamagnetic limit
Over time, manufacturers will try to fit as much data on one platter as they can, increasing the data density on the hard disk platter.
The superparamagnetic limit in hard drives is a limit set on the storage density of hard disks due to the particle size of the magnetic elements on the platters. With the increasing density of data on the platter, the tolerance for failure is decreased.
Looking out for bad sectors
Even though bad sectors are a physical anomaly in hard disk, this does not mean that you can actually physically see it. Instead, there are a few applications (or sometimes, signs) that can enable you to detect bad sectors.
There is a system on most computers, called the Self Monitoring Analysis and Reporting Technology (or S.M.A.R.T.) is a technology that enables a computer system to predict the future failure of storage device, in theory anyways.
This feature is supported in Windows version 95 onwards, and can be accessed through BIOS, as by default, it is disabled.
One other option is to use Window’s resident checking application, chkdsk. This application can do both quick and full surface scans.
Of course there are other good external applications such as ADRC’s very own hard disk checker. It is free, and requires no installation.
Also, some hard disk manufacturers have their own hard disk utility programs, where their application will scan the hard disk for any problems. The companies that have these applications are Maxtor, Seagate and Western Digital.
Backing up drives with bad sectors
Bad sectors can cause your computer to be almost unusable, crashing left and right and preventing you from accessing and backing up your data.
If there is any critical data on the hard drive, you need to quickly transfer the data onto another hard disk (or any other media) before the disk crashes (GASP) on you, taking your data along with it. However, you need to check if you suffer only from bad sectors and not physical failures (signs which include clicking, grinding, scraping sounds).
Get an external drive to backup the data to. However you need to get a hard drive which is at least the same capacity as the old drive. I recommend however that you get a drive of a bigger capacity just in case.
Step 1
First you need to install the hard disk as a secondary drive. Remove it from your computer and install it into another computer. If you are using and IDE drive, you need to set the drive as a secondary drive. If you are using a SATA drive, adjust in BIOS accordingly.
Method 1: Copy Files
As there we are copying from a hard disk with bad sectors, normal copy and paste will not do since if the data is being copied from a bad sector, the copy process will get interrupted/hang/freeze and fail. Again, we are going to use another freeware from ADRC.
Download, unzip and run the application.
Under the tools menu, select “copy files”. Select the source location (the disk with bad sectors) and the target location (the backup disk) and press “start copy”.
Why are do we need the software though? What’s the difference? Isn’t it the same as copying like in click-and-drag?
No. For one, the software has and inbuilt function where even if parts of a file is corrupted due to bad sectors, it will search the neighbouring sectors to determine the extent of the bad sector blocks, and automatically calculate how many retries are needed and reduce the number of retries over the bad sector blocks.
Once it does, it will then recovery every readable bits of a file and put them together to salvage your data, thus at the very least some parts of the file is recovered. This is still much better than having everything gone.
The application also has an option, “Copy Sub Folders” where it scans through the entire directory and tries to copy everything you need.
“Copy files” is works well when you want to only copy certain files and folders and not the whole drive. If you want to copy the whole disk, you need to utilise another function, “raw copy”.
Method 2: Ghosting
If you want to copy the whole disk to a new one and do not want to reinstall the operating system.
Still using the same ADRC data recovery tools, select “raw copy” under tools. Then simply select the source disk (the disk you want to backup) and the target disk (the disk you want to backup to)
Then simply click transfer and wait for the operation to finish.
Results!
If you are lucky, you will have recovered backed up almost everything in the drive. However, if you wait too long to backup the data on a badly infected (with bad sectors) disk, some data may get corrupted and inaccessible.
About the Author:
Suhaimi Baruddin is currently employed as a writer, designer,researcher and data recovery engineer at Adroit Data Recovery Centre’s laboratory, which is located in Singapore’s Science Hub. With the necessary tools, parts and experience, ADRC strives to spread the word about data recovery, and help people recover data which means so much to them. – Adroit Data Recovery Centre Pte Ltd
External Hard Drives – a Modern Day Necessity
Nov 25th
BACKUP STORAGE DEVICES
You can backup your files on cdroms and have the files compressed to save both space and backup time. WinXP will compress folders, subfolders, and files during backup.
You can purchase compression software that will do the same, saving you cdrom storage space. The compressed files are automatically uncompressed once they are restored onto your hard drive.
You can also use a second hard drive as your backup storage device. We use two backup hard drives to be certain Ultimate PC Repair is up and running 24/7.
You can either purchase an internal hard drive and install it to your ide cable, or you may want to purchase an external hard drive that connects to your Universal Serial Bus or USB Port.
The advantage of the external drives is that they have very large amounts of storage space, transfer data fast, and can be moved from your computer to any other computer.
We use the Western Digital 170 Gigabyte External Hard Drive and we simply bounce it around to either one of our four computers with the greatest of ease.
USING ONLINE BACKUP SERVICES
You may also consider online services for backing up your data. If you lose all your backup data, say due to a natural disaster such as a flood, your online data is right there waiting for you.
Another advantage of online backups is that you can access, upload, or download your data from any location. It is best to use high speed internet access if you’re considering online data storage.
One such online backup service is Istorage located at http://www.iomega.com/istorage and charges from $2.49 a month for 50MBs to $17.95 a month for a big 1,000MBs of storage.
Or you can check out FilesAnywhere located at the url http://www.filesanywhere.com
Still another online service to try is CapSure located at http://www.capsure.com
Backup your system now in one way or another if you have not done so. If you have critical data that you simply cannot do without, take the time to invest in a backup device or one of the many online backup services.
Stop and perform those backups as soon as possible. You will be thankful you did should something go wrong with your computer. It’s always better to be safe than sorry.
David is the {{{owner|developer}}} of Long Island Computer Repair, which is located on Long Island. We are Long Island’s premiere source for affordable Computer and Internet Marketing Services: http://www.StellarComputerSolutions.com .
Which is the best quality hard drive?
Nov 24th
Some of the best hard drives have a certain interface. The qualified ones that have been tested to have a good interface are SATA, IDE and PATA. Some of the reputable manufacturers that produce these kinds of hard disk drives are Western Digital and IBM/Hitachi Deskstar and Seagate. Hard drives from these manufacturers are quite good and I would recommend that if you have to purchase a hard drive, you can purchase from one of these places.
But is there any hard drive that is of high quality and will last forever? The answer is no! All hard drives, whether of great quality or poor quality, one day will fail. So whatever hard drive you buy, just know that one day it will fail. It has been found out that in every 15 seconds, a hard drive crashes. This is no exception for the best quality hard drives. So then, what do you have to do?
It is always important to backup your data regularly. This is very important because if we go by the statistics stated earlier that hard drives crash in every 15 seconds, yours could be following suite soon. As you work on your information and data, save it as regularly as possible. Put it on the company server, save it on external storage devices (external hard disks, DVDs, CDs, flash disks). These days, there are websites that offer online backup services. So do the necessary.
But what if the hard drive has already crashed and you didn’t have a backup system. You can use data recovery services. The data recovery expert will request for your hard disk and after a proper diagnosis, will give you a report on the data that can be recovered. It is important to note that not all the data can be recovered. It all depends on the amount of hard disk damage. More information about quality hard drives follow the link
The author is a data recovery specialist. Get more information on data recovery services here
IDE Hard Drives Explained
Nov 22nd
Integrated Drive Electronics (IDE) interface in actual practice refers to ATA or AT Attachment. Any drive with a built-in controller is also called an IDE. Many IDE Hard Drives are plugged into a bus connector on the motherboard. These drives are easy to install and require the smallest number of cables because the controller is on the drive itself. No doubt ATA refers to its drive, but IDE on the other hand refers to the type of interface connector i.e. 40 pin in this case. ATA Packet interface or ATAPI is an extension of IDE which permit various devices like CD ROMs to work by using the IDE norms. Through this packet interface such devices are connected directly to an IDE port, but a device driver is needed to make full use of the device, meanwhile a hard drive is originally supported by IDE without the assistance of any drivers.
IDE Hard Drives can be found with most compatible computers, each computer is equipped with a maximum of four IDE devices. If you intend to buy IDE/ATAPI/ATA hard disk drive ensures there is available space for the drive to be connected. IDE hard drives are being used during the early Compaq 386 systems by way of WD controllers. During 1980s the ATA IDE was made as an ANSI standard, so a common design was created, but various areas were left open for different manufacturers for their own commands. Later two drives in the same system were considered as a hard nut to crack.
Because each drive has its own controller and both drives usually operate over the same bus. With the introduction of ATA, two drives were able to operate in a chain, thus, primary drive became the master and the secondary drive became the slave. IDE hard drives can be differentiated by a master or a slave with a jumper on the drive itself. While purchasing a second IDE Hard Drive you should stick with the same manufacturer to avoid unavoidable problems because of the compatibility issues involved. For example if you use Maxtor hard drive, choose a second hard drive from the same manufacturer. Sometimes, it could happen if you choose a different manufacturer’s IDE hard drive; it will not work on the same cable but will require a separate cables.
Apart from its interface, it is important to look for the transfer rate of the IDE hard drive. Long transfer rates means slower speeds of your computer while transferring larger files. While buying the IDE hard drive look for specifications like Rotations per Minute (RPM) i.e. 5,400 or 7,200 RPM. 7,200 RPM is ideal today.
Because of its older interface IDE hard drives generally carry a higher price tag like that of Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 1TB, this drive supports incredible space on a IDE interface. There are various manufacturers involved in making IDE Hard Drives like to name a few, Seagate, Hitachi, Western Digital, Toshiba and Iogear, they come in varying sizes ranging from 250GB to a whopping 2TB.
Sophie Milch currently manages purchasing and inventory control for Comnauts.com. Sophie keeps herself busy by making sure our inventory is filled with quality products, the latest and the greatest. Sophie holds a B.Sc. in Mathematics from the University of Waterloo and is frequent contributor to several technology blogs and magazines. When she?s not working; in typical nerd fashion you can catch Sophie twittering friends, beating down Murlocs in World of Warcraft and watching re-runs of the X-files.
Important tips of External Hard Drive
Nov 22nd
If you’ve never bought an external hard disk before then there’s a few pointers here that may help to have on your shopping list before you go and make that final purchase.
1. Buy A Brand
Do yourself a huge favor and buy a brand name that you easily recognize. Sure these may cost a little more than brand x but with computer accessories like this you really do get what you pay for. If a Maxtor 100GB external drive costs $200 and another brand x 100GB drive costs $80 why do you think that is? Because the company likes you? Because they like making smaller profits? No it’s because it’s a cheaper drive made with inferior parts that’s going to break a lot sooner than you might expect.
The other aspect of sticking with a brand is your warranty. For example Maxtor, Western Digital and Iomega are all reliable companies and well known for their external hard disks. If something goes wrong with your drive you can have it fixed. With brand x you’ll probably not even be able to find an email address that you can contact the parent company on. Is saving a few dollars worth that risk?
2. Connectivity
When it comes to external hard drives you’ll need to choose carefully when selecting your connection types. Your external hard drive will support either USB or Firewire. Firewire is the fastest option available at the moment but your computer may not support this. The vast majority of modern computers will, however, feature a USB port.
The next question now is what type of USB port do you have – USB 1.0 or 2.0? If your computer only has a USB 1.0 port then your external hard drive is going to transfer data VERY slowly. USB 2.0 is the minimum you should consider as connection options for both your computer and your external hard drive. If you don’t have a USB 2.0 port (also cal
3. Google It
Whatever brand or model you decide on make sure you do some research before purchasing. Always, always Google the exact brand and model of the drive you’re considering buying. Look for reviews and especially any feedback on how reliable a drive is. You’ll be very surprised to find that some companies have particularly bad reputations in terms of equipment reliability and what’s known as the “click of death” in the external hard drive industry.
Spend time in Google checking out your prospective purchase. You’ll be glad that you did.
led HiSpeed USB) on your computer you may need to get a USB 2.0 card fitted.
4. Speed
Now of course we need to talk about speed. The faster your hard drive operates the faster data will get transferred to your computer and vice versa. Without boggling you with comptuer jargon there’s a couple of technical things you need to include on your shopping list.
Seek time – this needs to be 10ms (milliseconds) or less
Buffer size – more is better. Get a drive with at least a 4MB buffer.
RPM – higher is better. 5400rpm as a minimum. 7200rpm being preferred.
Stick to the above basic pointers and you’ll do just fine.
5. Size
This is the simple part of the whole “buying an external hard drive” equation. Buy as much as you can afford. If you can afford 100GB then get it. However if you can afford 200GB then get it. Then again if you scraped together a few dollars more you could afford 300GB then do it.
This isn’t a sales pitch. Far from it. There is simply no such thing as having too much data storage space. The 160GB drive that I have here was filled up in a little under a month. Currently a terabye option sounds good for my future needs.
Always add 50% to your data storage requirements. Honestly. You’ll thanks yourself within the first 90 days of buying your external drive.
Hopefully now you’ll be better prepared for purchasing your new external hard drive. It’s one of the best purchases you’ll ever make.
So you’ve finally decided to buy an external hard drive as a backup option for your computer. This is a great choice for you because you’re making backing up your data faster and easier than you could ever have imagined. You’re also making your data far more portable in larger quantities than before.
You’ll no longer be limited to storing a few hundred megabytes or even several gigabytes. Nope. Now you can look forward to portable and reliable storage capacities ranging into terabytes. That frustrating desktop computer or network file server backup job just got a whole lot easier.
About the Author:-
Did you find this article useful? For more useful tips and hints, points to ponder and keep in mind, techniques, and insights pertaining to computer Virus, do please browse for more information at our websites.