Computer_Nerd

For those who are not familiar, I have a licensed consulting biz called DevelopYour.COM. Server farm is up and running. Have recently purchased some pretty expensive software to recover hard drives from crashes, formatting several times over, etc.

If anyone needs confidential help recovering their photos, finanical records, or whatever from a crashed hard drive, I'll be happy to help at a very reduced rate.

WS6

How about drives that don't spin up?
I've got a 40 and 60gig drive that fail to spin up.
How much would you charge?

Computer_Nerd

If they don't spin up (ie: motor dead) then they have to be taken apart and put in a replacement casing, which would require a clean room. I have a beagle, my house is never clean. They may be coming online but remain quite silent. I can take a peek at them for you if you'd like. Have been able to recover data from drives during software testing that were not recognized by any operating systems (corrupted master boot record and FAT tables) and others that were formatted several times over.

Computer_Nerd

The recovery process is extremely thorough, taking approx 24 hours for a 60 gig partition. No "up-front" cost. Donations towards the cost of the software and time+effort are generously accepted.

WS6

I'll think about since it is only a bunch of MP3's. I can't recall exactly what else was on the drive though.
I was going to try the cold start method, put the drive in a freezer then try and hook it to a pc and see if it spins up. they've been in the freezer for months now.

Computer_Nerd

As I'm reading this, am restoring an 80 gig drive of MP3s.

FlimFlam

dork.

Brian T

My HD incosistently spins up. I'll get HD failures all the time, but if I turn it off and on enough times it'll spin up. Not sure why. I just leave my computer on 24x7 to avoid having to turn it on and off 20 times. I'm not sure what the deal is with that. Maybe you can explain.

Computer_Nerd

Windows 9x has known issues with several BIOS chips (motherboard brain) for "green" settings to go into power saving mode, which conflicts with the operating systems' own version. This is the cause of a computer going into power saving mode and not able to come back, the user has to power down then back up again.

Your description leads me to believe that it is the hard drive motor or the power supply itself going bad, which can happen. The reported HDD failures when running the computer will result in "file not found," lots of retries, and occaisonally the blue screen of death (when fails to read entire expected disk cache). When the motor has a bad power connection, or if the power supply is not strong enough, the hard drive will not be recognized in the power on self test (POST) before the operating system loads. Test this by disconnecting any cd-rom drives' power cables.

I'd highly recommend getting a bunch of cheap CD-Rs after rebate and burning your stuff to them as a backup. Microsoft has a built-in backup software program in the Start/Accessories program group.

My server farm runs 24/7/365 on redundant power supplies and dedicated 20 amp circuits. Have experienced shelf lives of approx 3-4 years on hard drives and about 3 years on power supplies. Look for power supplies that have good quality fans (and can be replaced), as they are the parts which wear out first. For a P3 with a cd-burner, a 350 watt should do. P4 go with at least a 400 watt. Something with a DVD burner, you should go with a 450 watt or higher. Stay away from underpowered 250 watt cheapies unless you are running P1 Linux servers with no burner.

I'll post this lengthy helpful info for all to read instead of posting as a PM. If they don't want to read it, they prob wouldn't have clicked on the very specific thread title in the first place.

Brian T

Hum, I believe I have a 250w powersupply, but I might have 300w. I haven't cracked it open in awhile. It never fails me once its on. Only once I turn it off some reason it doesn't want to get spinning without a lot of work. My whole computer is due an upgrade, so I won't worry about it at the moment.