Totally and completely, by the looks of things.  My 200 gig SATA drive was making funny noises and no longer works, and they're still no closer to finding out what's overheating and reseting it.

My tech actually asked if I had a lot of data on the SATA drive... silly silly man.

Mahray
Seriously P*ssed Off

lol.i pity u. my sympathies, empathies and all that jazz.  :tongue1:

just went thru the same thing the other day with my laptop..it's really hot here..and then stupid, stupid stupid me had to try rendering an image 24x18 @ 300 dpi.. with tons of glass mats and water.

i swore i saw smoke while it burnt itself out....

do what i did..growl like a bear, rave like a lion (lioness) , and bang  heads on a tree...then go out and do some really expensive retail therapy. like buy yourself a new comp.

it's a good excuse.

got a new laptop myself.. 1.25 gigs of ram, 60 gig hard drive, 128 dedicated ati radeon graphics card, amd 64 athlon processor, 15 inch wide screen, blue tooth, wifi ready. is it good? i dunno.. but i feel happy with it. so far. can't wait till i try to burn it up again. :tongue1:

tell him that whatever he finds on that drive, it was uploaded via malicious attacks. especially the donkey part.

drac
(sory to hear though)

Bummer dude ! All that kangaroo fluff probably didn't help though.

assuming it's a desktop, check to see if your drive will work as a slave on another computer - if so you might be able to save everything by  hooking it into another computer with the same os or at least same file system as a slave drive. If that works it probably indicates the drive is ok and some critical software got corrupted such that the os needs reinstalling (there was that virus last week that was corrupting program files directory and windows directory exes)

Anyrate sorry to hear of your problem  . good luck with your repais,
-TJ.   

BM - They tried that, and that's when it didn't work.  When I get it back, I've got some low-level recovery software that might work.  If not, I backed up my more important stuff recently, but still... :(

BM - They tried that, and that's when it didn't work.  When I get it back, I've got some low-level recovery software that might work.  If not, I backed up my more important stuff recently, but still... :(

anyrate hold onto the drive in an antistaic bag - you might run across an affordable  forensic solution eventually. From what I understand that sort of stuff isn't cheap but it is possible. Maybe someday the price will be affordable.  

Mahray my hdd was making like a ticking noise everytime i moved the curser or did anything on the computer.

I had the power supply replaced and i have just fired the computer back up after getting it home. There is no more noise and i don't have the rebooting situation anymore by the looks of things, first thing i did was open D|S and load a model i knew gave me trouble before with the rebooting. everything went fine.

get the power supply changed or checked to see if thats where your porblem lays. 

That was the first thing they were checking (although my cabling is a serious mess...)

If they tried the drive on another computer and it still didn't work it was probably the drive itself - unless it needed special instalation procedures such as software installation  to run... windows setup shoulda caught that and set up any necessary drivers  though ???.

Glad you got yours running CrazyDawg. Did they say what went wrong with the power supply or just remove and replace it?

-TJ

@bikermouse, it was a voltage regulator that was on its last legs. The tech that replaced the power supply said if i had used the computer for any longer it could have fried the motherboard along with other things as the voltage would have been way to high.

He called it another name but said its like a voltage regulator..so i'm staying with that as i have forgot what he called it lol

@Mahray, sorry to hear your computer is now borked, in some way i feel responsible for it by informing you of my problems...not really just wanted you to smile :tongue2:

Thanks!  Usually I don't play inside the power box but I have replaced  a power supply fan to keep a computer running a little longer  - perhaps I saved the transformer, voltage regulator etc from overheating that way. My sense of smell and hearing are good enough so that when a computer starts sounding or smelling funny I can take a look at it right away.. 

SATA is a fairly new technology  isn't it -  should it be going out this soon?

No, the SATA drive should be fine, had it a bit over a year.  My IDE drive that I've had working full time for the last 6 or 7 years is still working perfectly.  As I said - "Not Happy Jan!"

Quote - tell him that whatever he finds on that drive, it was uploaded via malicious attacks. especially the donkey part.

drac
(sory to hear though)

omg it was u!! i already wondered where the donkey part came from!

Now if drac's statement don't insipre a render, nuttin' will!

A year? You might check for warrantee info. I'd be upset too - forensically so ... iknow iknow .. they protect themselves past purchase price ... but you might be able to get a replacement or some compensation.

SATA drive needs a driver to function with Windows. the idjits in Microsoft in their wisdom decided it can be loaded only on a floppy when you install Windows. You know, when at the beginning of the installation you have to press F6 to install RAID drivers and such. That's when you install the drivers, which should have come with your motherboard. I did that with my new computer a short while ago. So, did their computer not recognize the drive, said it was unformated, or no sign at all? If the disk is said to be unformatted, install Restorer Pro 2000 on your old drive and tell it to recover everything. When my old comp's drive went kaput at the beggining of the year, that's what I did. But I had a new, bigger drive to restore to. If the disk's electronics is fried, but the disk is spinning, you are somewhat lucky, cause you (or a repair shop) can take the electronics from another such disk and restore your data. If the disk is not spinning at all, it's the motor and you can basically sit down and cry, cause restoration from such a drive is a long, tedious and quite expensive task. Apropos the overheating, a friend installed a new processor cooler and a new PSU in my old comp just today, cause the old ones were making funny noises and Intel Active Monitor was sending up pop-ups every little while, saying that the processor temperature passed the allowed range. Now everything is quiet and nice.

I knewed it ! I felt it in my bones!  Drivers!

 man that's the lamest of the lame! Ever since I got me an XP computer I thought  BGates finally got it right ! I shouda knowed better me. If we all sued that guy for our lost time trying to fix problems that should have been fixed before his software left the factory why he'd be lucky to be able.to afford macaroni and cheese for dinner. Why just paying his lawyers to fend off the suits would leave him driving miss daisy! ....

Sata drives are plenty of fun, especially when the motherboard comes with the wrong (or outdated) support disk. Eventually I did get what I needed from the manufacturer website...

Hopefully you'll be able to get something off the drive Mahray.  If not, wrap it up and bury it and give the archaeologists in the year 5726 to ponder over.

To paraphrase a pilot's aphorism.. "There are 2 kinds of users; those who have lost everything on their hard drive, and those who are going to". Sorry to hear about that. Hard drives can be recovered from almost any sort of damage (the deciding factor is how much you want to spend). Our company used to use a place called 'Ontrack', out of Oregon (somewhere..Beaverton, maybe?..;), but the cost (then, late 90's) was $1k/Gig, maybe it's come down some.

Don't quote me, but usually the Power Supply is a unit. I haven't worked inside a Power supply in about 15 years (last time I did the 60-Cycle Polka..;), most of it involves transformers and rectifiers. Good thing it got replaced when it did.

The thing about these 'monster' drives (hey, my first homebuilt had 2 30-meg drives, and I thought I was on the top of the world..and Reagan was president..;) is that no matter how much you think you've backed up, there's always something that gets forgotten in the download directories.

good luck

I just set up an AMD dual core system with a SATA drive and didn't touch a floppy disk.  Simple install the drive, boot the new winXP x64 CD, format, and install the OS.

WinXP
winks
Winesap
wonks
wanks
Edit...
Ignore all
Add to dictionary

BORK BORK BORK!

Sorry to hear about your Drive. Put your case in a tub full of mineral oil (I am not kidding) that will stop that heat issue lol.

Do you have an AMD or Intel 

I am looking at a new Dell Dude!

LOL

I would build my own like the last two but I don't have the time nor the money and can get a Dell cheap with a flat screen.

mineral oil? now that's a new one..I remember we used to have to use 'non-conductive lubricant' on some printers. Well, ya learn something every day.

http://www.anandtech.com/printarticle.aspx?i=2373

Yeah some buddies and I did something similar to the fish tank with plexiglass when I was an overclocker. Wasted to much money an had to cut back. Frying CPU's can get spendy!

Guess it depends on the value of what's on it, & what'll cost to send it out for recovery (ghosted).

Good luck
I just got my DSY'r back to a decent state.

I have documents, photos, and bryce fiels backed up.  Everything else should be replacable (with a bit of effort).

Mahray

PS Sorry for the late reply, took the weekend off to camp and fish.

I feel for you, I just lost 67 gigs of bryce saved files on an external drive that is a kicks it across the room piece of crap.

Sometimes the power plug to the drive will quit delivering power (open) I had one go out yesterday on an older computer - at first I thought it was the drive itself until I noticed that the drive would operate when I moved the power wiring - I simply switched the power source to a free plug and it works fine now.. It gave me the chance to put in an aditional cooling fan and change the ethernet card from a Linksys to a D-link, take out the modem which I never use.  

Problems are all solved with a new power supply.  Greater wattage, more power cables, dedicated SATA power etc... plus my harddrive is working in my rig.

Thanks for everyone's help :)

Quote - Problems are all solved with a new power supply.  Greater wattage, more power cables, dedicated SATA power etc... plus my harddrive is working in my rig.

Thanks for everyone's help :)

Told ya it was the power supply :tongue2: