My 60 Gig hard drive made a funny noise followed by a reboot and a message stating there was damage and to back up my stuff immediately as failure is imminent (I’m paraphrasing here but the message was clear).
Went through a CHKDSK and got the same message, also has made the noise once on trying to boot up unsuccessfully but did boot on the second try.
I’m currently making CD’s and DVD’s of all my stuff I don’t want to lose in case it crashes.
So, what are my options for a hard drive? Since I’m over 40 and not a techie I must plead computer ignorance. Can I put a new, second, HD in and transfer the stuff from the old one? Is it worth the cost to save my current 6+ year old machine?
If you are pleased with your current computer then yeah, getting a new harddrive is worth it, internal drives aren’t too expensive. It should be possible, assuming you computer has a spot for it to install a second harddrive and transfer the stuff over, which is what I recommend.
Most motherboards have 2 IDE channels that can have 2 drives each. So 4 drives is easy to do. If you have a DVD drive and one HD, then you should be able to add 2 more. It is best to download a copy of your motherboard manual to be sure.
Since your drive is dying, you will want to remove it anyway, so you have room.
A 6 year old box will have a PATA plug, instead of the newer SATA. Go to this link to see options on the market now. I would suggest a 320 GB drive, they are the cheapest per GB at this time. http://www.sharkyextreme.com/guides/article.php/3680941
Don’t worry about wasting money on your old box. You can move your new drive to a different box later. I haven’t bought a new computer in 10 years. I just replace parts as needed. The only original part left is the case !
You will have to reinstall your OS. But swapping out the drive is easy. There is a power plug and a data cable plug.
One trick is to check jumpers on the back of your old drive. It may be set as master, slave, or master with slave present (if 2 drives are plugged into the same data cable). Set the jumpers for your new drive to match the old one.
I went out and bought a new hard drive, and hooked it up as my primary(master) drive.
I started my comp up and installed windows XP to the new hardrive. Once that was all set up, I opened up ‘my computer’ went to the bad drive, opened it up, and copied everything from that drive I wanted/needed onto the new.
Odd how I couldnt start up with the old drive, but was still able to access. Ive tried fixing it plenty of times sense then, but its only use now is to use it as a big memory card lol.
New hard drives are cheap now, especially for ones that are 100GB or so.
You’ll need an ATA drive rather than the newer SATA drive. Probably best to get a drive that is less than 137GB because drives larger than that require some BIOS magic that some older computers can’t handle.
As long as the old drive is still working (and continues to work) you can copy an image of the old drive to the new drive. Everything will be exactly as it was on the old drive. You won’t have to reinstall anything.
Give me a call and I can do it for ya. My rates are cheap. I work for beer.
If possible you’ll want an image of your C: drive. You should be able to install the image on a new drive in the logical C: position. You’ll need an image writing program (JC gave me DriveImage XML) to do this. Then, a load of CD’s or an additional harddrive. Harddrives are cheap. I have a big one that I keep an image of my C: drive on that I update weekly.
You need the motherboard manual, not the computer 's. Then google this. You should be able to download a free manual. Also find out if you want a new bios version. Read what the bios updates do and see if that sounds useful to you. These are free also. Hopefully you can use a 320 GB drive in your box. The smaller drives are a bad deal at cost/ per GB of 50 cents vs 25 cents for a 320. Plus you can never have to much storage. JC makes a good point that a 6 yr old box is a bit iffy on using a large drive. My guess is it’s OK but surely it’s good to check.
I like to reinstall my OS once in a while anyway, as viruses, malware, and so much crap tend to build up over time. If you have not done that in a long time, I would recommend installing your new drive and a fresh OS install. Then temporarily connect your old drive to just move over what you want.
We all work for beer here, even the kids. Since they haven’t developed a taste for it yet, it tends to get consumed by the adults in the house instead. We’re building up quite a pile of IOU’s.
I currently have Red Hook ESB and Fat Tire on hand. Let me know which HD and Beer to get and we’ll barter.
One thing to check before you go buying yourself a new disk:
If you’ve got a SATA disk, check that the data cable hasn’t come loose. Last July I was getting the same message as you’re getting now, and every few hours the disk was just stopping and it vanished from the computer’s radar.
Turns out that some twit had given the machine a hard bash with a big bit of wood and it had caused the data cable to come loose. This wouldn’t have happened on an IDE drive but those pesky little SATA plugs just don’t have any grip. 11 months later and I’ve had absolutely no trouble with it since.
You could buy a External Harddrive mine was 200 AUS for a 320GB hard drive so there not to expensive. U said ur computer is 6 years old. I think its in great need of an update anyway. It would cost more to mod it yourself then buying one new with the stuff in it. Look in auctions and the paper soz they sometimes have very good computers in there for little prices.
Hope it helps.
From Brendon.v
It’s a 160GB drive. But the BIOS only supports up to 137GB so I partitioned and formatted the drive to about 130GB. Now that XP SP2 is installed the rest of the drive space could be partitioned and used if wanted.
I’ve got SpinRite. We can give it a go on the old drive just to see what it can fix. It can take several hours to many hours though for SpinRite to scan and repair a disk. Depends on how many sectors are messed up.
The old drive is readable. It’s installed in the computer as a second drive. Don’t know how much of the data is corrupted though. Don’t know how much longer the drive will last. Hopefully it will remain good enough to get any additional files off that weren’t backed up.
