Seriously, though, I considered raid, but (a) it's a pain to set up with a system running 2 OSs (Linux and Windows), and (b) I decided I wanted my backup drive spinning as little as possible.

Plus I was worried about the messing up the intial poliarity spin.

 

http://www.tech-report.com/reviews/2...d/index.x?pg=2

 

Yeah, I have horror stories about hardware raid cards. We lost some amazing amounts of data.
3ware . . . eek.

Edit: I should probably add the two details that may have killed us. The first was multiple users accessing the same files at the same time. The second was trying to get the fastest possible access times. The combination of the two ended with a lot of corrupt files.

 

anyhow, i installed xp on a new HD and now i want to install the old HD as the slave and pull the files off of it.

my question is this: if it was a virus that killed my isht, won't i be risking having my isht killed again on the new HD? i installed norton and DLed all the new definitions and stuff, so that might help. any suggestions?

oh and btw, i checked my polarity and it was fine.

 

kinda funny how tom's hardware article says how to do RAID without additional hardware...

i thought raid MEAN getting additional hardware... LOL.....

after all, you can cant raid with a single drive...

 

Dude! lol!

I ran raid 0 (MSI MOBO raid) on a win 2k maching at work...both of the gosh darned drives caught on fire! Literally!...freaked me out, and I had to trash 2 perfectley good drives...I thought that I was going to burn down the freaking building...smoke and stink...

Not to mention that it took hours to format in a raid 0 configuration.

Andy

 

I'm thinking it's more likely it's a HD problem. I think with the antivirus stuff you should be safe. Install the second drive, copy your files to the first, and then scan them all. Once you're done with all that, run a scandisk with surface scan on the old drive. That could take hours. And if that drive is in the process of dying, it's probably the last thing you'll ever do to it. If it does pass scandisk, run a virus scan on that whole disk.

And let us know what happens!

Oh, and remember to run MSDiskDepolarizer at least once a week!

 

Also, once you get up and running again.....it seems as though quite a few ppl have had problems running a RAID setup....so, a pretty reliable back up plan would be to run a Mirrored drive setup.....its not super efficient....but its pretty reliable. That way if one drive fails, the other takes over and its a seamless transition, with no data loss.



Good luck!



-Ted


oh yea, also make sure that your pattern generator is aligned properly with the flux capacitor, so you are sure not to have a ion reaction in the Anti reflective coating on the surface of the drive.

 

dude, i had it jet hot coated before i even used it. pshhh.

so the HD that's fubared is a maxtor (yeah yeah, maxtors suck, it'll be my last) so i downloaded maxtor's powermax diagnostic software, and after running the quick test, it seems like everything's fine. i'm running the advanced test as we speak, and i'll let you guys know how that turns out.

i've also been trying to copy the files off the old disk onto the new one, and it's been going okay, but every now and then i get an error saying that it can't transfer a file due to an I/O device error. i've got most of the important stuff, but do you guys know of a good way to get all my email addys off my old outlook express and onto my new one?

apparently XP Pro doesn't come with scandisk, so i just had the defragmenter "analyze" the drive and it came out fine. perhaps i need to download scandisk from somewhere. a link would be hot.

also, when i have norton AV scan the old drive, it always hangs. i know there're no viruses on the new drive, but since it hangs while searching the new drive, i can't tell. when i try to download service pack 1 for XP, it also hangs. perhaps i should try disconnecting the old drive before i do that and see if it still hangs.

thanks for sticking with me on this one, guys. the help really is very much appreciated. i will definitely look into running the mirrored drive setup because this fun little process is in the finishing stages of killing my entire weekend (which consists of monday and tuesday since i work retail.)

oh and thanks dahveed, you RAWK!!

 

me?

my parents are gone for three weeks, but i don't think they're gonna find me on the east coast.

speaking of which, can you guys say i-club kegger at my house?

 

so after running the advanced test, it says i have an error, asks me if i want to try to fix it, i say yes, it IMMEDIATELY says we fixed your isht. we'll see what happens...

 

This is what you want to do...

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/tre...ocs/chkdsk.asp

You're welcome, anytime!

 

It really sounds like your disk is going bad, with all the i/o errors and hanging.

Before you run too many tests, FIRST worry about getting all the files you value! If the disk is going bad, every time you access it could be doing more damage.

I've had bad disks before (Western Digital) where the diagnostic software they sent said the disk was fine. Don't trust that stuff, remember that proving that they owe you a new disk may not be their top priority.

Do a search for scandisk.exe on your drive -- I haven't used XP but I'd be amazed if it wasn't there. If not, PM me your email address and I'll email you a copy. It's from WinMe, so I'm not sure if it will work in XP, you may need to boot with a boot disk into DOS or Win9x/Me or something . . .

 

Somehow I'm out of sync, dahveed is way ahead of me.

Yeah, what he said (chkdsk) looks like it's pretty much the same thing as scandisk.

 

gaah, i was soooo close!!! i had everything ready to go, and i had the case apart to disconnect the bad drive, but once i put it back together, it didn't do a damn thing when i hit the power button. i've checked every connection ten times and no matter what i do, it doesn't do a damn thing when i push the power button. i checked the connections from wall outlet to power supply, from power switch to motherboard, from motherboard to power supply, and everything looks good.

here's a question. is there anything that would make a power supply just flat out not start up, including bus cables routed improperly, or HD shunts installed improperly, or drives just not installed at all? i know i have this all connected properly, but i was under the impression that even if there were no drives connected and you hit the power button, the power supply should at least fire up the motherboard and the BIOS.

so unless you guys have any wonderful ideas, i think it might be easier to replace my 300mhz, 8MB vid card, 5+ year old power supply, with a new machine. i could start picking the thing apart and replacing power supplies and whatnot, but would it really be worth my time on a 5+ year old Gateway machine?