Life sucks once again, or: how a HD totally messed up Odin's evening/night

[odin]

Well,

That was fun.

I received Simon the Sorcerer talkie and Microcosm from BouncingAyatollah today. Eagerly I mounted CD0: to have a look on the CD's, and then my Amiga completely froze. After a reset my 4.3gig Quantum Bigfoot wasn't recognised anymore. I thought 'Oh dear, f00ked RDB'. Three hours messing around with OS3.5's and OS3.0's HDToolbox, swapping master/slave jumpers around/trying different HD and CD-ROM combinations I connected the culprit to my PC. I had found a tool on Maxtor's homepage (who own the Quantum name nowadays) which promised indepth scans and tests for HD's.

After booting the Maxtor floppy I let it scan for HD's but it didn't find the HD :-/.

In other words, it's completely dead. As a dodo.

AND OFCOURSE I DON'T HAVE BACKUPS. Grrrrr, byebye keyfiles, emails, stable 3.5 install.

:-x

/me hits himself with a large hammer. After 5 long hours and misery I am now back to a very basic 3.0 install on a very shoddy 1gig Quantum Bigfoot.:cry:

Anyone wanna buy this piece-o-shit miggy? :pissed:

[iamaboringperson]

After booting the Maxtor floppy I let it scan for HD's but it didn't find the HD :-/.

In other words, it's completely dead. As a dodo.

AND OFCOURSE I DON'T HAVE BACKUPS. Grrrrr, byebye keyfiles, emails, stable 3.5 install.

:lol:

[odin]

Yes I know.....and what's worse...I knew the HD was becoming dodgy. It all started with Shapeshifter/MacOS wrapping round the 4gig mark and eating the RDB a few years ago. The HD hasn't been completely healthy eversince.

A wise man once said: BACKUP. I know for sure that wise man wasn't me :crazy:.

[iamaboringperson]

.I knew the HD was becoming dodgy

The HD hasn't been completely healthy eversince.

That's the time to get a new one. ;-)

[adz]

The disk itself may still be ok, it could simply be the controller card on the hdd. If you have another identical working drive, you could swap the two controllers around. Just a thought.

[odin]

Hmm...unfortunately I don't. Just a 1.3 gig variant with different revision/firmware.

[adz]

odin wrote:
Hmm...unfortunately I don't. Just a 1.3 gig variant with different revision/firmware.

Never know, it may work, if you don't really care about either drive have a crack. Or if you don't wanna risk it, keep an eye out for an identical one, even if it has bad sectors.

[odin]

Unfortunately the 1.3 gig's PCB didn't fit, screw placement is a bit different and there's a chunk of metal in the way. I'm now scavenging EBay for a 4.3gig one.

[Vincent]

I'm having a problem with my 20Gb HD at the mo, but this one is mostly salvagable :-D  Except for the partition that has my docs on it :-x, luckily though I have n old 2.4Gb hd that has a backup on it from last year :-D.

The really annoying thing is that I've got (well, had) over half the disk full of games and progs....

Time to re-install all over again :-(

[mikeymike]

After Red Hat Linux nuked my partition structure four years ago, and another HD disaster with an IBM DeathStar drive two years later, my current PC's most important data is backed up to CD, my server and my laptop :-)

[Vincent]

mikeymike wrote:
After Red Hat Linux nuked my partition structure four years ago, and another HD disaster with an IBM DeathStar drive two years later, my current PC's most important data is backed up to CD, my server and my laptop :-)

Mr Backup Man :-D

But, you never can be too careful :-)

[mikeymike]

I lost all my college work on disk last time (sentimental value really though), I have very little of it left on paper.

All my business stuff is on the computer, as well as all the usual stuff.  I'd be gutted if I lost it.

I need some of it on my laptop all the time anyway, so it has a functional use rather than just backup there.  On my server it has been handy as I can download a document remotely.

[PMC]

Odin,

Sorry to hear about your hard drive problems dude.

If it's any help, some drives seem to be prone to corrupting the RDB at the slightest excuse.  The most robust HDD I ever had was a 420Mb Western Digital that never let me down once.

I fitted a bigger drive (beyond 4.3 Gig) and sure enough the inevitable happened.  Booting up the Amiga would result in a Guru every time until I removed the drive or disabled it in the early startup menu. Didn't matter what filesystem I used either :pissed:

I'll ask a very stupid question....  Did you run a quick format or did you run a full format on the drive when you originally installed it?  The stability of the filesystem seems to be much better if you run a full format.

Don't shoot the miggy just yet!

[odin]

Full format I think. I always do a full format when doing a clean install on something.

[PMC]

odin wrote:
Full format I think. I always do a full format when doing a clean install on something.

Wise move.  I ended up fitting a 4.3 Gig boot drive and a 15 Gig drive split between two partitions.  

The end result was that I could back up each partition onto two others, as my total file useage never exceeded 25% (boot partition 10%) so I could afford to be generous with storage.

However, backing the lot up took bloody ages...  :roll: