Cav's Place

Last night I tried burning two boot CDs on my parents’ computer and then meant to test them here, which made me need to take the computer out of the desk again since I had forgotten to connect the DVD back last time. I didn’t do that last night, but did it this morning, and since I took it out I also switched the hard drives to be able to connect the failed one as slave. Then I tried booting off the CDs and it wouldn’t work, so I guess I didn’t manage to burn them properly…
Since the software solutions seemed exhausted for the moment I thought I might as well try just running it normally one more time like this, with the failed drive as slave. I didn’t try this before because I thought it was the solution that was least likely to work, so I didn’t want to risk damaging it further by trying it, but now…
It was still locking the computer, but after a few reboots I decided to just wait and see how long it will stay frozen like that, since it sounded like it was working on something. A few minutes later it finally displayed a message, saying that it needs to check drive F: (which was what the system partition of the failed drive ended up being). I didn’t let it do that and it seemed to freeze again, but a few more minutes later it finally logged on to Windows and a few minutes after that I could access My Computer and see all the partitions of the failed drive except the system one still intact!
There was some more panic after that because the partitions seemed to keep vanishing. I’d access one and when I’d go back to My Computer I’d see one of the others gone, or I could see it there at first but it’d get crossed out for a moment when I’d try to access it and then vanish. Seemed to be just random, so I opened separate windows for them so I won’t need to keep going back and forth and have to wait for the one I need to show up again… Of course I then quickly saved what I needed most, except the few files I had on my desktop, since I can’t access that, and now I’m trying to see what else I can save.
Actually I could technically save everything, but I don’t have anywhere to put it… I’m trying to see if dad will let me take the hard drive off his computer for a while and stuff it with things from here until I’ll get the failed drive replaced, and then take it again to put them back of course. Still, these two drives have some 40 Gb of free space in between them, making me still need to pick very carefully… Either way, I’m absolutely thrilled I could save what I needed most and do it so easily too!
The computer seems to be running more slowly with the failed drive connected, and about once every minute or two it sounds weird and locks up everything for a few seconds regardless of whether I’m accessing it or not, plus that I’m hearing some sort of hum or vibration, but I could get those things back!!!
The system partition from the failed drive is completely gone, can’t access it at all and it clicks if I try, doesn’t know it’s label, won’t even tell me what size it is, basically it just sees that there’s some space that’s not within any of the other three partitions and assumes there’s a fourth, but that’s as far as it goes with it. If it’ll still be working by the time I finish saving everything else I can fit anywhere, since I’m thinking it’s better to get everything else first as it could probably cause further problems if it’s physically damaged and I try accessing that area too much, I’ll try running some diagnostics on it and see if I can recover what I had on my desktop too… Then, either way that goes, I think I’ll wipe all the other three partitions, just to be on the safe side, and send it to the shop it was bought from to be replaced.
Bottom line, I’m just dancing around here! Silly me for not doing this sooner!