Just a quick update, for anybody not reading the comments… I didn’t do anything about my hard drive because the answer I get from most people, actually from everybody except those on one forum (who have suggested getting and running HDD Regenerator or SpinRite), seems too risky…
They’re saying that with such symptoms the best thing to do would be to put it in an airtight bag and stick it in the freezer for several hours or a full day, then connect it immediately and, if it works, grab the most important things as fast as I can, since the method usually works for any mechanical failure but the breaking of the read head, but it usually only works as long as the drive is cold, so it will most likely lock again when it will warm up.
I heard of the solution before, I looked into it now too and what discussions I found on the topic conclude that it does indeed work for a limited time in case of any mechanical failure but the breaking of the read head. As for what “limited time” means, I saw anything between two minutes and one week, but usually it’s under one hour. Actually what I found most frequently was that people were able to recover 30-40 Gb of data off a failed drive that was frozen like this before it failed again. Since what I really need is likely little over 300 Mb and all I really want back is around 1 Gb put together, plus that I won’t even have anywhere to put more than 10-12 Gb, it seems a good idea, but… Sticking a component in the freezer and then connecting it immediately? Sounds crazy to me! I think I’ll only resort to it if nobody will convince me that a software solution could solve the problem for long enough to recover what I want to recover…
Oh yeah, since I forgot to mention in the previous post, don’t tell me about professional data recovery services, no way I could afford that and wouldn’t have people snoop through it, especially if told exactly what I need back most, even if I could…
On another note, yes, I know my recent comments plugin causes errors since I upgraded to 2.3… I don’t want to deactivate it and I’m really in no mood to look for one that’ll work now. If you send a comment and get an error saying that headers have already been sent by recentcomments.php, know that your comment has been posted. If you want to be sure you can copy it before sending it, then hit back and refresh the page. In case it somehow didn’t post you can then try pasting and sending again, but that shouldn’t be the case.
My hard drive failed last night… I had my browser open, along with Yahoo! Messenger and DC++. The traffic over DC++ was very high, some 5 Mb/s download and 7 Mb/s upload, but I was just finishing downloading in a few seconds, so I thought I’d open a file in Media Player and then close DC++ as soon as the file opens and the download ends. Plain dumb rush… And it seems that my HDD decided enough is enough, it froze and wouldn’t recover. So eventually I rebooted, only to get “A disk read error occurred. Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart.” Rebooted two more times and got the same result. I looked in BIOS and it still saw it just fine though, and the spinning and start-up sounds also seem just fine, but it sounds bad when it gives errors, a spin, click, rewind, repeat cycle…
So I put in the old 20 Gb hard drive, installed Windows on it and tried booting off that one in hopes of being able to access the 160 Gb one and save the crucial data from it, but it wouldn’t work. If the 160 Gb drive was connected, Windows would freeze at logon. I even tried the risky maneuver of connecting it with the computer running, to get past the logon moment, only to have it freeze even so and then unfreeze as soon as I disconnected it.
Then I downloaded the floppy version of SeaTools and ran it. It saw all the details of the 160 Gb drive and also said SMART status is OK. So I tried running a long test, but around LBA 3 million (out of around 320 million) it started finding bad sector after bad sector. I let it find a few dozen, then stopped it and told it to repair them. It said it did so I then ran a short test. It failed immediately, didn’t even start showing anything on the progress bar. Then I ran another short test and this one succeeded, which to me would mean that the problem is not the read head and that there are plenty of good sectors left. Then I ran the long test again only to have it find the same bad sectors all over again. Stopped it after a few, told it to repair them, then ran it again just to see if the exact same ones will be found again, and they were…
There might be just one damaged area, but it’s a critical area and the MBR is most likely destroyed. If that’s the case, the rest of the drive should still be accessible with the right programs, but I have no idea which those would be and how to get them, so any help would be most appreciated.
Today I tried one more thing, namely booting from the Windows installation CD and entering the repair console. It spent quite a long time analyzing the drive, eventually I got the expected prompt, but on a “dir” command it said there was an error. Then I tried “fixboot” and it saw that the boot drive is C: and, after another rather long pause, that the file system is NTFS, then said it had successfully written a new boot sector. So I tried booting with it again but I got the same error. I wouldn’t risk a “fixmbr” because then I’d probably really lose any chances of recovering my data.
The disk itself isn’t a problem, the warranty expires in January so I’ll just have it replaced, but the data is. The vast majority of it is replaceable, there is probably about 1 Gb of data that I couldn’t replace but even most of that isn’t that important anyway. It’d be certainly peeved about losing those things, but in the long run I could do without. But the real issue is that there are probably around 300 Mb, maybe a little more, that I absolutely need recovered. Those things are absolutely crucial!
Please don’t tell me I should have backed up things that were of such importance unless you have a time machine, what I’m asking is what to do now to recover at least that crucial data, if not all that I couldn’t replace or even everything if possible…
I ran some tests, got some results, now I don’t want to simply start trying fixes since I don’t want to damage it further. Right now I’m looking for a way to read any still readable data off a corrupted NTFS drive with a most likely destroyed MBR and almost certainly also some physical damage, and copy it to another location. Only after that will I try to recover any data that now looks lost, since the process could fail and even end up corrupting data that right now would still be readable. As I said before, any help would be most appreciated…
I think teens having sex is a matter that receives too much of the wrong kind of attention, but the results of an interesting study that says teens who have sex early are less likely to get involved in illegal activities later have been made public recently. That flatly contradicts an earlier study that claimed the exact opposite, but a third study, albeit on a slightly different topic, could piece all of that together.
When you take the same point of reference and yet get opposing results, shouldn’t it be obvious that you have the wrong point of reference and that others are the deciding factors? Especially when your chosen point of reference has been shown to have no effect in most circumstances on a related event… Are people so blinded by sex that they can’t see what lies behind the choice to have it?
We are talking about teens choosing to start their sex lives, so let’s see what reasons could be behind that decision. I’m sure I won’t list all of them here, but I think I have the major ones pretty well figured out: trying to appear more mature than they are, actually being mature, fear of losing a (potential) relationship that isn’t secure, being involved in a relationship that is secure, giving in to peer pressure, establishing their right to make decisions about their own bodies, not thinking about the potential consequences, knowing how to avoid the potential negative consequences and only be left with the positive ones, or perhaps just seeking thrills.
With the exception of the last one, you might have noticed that I paired up the potential reasons, one wrong and one right, at least according to how I see things. And when the same thing can be done for conflicting reasons you should look at the reasons behind the reasons. All those three studies agreed that relationships are more likely responsible for the variations shown and not the sexual part of them in itself, but it’s not hard to peel off one more layer and see that it basically boils down to maturity or lack of it, as the case may be.
Granted, most are not mature enough to make that decision when it’s made, but sometimes it works out even so, while at other times a decision made for all the right reasons might not work out right anyway. And that adds a new layer, namely the ability to learn from mistakes, or the ability to learn in general.
Now that we have stripped it all down to maturity, which can be generally summed up as figuring out the potential consequences of your actions and making decisions accordingly, and ability to learn, the path to take seems obvious enough to me…
As always, one should focus on the cause, not on the effect, and try to make improvements there. In this case, the improvements would be mainly to encourage teens to think for themselves, be responsible for their own actions and their own lives, while at the same time making complete and accurate information available to them. And that seems to be pretty much the opposite of what’s usually being done, which makes me wonder why…
Ok, I’m not wondering, I have my own answers for that “why”, but that’s another matter…
Remember when I was saying that the developers of Hellgate: London should have made a movie instead of a game because, considering the trailers, it’d have turned out better? Seems like I was right, seeing as reviewers didn’t receive it too well, most awarding it 7 or less (out of 10)… Very intense action but little else, nothing to really keep you interested through it all. That said, I’m still waiting for a movie on this theme…
I said I’ll make it through the week, take part in Materia Magica‘s Halloween Global and read two books to help me along. Did all that, the week’s over and… I’m wondering why the fuck am I writing this… I’m not even sure precisely how much of this is simply because I made it as far as I wanted to try to make it and how much because of other factors added to that…
Woke up and got up immediately instead of spending hours in bed as I’ve been once again doing lately, since parents would come back in the afternoon (they were gone since Friday) and I didn’t want to waste my last hours alone, not that I do much of anything in them anyway… Not having those hours of brooding and daydreaming made me feel sort of like having a storm cloud right over my head the whole day, more so than usual I mean…
Then getting up much earlier than usual and doing some things around the house meant I got tired by the time they got back, which made my mood even worse, just drooping around since I couldn’t take a nap this evening.
I’m sure the fact that certain areas are itching quite unbearably again added a lot to it, especially since now I know I won’t get rid of that problem (diagnosis was atopic dermatitis), plus noticing all the bad shaking again and the fact that my lower front teeth are moving around quite a lot.
I also decided to give the glasses a try now and that’s just depressing. Might be nice not to have to squint anymore but wearing these pieces of shit just sucks! Plus that I’m seeing noticeably worse when I take them off, eyes getting used to being relaxed… The left one is ok, only takes seconds to readjust, but with the right I can’t even make out headlines now… Plus that I’m seeing more spots and dots after I take them off than I usually do.
Then there is the simple fact that they got back and everything went right out of my hands again, of course. That’s made worse by not being able to find underwear again. One pair there, but I took one look at them and weren’t too sure they were mine, so I checked the clothesline, had a hard time picking one I thought was mine, looked at them again and weren’t so sure anymore, so I put them back… Really depressing to not even know what your underwear is anymore and always wonder whether it didn’t get mixed up before too…
Then there were the books (“The Man Who Sold the Moon” and “Glory Road“, both by Heinlein), which I finished now… For one, they’re from her and I “used up” two of them. Saving the books for “emergencies” and, while this certainly rates as one, there’s a noticeable feeling of loss because I read them… And if that wouldn’t have been enough in itself, while normally I expect the heroes to have terrible prices to pay for their achievements and frown when they don’t, right now I could have really used a “happily ever after” ending, and “Glory Road” didn’t provide that. Actually, it’s final chapters were very close to being exactly the worst thing I could have read about right now…
Plus that there isn’t anybody to talk to, and certainly no hugs, though that’s no news…
Yeah, perhaps silly, I know, but that’s how it is… Now I guess I’ll just get myself obsessed with Divine Divinity again, since I’m trying to pick up where I left off back in February, and see if it takes me through another week…
But, damn it, I just want some sort of life that I’ll have some fucking control over! Was about to wonder whether that’s so much to ask, but I had that and fucked it up… So I guess it might be…
