[bluevolt]

The title is self explanatory. Let's take a picture of our PC/Laptop and show it off here. This will also help to know member's table manners (If you know what I mean)

This is my humble setup at home. HP Pavilion dx2480 Microtower PC + HP Laserjet 1320 + Logitech LS21 2.1 Speakers + Accessories.

[rana_kirti]

Guys,

Looking to buy a 3tb hdd. Any particular brand/model preferred by our community ?

Which would be the most reliable brand ?

Thanks

[Thad E Ginathom]

Dead PC

16 months old, today, my Gigabyte/AMD-based machine will not boot.

The fans are running, there is power to the network card and the Firewire chip. No display, not even BIOS, no keyboard lights --- and no power from USB, as seen on my phone, which would charge from the port. My guess is that sections of the MB are working, but the PCI/USB/Graphics is dead. I wish we still had tiny onboard speakers for the beepcodes.

I called Gigabyte: the nice surprise is that the warranty is three years, so it is dismantling time, and off to Gigabyte support with it. Just getting a second opinion from an engineer tomorrow before I do that.

[NetfreakBombay]

Sometimes it could be due to a failing/failed SMPS as well.

Symptoms are similar in that case, some peripherals would have power but Motherboards and basic chipset wont power up if it detects bad power supply (E.g. too high or low voltage).

[Thad E Ginathom]

That makes sense. So I should bend a paperclip, google where to put it, get out the meter and check voltages.

Or maybe I should leave that to an expert. For starters, there seemto be a lot of GND pins. Which to use?

[NetfreakBombay]

Or ask the engineer to bring a spare power supply... I am facing the same problem in PC and hope its SMPS that is bad since Motherboard is out of warranty.

[s4ch]

Originally Posted by rana_kirti

Guys,

Looking to buy a 3tb hdd. Any particular brand/model preferred by our community ?

Which would be the most reliable brand ?

Thanks

I would say avoid Seagate as they may be cheaper initially but less reliable. Both of the Seagate HD's I bought crashed within 2 years but fortunately I managed to save my data. Go for Western Digital without blinking, 64Mb cache would be great. I bought a 2TB WD 64Mb cache HDD last year and am loving it.

[Thad E Ginathom]

Originally Posted by NetfreakBombay

Or ask the engineer to bring a spare power supply...

Done. He's on his way later today. It looks like my PSU (Antec) also has 3 years warranty . But warranty on paper is one thing: item replaced/repaired is another.

Thanks for your help

[Thad E Ginathom]

Later that evening...

It was neither psu nor motherboard!

The problem was with one of the hard disks. When the [SATA] disk was attached to the machine, no boot, not even bios display.

That was the important disk. Now I'm trying to salvage something from the mess.

Can it really be that I didn't backup anything since ... ... ...



(can it really be that I was once a professional!)

People: learn from the mistakes of others. Do a backup now.

Anyway, I'm glad I got someone else to look at the machine: I would have been chasing the wrong things for ever.

[IronH4WK]

my wifey had a 500GB Seagate external hard drive and one day it fell from the coffee table (about 1/1.5ft drop); the drop was vertical, didn't fall flat. 7yrs of data went poof!

be careful with your devices; don't take them for granted.

[Thad E Ginathom]

Ouch.

The disk is under warranty. I could just go to Seagate and get a new one. I have most of the data elsewhere, but I am missing enough, along with a lot of work re-arranging, and the settings of the Ubuntu root/home partition on that drive that I am going to see about data recovery, so I'm taking it to Micron in Adyar, today for diagnosis.

remembered that my MB has two SATA sections: when connected to the second, it does not prevent the machine starting, but it is not recognised.

[NetfreakBombay]

If HDD is Seagate, there is some hope.

Seagate had a bug that screwed up HDD electronics but did not corrupt data. Most data recovery shops know about it and can fix that in minutes. All they need to do is update firmware on disk so that BIOS will start detecting it.

That is if this is due to that specific bug.

More details :

Firmware Update for ST31500341AS, ST31000333AS, ST3640323AS, ST3640623AS, ST3320613AS, ST3320813AS, ST3160813AS

[Thad E Ginathom]

I seem to remember hearing about that. It is a Seagate but...

I went to Micron, in Adyar, Chennai, today. They took the disk for a while, and then said that the read head is dead --- and nothing can be done. Warranty replacement is the next step.

Oh well, I'll never again be able to see how shiny my new car was on delivery day!

[Aroy]

I normally back up my critical work on all the three:
- Desktop
- External HDD, also used to transfer data between Desktop & Laptop.
- Laptop

If the data is irreplaceable, then I back up on CD/DVD, with CD preferred, as I found DVD less reliable for long term storage. I now have over 400 DVD of satellite images and some 100 CD of critical data, source code and photos.

[Thad E Ginathom]

In theory, I use at least one external hdd. In practice, my backup routine stands exposed as pathetic. <Blush>

I went to Micron, in Adyar, Chennai, today. They took the disk for a while, and then said that the read head is dead --- and nothing can be done. Warranty replacement is the next step.

Further enquiry: they can take it apart and try to recover the data. It will cost Rs5,000 plus the cost of the new disk. They don't guarantee to recover anything.