April 20, 2016 – Our RV Adventures

Daily Archives: April 20, 2016

April 20, 2016 Uncategorized

WD 1 TB Hard Drive . . . R.I.P.

When I got up this morning, I was welcomed by a black & white screen on the computer, but worse was what it said.

Can Not Find Boot Device:

Please Insert Bootable Media

Crap!

Translated, that means it can’t find the hard drive.

And since I’m pretty sure it didn’t run off, that means it’s died.

Crap!

Jan said she was online this morning, and about 7:40 she tried to go to another website and the computer froze. And when she rebooted, she got the B&W screen. So I turned it off to let it cool down.

Luckily I did a full backup less than a week ago, so I’m pretty good there. But first I needed to get a working desktop PC going again. I’ve got the laptop, so I got it out so we could get online for the day.

Normally the laptop only gets used on travel days for our Delorme GPS map program and Silverleaf engine display. In fact the last time I used it like this was last year on our gate guarding gig

While I was online checking email, I was thinking about what I wanted to do. I had a new 3 TB harddrive that I bought a while back for a client project that didn’t pan out, so I could put the new HD back in it. Or I could put the new HD in a newer computer that I had stowed away.

The only problem is that the newer one is a full size desktop model, while the one that died is a mini-desktop unit that sits under the monitor. But since the full-size one was newer and faster, that’s the one I decided to go with.

Digging out the computer and the HD, I put the two together and started to install Win7. I decided to try out the Win7 install on a USB drive that I bought a while back.

Win7 on USB

I got this back last December, but checking on Amazon tonight, it’s no longer available, but it allows you to quickly install a new copy of Win7. Of course you still need a MIcrosoft serial number, but I can reuse the old one from the sticker on the side of the case.

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The install went very quickly with no major hiccups, and about 45 minutes later I was downloading and installing the necessary drivers and apps. At this point I put it aside for dinner.

Next I started downloading and installing the programs that I wanted – Chrome, LibreOffice, Open Live Writer, Total Commander, etc. These will get me back online, and then in the next day or so I’ll hookup my backup drive and transfer the rest over,

But I also may be able to recover some of the last week’s data that didn’t get backed up. When I turned the computer back on, it actually booted up and ran – for about 10 minutes, and then it locked up. So the problem was heat-related. Which means that I’ll probably be able to get some data off using the freezer trick

You do this by putting the drive in a zip-lock bag and leave it in the freezer for a couple of hours. Then you take it out and hook it up as quickly as possible, and then copy data off as quickly as possible. This works better if you make a list ahead of time of the most important stuff you need.