Jump to content

Not a good day for computers...

Rate this topic


raintheory

Recommended Posts

I don't know what's up here today... :angry:

First off the loading mechanism on the DVD drive of my desktop computer went out on me this morning. Later, while trying to load a linux distro on my old laptop the CD-ROM on it died on me. Then, as if that wasn't enough... our 500 gig external hard drive (which we have had less than a year) started developing the "click of death"... I'm now in the process of trying to save what I can from it. Mainly jam sessions of my own music and such. <_<

Man, I just checked and Mercury hasn't been in retrograde since last week... Perhaps the eclipse has something to do with it? :unsure:

Anyone else having a bunch of crazy computer/electronics issues today?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I've been ok pretty much. I cant say it enough, don;t put all your eggs into one basket, dont get a huge hard external hard disk, get a few small ones and backup the same files onto both of them. Or at least make backups of what is on the external hard disk to blank dvd;s. I keep all my omg files, mp3's, photos, and videos on my external but I keep a backup of the photos, my documents folder, and all my 'little' programs/drivers etc on one dvd and my mp3's on a dual layer disc. sorry to hear about ur bad luck man.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Luckily I had burned most of our recordings up through the end of 2005 to DVD-Rs in anticipation of something like this... Mainly it's just the recent stuff that hasn't been backed up.

After I get the recent stuff off of here I'm going to try to figure out if I can salvage the drive or get a new one under warranty. Hopefully it's just data corruption to the extent that a long format while attached to our G5 will take care of it...

At this point I am debating getting a fireproof safe/lockbox to keep our DVD backups in... Or perhaps a safety-deposit box somewhere. :P

BTW, how long have you had your LaCie 160 gig HD? Our's is a LaCie as well, got it last May...

Edited by raintheory
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I;ve had mine since 31/7/2005 :lol: When I make images of dvd's to burn I always get big fragmented chunks, but i dont think this is unnatural. I always defrag my drive as soon as it gets a bit fragmented. Even if its two 4.7 gig fragments I do it. I asked lacie support and they said fragmenting the drive often shouldnt cause any problems. Even those fragments make a difference when it comes to the read speed and me writing to dvd's from the external.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I had concerns of defragging mine since it is formatted as HFS+ for our Mac... I use MacDrive to access the drive with Windows. I actually emailed them to ask if it was safe to run windows utilities like defrag, etc. and they said they don't recommend it if the drive is formatted as HFS+...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

ah i see, doesnt mac have some sort of thing for defragging?? Mine is NTFS as its on a windows comp :lol:i get the best of both worlds, usb, both firewire types on the disk drive, defragging. :P

Here is what apple says about (de)fragmentation http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=25668

I would have preferred NTFS, but then OSX wouldn't be able to read it. Only options that OSX would read were HFS+ & FAT32. FAT32 would only allow up to 32 gig partitions, which wasn't very useful for my purposes. -_-

On another note, after a bit of research I discovered that the 500 gig big drive is actually 2 smaller drives in one enclosure. After plugging it in on the G5 and having no problems, I'm beginning to wonder if the power strip I was using while running it on the laptop wasn't giving it enough juice to power both drives correctly...

At any rate, I have all the new important data on DVDR now. ;)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

What was the thing powered by? Don't tell me it was USB interface only :huh:

no no, it wasn't usb powered. I just had it plugged into a fairly sketchy old power strip with a bunch of other power intensive things...

regardless, I think we are going to send it in before the warranty runs out.

I'm just glad that we are able to get everything off of it beforehand.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

hmm. Thats the thing I hate about buying things off the internet, when something goes wrong it takes so long for the item to be replaced. Not like in a store where you can just take it back with your receipt, show them its not working and voila, you get your replacment. LOL ok, not just voila, but at least you can give it to them, leave it with them and they will take care of the rest. With on line shopping you have to wait a few days or a day or whatever for it to reach them by post.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
×
×
  • Create New...