Windows Killed my Hard Drive

[kituhwa]

Well,

A few nights ago a maxtor hard drive I installed on my PC crashed, and it crashed hard, I'd only had it for about 4 months before this disaster.

My PC is old, I bought it used, and was running that crappy Win98 on that machine, I'm an extremely poor college student who couldn't afford to upgrade, but I doubt it'd made a difference.

Win98 has actually killed three perfectly good computers that I've had before, and each time I couldn't afford to upgrade or just buy a whole new system. What generally happened was, I'd buy the hardware I needed, like a cd writer, and not worry about the OS, well you know how Windows says to avoid "multiple restarts" because it can damage your hard drive?

How in the hell are you supposed to avoid it when the OS crashes on a REGULAR basis? There have been days where my system crashed at least 4 to 5 times in a single day. As for the most recent crash...

I was sitting there all excited to get started on playing around with JavaScript, (I'm majoring in Multimedia and Web Design) so I was about to open up Note Pad, yes I said Note Pad, Dreamweaver is easy, but it makes it TOO easy, and I need practice, lots of it.

I had just bought the book "JavaScript in an Instant" at Borders. Anyway, I had about three windows open and out of nowhwere it just restarts, then it refuses to start back up, not even in safemode, it would attempt to run through scan disk and get about 64 percent done and crash again making this horrible noise "click-click, click-click, click-click" leaving me no alternative but to hit the power button, which in turn caused an even harder crash in which my computer would not even register the C: drive.

I took the drive out of my computer and reformatted it on my parents Gateway using the software Maxtor provided. Well, everything was fine, so I thought, so I put it back into my computer and reinstalled everything, yes including WinSuck98. After I had finished installing ALL my software and all my drivers, and all my hardware, the system crashes AGAIN, so I restart and hear the horrible "click-click" again. I started smashing things and a long string of explatives erupted from my mouth and I started all over again, hoping maybe, maybe, Oh PLEASE God, maybe it might work this time?

Refromatted it AGAIN on the other computer using the software provided by Maxtor and put it back on my machine, reinstalled WinSuck and tried running ScanDisk for Windows, it got to 64 percent and "click-click" again I turned it off and back on again, guess what? That's right, Drive C: not found. MOTHER...you know the rest.


So, I got on MicroSucks website told them how much they sucked and that they owed me money HA HA (hey I can dream can't I?) For destroying so much of my hardware. Then I got on the net and started looking stuff up.

At my school the Art Institute of Colorado everybody uses Macs that's in the Multimedia Department. I've only been using Os9 and now OsX there for about a year and I like it, but still prefer PCs.

I first heard about Linux when a Mac guy and Linux guy at my school were both sticking it to Microsuck, I overheard their conversation and the Mac guy says, "The only thing Microsoft ever produced that impressed me was a screen that you could write on, you know like the monitor, and you could save that as like an e-post it." And the Linux guy goes "They won't impress me until they fix the operating system". They both had a good laugh and then the Linux guy goes, "I just don't get it, I can do the SAME thing in Linux and it DOESN'T crash"

I was like *gasp* a...computer...that....doesn't? crash??? Could it be?

I hadn't really thought much more about Microsuck alternatives until my infamous super crash that has caused me to have to pay the postage to ship my hard drive back to Maxtor in the hopes that they will honor my warranty and replace it, which I'm not sure of. Even though I installed the drive EXACTLY the way the manual and software said to, when I last took it out it was extremely hot to the touch, that has NEVER happened to me before when installing or uninstalling a drive.

In any event, I just needed to vent and I'm sure you guys appreciate it. I really want to stick with the PC and start using Linux, BUT I'm not so sure I can because to my knowledge companies like Macromedia and Adobe haven't developed any software for Open Source OSes like Linux have they?

And since those are the "standard" and what we HAVE to use at school it looks like I either have to like sell ALL my blood and sign up for some scientific experiments to afford a Mac, or stick with using WinSUCK

[Enmity]

Nice that more people have found alternatives    
I suggest you get Knoppix as a tryout first, it's a live CD and it boots right off the bat and your hard drive isn't touched AT ALL (unless you set the drive in read-write mode manually, that is)

[insomnia]

quote:Originally posted by Mat:
I was like *gasp* a...computer...that....doesn't? crash??? Could it be?

Yep.

 

quote:In any event, I just needed to vent and I'm sure you guys appreciate it. I really want to stick with the PC and start using Linux, BUT I'm not so sure I can because to my knowledge companies like Macromedia and Adobe haven't developed any software for Open Source OSes like Linux have they?

They do (but not Open Source).

 

quote:I'm majoring in Multimedia and Web Design

You'll love Linux.
And if you're not sure, make a dual boot.  

[ September 29, 2003: Message edited by: insomnia ]

[kituhwa]

Well, the more I read about Linux the more I like it. I've been to the Linux.org site and the Linux.com site, on the former they seem to like Debian and RedHat, and on the latter it looks like they like um..what was it...Lycoris? I actually thought of downloading Linux but that would just kill me because I have *sigh* dialup, it would take months, ha ha. I spent the last twenty bucks I had on my JavaScript book. Not much use right now.

I am using my parents' Gateway which I HATE, because one, it is an oversized BEAST. And two, the damn thing has tons more memory than mine and a way faster processor and mine is still way faster. My computer is old faithful man, all the shit I've done to it and it's still tickin', minus a functioning hard drive because of microsuck.

What distribution of Linux do you guys recommend as I've never used another OS before? Save for my limiting experience with the Mac.

Oh yeah and um, did you say that Adobe and Macromedia make programs like Flash, Photoshop, Premiere, After Effects, Director, etc. that run on Linux?

I contacted a guy in local Linux User Group, but haven't received a reply back from him yet. I wonder what distribution of Linux they are using.

[Zombie9920]

Multiple restarts don't kill hard drives anymore.
A new hard drive on average is designed to be turned off and powered back on up to 500,000 times(Maxtor is no exception). Chances are, that hard drive will have bad sectors and you will have a new hard drive before it ever sees that 500,000 power-ups. Restarting your computer doesn't even power down your hard drive(if you do a soft restart or if you press the reset button). Anyways, are you sure that there isn't a problem with your IDE controller or one of the IDE ports on your motherboard? You may be wise to stick a $50 PCI IDE controller card in your computer and avoid using the onboard controller.

A dodgy IDE controller will in fact damage your hard drives. A certified for new drives controller won't kill your drives and it will run your drives more reliably as well(you will see alot less crashes on one).  

Software may crash, but it normally doesn't cause hardware damage unless it happens to be overclocking software. Overclocking software  physically modifies the hardware that it is overclocking(in alot of cases, people don't know when to quit and they overclock the hardware way too far). An OS doesn't fall into the overclocking software category. The worst that crashing may do is corrupt data on your partation...which can be fixed by a disk scan(NTFS and other journalized Filesystems excel at fixing corrupted data).

I seriosly think you should look into a PCI IDE controller card. Not only will it solve the onboard IDE killing your drives but it will be more reliable and it will also make for a nice boost of performance(because you will get full speed out of the drive) for your computer no matter what OS you use.

[ September 29, 2003: Message edited by: Viper ]

[insomnia]

quote:Originally posted by Mat:
Oh yeah and um, did you say that Adobe and Macromedia make programs like Flash, Photoshop, Premiere, After Effects, Director, etc. that run on Linux?

 
Not everything (yet).
Most people use wine for those.

[hm_murdock]

PowerMax

See these guys for an affordable Mac. It might not be the newest thing, but you'll do well with em. You could get a good Linux box cheaper by upgrading your mainboard and processor, though.

Viper turned me onto a site where you can get a P4 2.4GHz and accompanying board for $300. Pick up some RAM for that and you'll be good to go. Unless the board requires Serial ATA (I don't know, I haven't checked their boards out yet) you can use your HDs, and any other cards you've got will run as well, including video, until you can get a new vid card.

 http://www.newegg.com

Check them out

[ September 29, 2003: Message edited by: Jimmy the Shyster ]

[Windows_SuX_@$$]

yea.. My HD Used to 'Click' then my PC would freeze or Restart... I got Linux, No Problems at all

[Zombie9920]

quote:Originally posted by Jimmy the Shyster:
PowerMax

See these guys for an affordable Mac. It might not be the newest thing, but you'll do well with em. You could get a good Linux box cheaper by upgrading your mainboard and processor, though.

Viper turned me onto a site where you can get a P4 2.4GHz and accompanying board for $300. Pick up some RAM for that and you'll be good to go. Unless the board requires Serial ATA (I don't know, I haven't checked their boards out yet) you can use your HDs, and any other cards you've got will run as well, including video, until you can get a new vid card.

 http://www.newegg.com

Check them out

[ September 29, 2003: Message edited by: Jimmy the Shyster ]

Those i865 boards support both Serial ATA and IDE. Most of them even have SATA RAid capabilites and some of htem have IDE RAID as well as SATA Raid. You just have to basically look over all of the extras that are included on a particular board and decide which is best for you. Myself, I like Asus P4P800 Deluxe because it offers everything(IDE Raid, SATA Raid, a WiFi port, Firewire, USB 2.0, etc.) .

[hm_murdock]

right now I'm looking at its little brother, the P4P8X for $97. I'm still gonna have to buy a case, PSU, and RAM, so I'm looking at budget-minded stuff

[Zombie9920]

Right on. For a case...you would probably be best off going to a local computer shop for one of those because the shipping&handling on a case is ridiculous.

You can normally pick up a decent Mid-Tower ATX case with Windows, Neon lights, plain, etc. w/a 400w PSU that has the 12v+ ATX molex for the P4 for around $50.

[ September 29, 2003: Message edited by: Viper ]

[hm_murdock]

awesome. I'll hit up the local joints. we're kinda poor for local small compute shops around here, even though we're a college town. our most successful local vendor is an Apple reseller, with Best Buy and Circuit City being the next best thing. There's a single small PC retailer, but they're pretty wierd, and have some freakin' ridiculous policies, both before the sale and after.

the best places are in Little Rock, three hours away, but that's still cheaper to drive there than pay shipping

[kituhwa]

Thanks for all the input guys, to the PC repair guy, ha ha, yes I'll look into that, it's a good point. My computer is still sitting there with all it's guts hanging out, haven't felt like putting it all back together again since the mighty crash. Besides I need to clean all the dust out of it, once I opened it up a spider had actually made a web inside it. I'm glad I burned MOST of my final work to a CD shortly before the disaster, but there's a lot of stuff I won't be getting back.

The drive I have in there now is my old 4 gigabyte hard drive, yeah I know it's pathetic. Anyway, what happened with that thing was the computer froze during a reinstallation of Win98 leaving me no choice but to shut the thing off. Well naturally there were endless problems when I turned it back on, I made it back to the Windows installation and it all went fine, but the problem is now Windows is on the drive twice.

There's a folder on the c: drive that says "Windows" and another one that says "Windows.000" both are Win98 folders and have all the same junk in them. Sooo...I tried reformatting that drive and doing a clean boot with the boot disk I got when I bought the computer. I reinstalled windows thinking that I had removed the duplicate copy of Windows, but no it's still there.

I don't have any third party software for reformatting the old drive and I don't remember how to do it in DOS, can somebody refresh my memory?

Also, tell me more about this WINE, I haven't read that much about it yet. Only some article about Disney and Pixar moving to Linux for some project and getting annoyed that Photoshop I think, wasn't offered for Linux so they funded a project to have it ported using WINE.

Oh yeah, and if my sister comes through for me some chick she works with is getting rid of her old computer, woo hoo! I get to strip it for parts, man, I'm such a nerd.

alrigh well  yeah, I guess I'm done.

[kituhwa]

Really I think the main problem with my computer has been that I've been forcing it to do things it was never meant to.

The poor little guy only has a Pentium II processor, hardly any RAM at all, and I tried running Adobe After Effects on it! Rendering out animations usually took an hour to an hour and a half for an only 10 or 15 second clip. When I'd add a comp to the render que and hit render within like one minute it was already saying "57 percent of 127 megabytes of RAM used" I'm sure you all find that very amusing, as well you should. I only had After Effects 5.0 though, I'd like to get 6.0 Professional, but I should probably wait until I have a better, (newer) computer.

[TheQuirk]

This is a bit off-topic, but I also recommend NewEgg. I bought all my computer hardware from them (well, except for case), and they're are totally x-treme.

[ September 30, 2003: Message edited by: TheQuirk ]