Reply With QuoteIt sounds like a hard drive problem to me as well. Is it possible for you to choose Safe Mode with Command Prompt? You might be able to run a chkdsk from there. ("chkdsk /f c:" without quotes)
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Okay, we all know I'm a Mac person, so I'm not quite sure what to do here. My mother is having a problem with her PC, where it tries to boot up, go to a "We apologize, Windows didn't start properly, blah blah..." and asks how we want to start it up. (Safe Mode, Safe Mode + Comm, Last Known Good Config, Start Windows Normally.)
Pick one of those, black screen with "Windows XP" logo comes up, little progress bar works for a minute, then the initial BIOS stuff (?) that comes up when you first turn a PC on shows up, then we're back to the start-up mode selection screen. Only thing that works different is trying in safe mode, which runs through listing some x.sys files before dumping us back.
By ear, it sounds like the hard drive may be screwed, but I'm hoping it isn't, or at least isn't enough that we can't get some stuff off of it, because my mom has a lot of digital photos on there and I'm quite certain she has no sort of back-up.
So, first of all, any advice in this situation?
Beyond that, I'm thinking what might be good for her would be to set her machine up with a two-drive RAID. Only problem is, I know just enough about a RAID to know what it is and the basic idea behind it, but not enough to know the full details of how to set one up (at least on a PC). She has a basic, home-built PC... could I just slap two drives of identical size into the case, and would Windows XP have the ability to set them up as a RAID?
Finally, if I have to slap some new hard drives in there, it means I'll have to re-install WinXP for her. If the only thing changing is the hard drives, can I just re-install WinXP and it'll all work? I come from an OS with absolutely no activation/DRM to speak of, so I'm not sure what the limits/rules are to Windows and re-installing.
WARNING: This post may contain violent and disturbing images.
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It sounds like a hard drive problem to me as well. Is it possible for you to choose Safe Mode with Command Prompt? You might be able to run a chkdsk from there. ("chkdsk /f c:" without quotes)
Who's bringing the GD Juice!
Here's a good description of Windows RAID.
A couple questions you might wanna consider. Is it time for a new PC for the moms? If so get the new PC and slave in the old drive in order to try and retrieve the data. If that is not a option and you want RAID than get the two new drives and either use RAID by your motherboard if it supports it, RAID card, or use windows and then slave in your old HD.
As far as the auto reboot after logo, could be hardware or a software issue. I would pull the HD out and copy the important data off to another system, then put it back in and restore/fresh install.
I hate RAID. I still don't get how it works or why it makes my system unstable.
So much ****ing semen.
RAID is a pretty horrible idea in any case and it wouldn't help you get any data back if that's what you were planning doshi. sounds to me like the hdd went south. if you're putting a new one in there you should be fine as far as activation goes assuming you have a legit copy and the product key. normally you get 3 formats/reinstalls before you have to phone MS and activate it. some people bitch and moan about this but i have never had an issue. when they ask whats up you just say new hdd.
there's a couple kinds of RAID but they all pretty much depend on a hdd not dying in the future. setting up a RAID array isn't hard in Windows but if a drive fails you're fucked. the notion of using one has never crossed my mind. if you need to save really mission critical shit, use tape.
Please look forward to it!
How so? Isn't the whole point of most RAID arrays to allow you to easily recover from a hard drive failure?Originally Posted by Dyne
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like i said it depends on the type. if using a mirrored array you usually can. i just think setting one up just to save everyday photos and stuff is too much. hell, even tape is overkill. might want to just set a zip drive or something depending on amount of stuff to save. plus she'll need a mobo cabable of it or an extra pci card.
also taken from wiki.
Correlated failures
The theory behind the error correction in RAID assumes that failures of drives are independent. Given these assumptions it is possible to calculate how often they can fail and to arrange the array to make data loss arbitrarily improbable.
In practice, the drives are often the same ages, with similar wear. Since many drive failures are due to mechanical issues which are more likely on older drives, this violates those assumptions and failures are in fact statistically correlated. In practice then, the chances of a second failure before the first has been recovered is not nearly as unlikely as might be supposed, and data loss can in practice occur at significant rates.
Last edited by Dyne; 28 Dec 2007 at 03:23 PM.
I always thought that the principle behind a RAID drive was that some data is stored on one drive while other parts of the data are stored on the other. So if one drive fails then, that info is gone and you are only left with part of the info on the other drive. Then again, I don't really know much at all about RAID.
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it depends on how you set it up. some RAID setups put parts of info on each drive but not all.
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