Is this really the end of my hard drive?
 

Hey,
We just turned Plonking's PC on and it made these funny noises and first thought it was a fan, but later we turned it on again and the noise was much worse, sounded like the hard drive was about to die, looked at the screen and it was unable to detect an IDE drive.

There are two hard drives, one with windows and one with linux, the windows being the master and full of work and important things! :Yikes:

The windows one seems fine, but the linux is pretty much screwed.

Is there anything we can do to save it??

Also in order to get rid of the linux boot loader (we have grub on there at the moment) do we just need to put in the xp cd and that "fixmbr" thing? If so what do we have to do?

Any ideas?

Re: Is this really the end of my hard drive?
 

lol yeah it's a real shame, i should have backed it up sooner, lol.. my main hope now is to get windows back, then i can go buy a new HDD and put a newer version of linux on there. looks like i have lost tonnes of work and stuff, but its my own fault for now backing up ... d'oh!

Re: Is this really the end of my hard drive?
 

Erm time to get a new drive and get everything backed up. You could do the fixmbr thing but if that fails I would boot from the XP cd and try a repair console session. If the drive is visible at all you can get the data off it but unless the BIOS or Windows can see the drive you are slightly buggered :(

Re: Is this really the end of my hard drive?
 

hehe ok i figured as much.. it was making noises the other day, and i thought 'hmm one of my fans are going'.. lol, couldn't have been more wrong, and, to top it all off, i bought a stack of 50 cds today with a view to replacing this busted drive once i had graduated.. there was a lot of stuff on that drive, mostly uni work and emails and stuff like that, but never mind.. i'll back everything up across the network (i'm in a live linux atm) and then try fixmbr.. which i havent had much luck with in the past, so am crossing my fingers :)

Re: Is this really the end of my hard drive?
 

Re: Is this really the end of my hard drive?
 

Erm ok were trying the fixmbr stuff from the xp disk and it asks for the administrator password after you press R. But the password from the admin account on that PC doesn't seem to be working :confused:
Is that the right password? We have tried upper and lower case and its not being mistyped.

Help! :Yikes:

EDIT- this is what happened http://support.microsoft.com/default...b;en-us;308402
just trying this now

Re: Is this really the end of my hard drive?
 

Nope it would be the MAIN administrator password that was set when XP was installed ;)

Re: Is this really the end of my hard drive?
 

hmm we didnt install it, the shop that made it installed it :( that would be why...

Re: Is this really the end of my hard drive?
 

Try leaving it blank then, sometimes they don't put a password on during a shop install.

Re: Is this really the end of my hard drive?
 

Y'know that was an amazing idea! :D:D:D
we didnt think of that but it worked!

moment of truth now just rebooting, argh:Yikes:

EDIT - IT WORKED! Wooooo! :D Thank you!!!

Re: Is this really the end of my hard drive?
 

See I'm useful for some things ;) Have fun sorting out that hard drive :)

Re: Is this really the end of my hard drive?
 

hurray, i have windows back :D

lost so much stuff, and now tomorrow im off to buy a 250gb drive and i'll get a new version of linux too.

hurray!

thanks!

P

Re: Is this really the end of my hard drive?
 

if the linux drive is still not recognised by the bios, and there's some really important data on it you colud always try The Freezer Trickââ€Æ¦Ã‚¾Ãƒâ€šÃ‚¢.

or, just take it apart and play with the magnets :D

Re: Is this really the end of my hard drive?
 

How much were you thinking about paying for that drive?

Re: Is this really the end of my hard drive?
 

What drive did you lose stuff from? At least you have got a working PC again, better than the alternative I suppose ;)

Re: Is this really the end of my hard drive?
 

Hehe, that's not a bad plan :) I'll research it a bit, and give it a go - it's not like I have got anything to lose :p:
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Not sure really - in all fairness, I probably won't get one that size, I was just trying to make myself feel better by thinking 'I'll get a bigger, better one, now ' :D It also depends on how much money I have left in my bank, so I guess I'll just have to wait and see ;)
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I managed to lost my old 20gb linux drive. It was quite a lucky setup that I ended up having - one which I will definitely use again :) My disaster action plan was almost ruined by not knowing the admin password, but, thanks to you, there was only one disaster, rather than two :D

Re: Is this really the end of my hard drive?
 

Take a look at www.aria.co.uk, they've got some great prices on HDDs at the moment.

http://www.aria.co.uk/ProductsList.a...age=1&SortBy=1

Re: Is this really the end of my hard drive?
 

will do, thanks for the link :)

Re: Is this really the end of my hard drive?
 

I always keep operating systems on seperate partitions or drives just in case, especially if I'm playing with Linux. Good thing I remembered that some places don't password the Admin account on pre-loaded PCs lol