For those who mailed me

My condolences, Chand.

Oh my. That's very terrible. What I suggest is making a hard drive partition of about 20-30 megs, and using that as a back up for files that you don't want to have archived on CD or zip drive just yet (especially if the CDs aren't rewritable). Depending on the type and severity of the crash, the partition is usually salvageable.

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Cinema, simulated life and drama/Birthright, culture, Americana/
The change in adrenaline got you searchin' for/the thin line between entertainment and war
There be no shelter here/the front line is everywhere

Indeed Chand, you are the prototype of the undestructable hardcore inf'er ! So keep up to good work and continue to ignore those taxbills, those really important letters,... and just play and map for inf !

What would we all do without our precious inf ? Without the support we get from eachother at this messageboard ? Without the inf team keeping up our hopes for a better realistic UT world ?

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Name : Andirez
Status : INFiltrated the messageboard

i'm just curious here, what causes a disk to 'crash'? i'm always hearing this, but i've never actually seen or even heard technically what happens. i've used some damn crappy hd's and i've never had a problem with them and all i could see happening would be a hardware failure, which would render the drive useless, correct? yeah, well, blah, blah, blah, sorry you lost all your work, i've just been wondering about this

Lost

Hmm... I don't know about making a backup of important files on the same hard disk where the originals are stored. /infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif Fine if you just accidentally delete some files, but in the event of a physical problem with the drive, you'll probably end up having to pay a lot to get someone to recover the data for you.

I'd recommend getting a cheap tape drive. I got an OEM Seagate 28800A (or something like that) IDE drive for $90 about half a year ago. It can hold eight gigs compressed, and it backs up relatively fast (about half an hour for one or two gigs, which is all I usally back up). CD-RW or maybe even Zip/Jazz disks would be options too, I suppose. /infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif

The funny thing with physical problems with drives is the physical problems are usually so rare in severity that they hardly ever "skip" partitions. Don't forget that the hdd is made up of multiple clusters, sectors, platters, etc. etc., meaning the drive is actually multiple drives seperate from each other. Usually a hdd crash is something that bastardizes one drive in particular (usually the one with the MBR, which in most cases is the C:\ drive) so keeping a temporary back up on a partition is usually safe. Though that was my point. Small partition for temporary backing up so that in the event of a crash, it will most likely still be there, which is better than it not being there at all. And any program freely on the net can recover formatted information. Yes, even formatted disks are recoverable. Whereas deleting a file only rewrites the hexadecimal offsets of the file system's address for the file to 0s, formatting rewrites both the file system's address and the address itself - but the file is still present. Only a low-level format and an fdisk will write 0's to every sector. Like I said, I studied this useless, stupid stuff. It sounds like court room semantics to everybody else, but there are incredibly dull, retarded, inefficient differences in everything a computer does. And I swear to god my Athlon would run better in DOS 5.0 than it ever could in Windows.

I realize that. I was talking about "hard drive starts making grinding noises when the computer gets turned on"- and "hey, where'd my partition table go?"-type problems. Sure, it's still possible to recover the data in situations like that or get someone else to recover it for you (the missing partition table would be pretty easy, at least in Unix, as long as you knew the original dimensions of the partitions... no idea how to do it in DOS), but it's a lot easier to just copy the files over from the tape or disk you had them backed up on.

Oh, and if we're nitpicking here, I have a couple of corrections to make. /infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif As far as I know, the memory containing the address of the first cluster of the file isn't even zeroed when you delete it; the first byte of the memory containing the filename is just overwritten with a special character (I wasn't sure which, but a web search just turned up 0xE5) that lets the FAT know the file has been deleted. And unless I'm sorely mistaken, fdisk doesn't have anything to do with wiping out data; it just manages partition tables. The DOS fdisk apparently zeros the first 512 bytes of a newly created partition table as required by the DOS format command, but that's an exception to the rule.

Well, the memory address is overwritten, regardless. Whether its with 0's or x's or o's (and keep in mind its different for every os, but they all essential remove the address.) It doesn't tell the FAT that it was deleted, the FAT's just stupid and assumes its deleted. And no, you're right, you don't have to fdisk to get anything to work again, but after a low-level format, you'd either want to create a primary partition or use your hard drive as a paper weight/testicle masher. So an fdisk is in order unless you're one of those guys that likes to look at his groin all bloody and raw, and his loose leaf not rustling in the wind.

And, as an added bonus, I once opened up a case I thought was making hard drive noises, and it turned out the IDE cable was rubbing up directly on the processor's cooling fan. Another time I opened a case to see if anything was wrong, and there was a whole bunch of spiders in there. Now, I've been shot at, had knives pulled on me, had my ass kicked in parking lots, but spiders - spiders scare the hell out of me. I did a little girly dance while making hysterical noises. They were looking pretty angry to me, too.

[This message has been edited by Bad.Mojo (edited 04-06-2000).]

Spiders in the case? Damn, I think that would scare the hell out of anyone...

My current computer seems to enjoy going through processor fans like crazy. It doesn't matter what quality the fans are, they all sooner or later (some after just a month) slow down and start making grinding noises. My current thought is that it could be the motherboard giving the fans too much power. Any other ideas?

I had a few processor fans die on me just from having cables to close to them, and messing up their cycles when they spin up. You may want to make sure that there are no loose cables around the fans, because that would cause them to go nuts. (Though you'll be able to hear a funny grinding noise.)

Also, the processor may actually be to hot and is causing alot of expansion/contraction in the ball bearings, or warping the fan blades. You may want to get a bigger heat sink in that case. For example, my processor has a 3 inch heat sink and two cooling fans, and it operates pretty stably, though anything less and I think it would be toast. The case is also well ventilated with two areas for air circulation on either side, an area for air circulation on the front, and I leave the lowermost expansion slot open a crack to get it some rear circulation as well.

You may also want to check the power supply, as I doubt the mother board is supplying to much power in and of its own right. make sure its set on its proper voltage. If its to high or to low, it will mess up the moving parts (any cooling fans you may have) either because its spinning them to fast or spinning them erratically.

And on the subject of spiders, it wasn't like a huge nest or anything, I'm just terrified of the littlest spiders. They're so goddam disgusting it isn't even funny... eight legs, spiny hairs, fangs, eight eyes, predatory. The most offences thing I could think of. Scorpions aren't scary, and they're a hell of alot deadlier. They're arachnids, but they're shelly and and they have a stinger and claws and look like angry lobster/crab things, which is cool. And ants are just to chill to be freaky.

Mice used to live in my packard bell.
They would get in through an open expansion slot. I'm not kidding /infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif! Them things love heat.