A very narrow escape!

pxl8

pxl8

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Andy Jones
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So yesterday I decided to bite the bullet and upgrade to Vista. The recent problems with the mailer worm got me thinking it was time for a fresh install in which case I might as well upgrade at the same time.

So I backed up everything to a spare drive and went ahead with the install. Everything went smoothly and I was presented with a shiny new desktop except my backup drive didn't show up. A look in Disk Manager didn't show it either. Reboot and bios can't find it, panic sets in.

So I was off on a trip trying to find vista drivers for the sata controller on my mobo but no luck, checking cables, etc. Stress levels rising all the time.

I went to bed last night no closer to solving the problem but convinced the drive was dead and I'd lost all my data - how unlucky can I get - the backup drive dies immediately after backing up?

This morning I was just looking at the drive as I was about to get it tested on another machine when I noticed what looked like a small chip bent out of place on the board right next to the connector. I unscrewed the board and sure enough a pin had come away so at least I knew what was wrong - the solution seemed simple enough, buy an identical drive and swap the boards. Then I got really lucky, a call to a local dealer and he's got the drive in stock so a quick trip to pick it up and everything is working again.

I reckon the chip must have been knocked by a cable connector when I was fumbling around inside the machine taking out an old 30gb drive before the upgrade. The past 18 hours have taken me from the depths of despair to sheer joy when it booted and everything was back.

From now on I'm gonna backup my backups, twice!
 
Came out in a cold sweat out of sympathy!!!

Just got a great deal from Amazon - 500gb WD mybook pro drive for £125 - EVERYTHING software / photo / music went there last night. Also have 2x 250gb drives that have served well and this coming w.end will be spent organising files double backing data AND burning some DVD's of the photos i'd cry if i lost.

Glad you got everything back up and running and i'm sure you're going to love vista :) :thumbs:
 
Phew ... :eek:

Downside to messing with your bits eh ... :D


Great to hear you sorted it though ... heck of a relief ... :shrug:






:p
 
No chance of resoldering that pin?
 
It's a great feeling when you solve a problem like that isn't it?
 
Actually, maybe it was the alignment of the moon and the stars or something, but I had a very frustrating evening with my PC last night as well.
 
Well I'm happily re-installing everything and I'm liking Vista a lot.

Kamion, there's a chance the pin could be soldered but it'll be a bit of a pain, the chip is only 5mm square and has 8 pins but it's worth a go. I might look into getting a replacement board from Maxtor/Seagate as well - always nice to have some more storage :)

BTW, thanks everyone - it was a lucky escape - guess I should get a lottery ticket for tonight :D
 
Phew :) Glad it all worked out for you :clap: I had a hard drive on a G4 mac go t*ts up at work a couple of months ago and I had no back up :cuckoo: I stupidly believed "it wouldn't happen to me". I got the data back but it cost me £800 for data recovery and a new drive :bonk: Talk about a lesson learned the hard way :shrug:
 
pxl8 said:
Well I'm happily re-installing everything and I'm liking Vista a lot.
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Are you running Photoshop on your new install of Vista by any chance pxl8? The only thing holding me back from going up the Vista ally is that I've read on Adobe's web site that CS2 is not fully compatible with Vista and they won't be patching it as CS3 comes out in the spring.
 
Grendel said:
Are you running Photoshop on your new install of Vista by any chance pxl8? The only thing holding me back from going up the Vista ally is that I've read on Adobe's web site that CS2 is not fully compatible with Vista and they won't be patching it as CS3 comes out in the spring.
Click to expand...

I've not had any problems, no with Lightroom. Mind, as Pete says, the only issue with Lightroom is not being able to burn discs from Lightroom - not an issue.

I haven't dropped CS3 beta on there yet but will be tempted to try that later.

Adobe Premiere Elements 3? Not a snowballs chance in hell of loading. Bundles of patches and updates required from Adobe.... another little mission to accomplish.......
 
Thanks Jon :thumbs: Not going to be buying Lightroom in the forseeable so looks like Vista here I come. Oooh it's been while since I've had a decent BSOD to get my heart rate up a bit!
 
I run raid 3 or 5 arrays for working drives as they will tolerate a disc fail without loosing data, whack in a spare and you have your data back. I also backup the raid to a firewire drive.

I was once foolish enough to think " it wont happen to me "
But every hard drive will fail eventually some earlier than others.

Glad you got all sorted
 
vista is good, once i got my soundcard and usb ports to work it was a pleasure!
 
Grendel said:
Are you running Photoshop on your new install of Vista by any chance pxl8? The only thing holding me back from going up the Vista ally is that I've read on Adobe's web site that CS2 is not fully compatible with Vista and they won't be patching it as CS3 comes out in the spring.
Click to expand...

Not installed cs2 yet but will have a go later. I know there are problems with it wanting users to register each time but there's a couple of ways to fix that (run as admin or just register). I've not heard of any other problems tho but I'll report back if I find any.
 
pxl8 said:
Not installed cs2 yet but will have a go later. I know there are problems with it wanting users to register each time but there's a couple of ways to fix that (run as admin or just register). I've not heard of any other problems tho but I'll report back if I find any.
Click to expand...

:thumbs: thanks
 
My old man has tons of pics and 4 separate backup drives, two which he doesn't leave at home cos there are photos that if he lost he could never get back.
 
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