African American Computer Education Technology Technology

Hard drive failure. What I did

Yesterday I had to change my hard drive and had a few issues that I was able to fix.

The problems started in the morning when my wife called me and told me that the computer would not boot. We have been having trouble with our hard drive for a while now and I was able to fix each time by just reseting the PC. This time though the computer was not seeing the hard drive. Using tools and knowledge that I had I had to do the following:

Install new hard drive

First of all I had to install the new hard drive. I was able to do this by disconnecting my CDR and leaving myDVD drive, two old hard drives in the machine, plus a new 80 gig drive with a 16 meg cache. I was unsuccessful at loading Windows though as I kept getting an error as the Windows setup was starting, after loading the drivers I would get an error that it could not load the setup. I switched to my CDR from the DVD drive and had no problems.

Setup Windows

I successfully did a quick format of the new drive (thanks for that new feature Windows XP) and successfully loaded Windows XP. This is pretty basic as I use a CD that not only has Windows XP on it but also has Service Pack 2 for XP slipstreamed onto it.

Rebuild hard drive partition table

After I booted to Windows I saw that my old drive was not showing up as a drive or a partition. If I right clicked on the partition in Disk Management it knew that the drive existed but could no longer find a partition on it. Windows Disk Management said that the drive was healthy, My first attempt was to create a partition but not to format the partition as I did not want to lose the data for good. I fought with this for a couple of hours as I did not back up lately and the wife would kill me if I lost all of her data. In the end I was able to use Test Disk from the Filesystem tools of the Dos Ultimate Boot Disk. It ends up that the partition table had a start but not an end and the program was able to fix this….whew I would have been in trouble….

Migrate Windows and Office data

After I had the old drive back I went into the BIOS and chose to boot from that drive. I was able to boot to the old Windows XP installation easily enough and did not want to keep any of the data there but thought it would be a good idea to transfer my Windows settings using the file and settings transfer wizard in Windows. I saved the settings using the wizard and chose this as the old computer and in the destination I chose a folder I created on the new hard drive called “transfer files”. I then decided to transfer only my settings as I knew that I was going to have to reload my software and would be manually copying over the file structure from the old drive to the new drive.

I also moved all of my settings for MS Office using the Save my Settings Wizard from the MS Office 2003 tools section. I was able to copy the settings, which come across as an OPS file to the same place as my Windows Transfer Files and Settings.

After I had moved the settings and files over I rebooted and went back into the BIOS and changed my first boot to the new hard drive and it’s windows XP installation. I was very happy to see that after running the wizrds for transfering the settings and after reloading MS Office 2003 I was able to move over my mail folder and saw all of my email, contacts, and best of all my email addresses (Still had to fill in the passwords for email but that’s OK). After a relogon I also had all of my desktop settings back includig the background picture of my daughter and the animated Pingu cursors.

Copy data from bad drive

Next I just did a blanket move of all of the files from the old hard drive to new into a new folder that I created in the root of the drive. I did this simply to save time as I am not sure about the stability of the old hard drive and fear that I will lose it again.

Reload software

I have started reloading software but as usual I am going to be slow about the move this time. I will install some of my favorite freewares and will install Streets and Trips, Adobe Acrobat, Macromedia Dreamweaver and Adobe Photoshop Elements and that’s it.

I have roughly followed about half of my Reloading Windows tutorial but since I have both drives functioning at the moment I have tried to cut some corners and make this work well as well as getting my wife up and running quickly for her work stuff this morning.

African American Computer Education Technology Technology stuff to buy

Pal Pc Tracker - Stops Computer Theft!
Computer software that allows you to find your Pc anywhere in the world if it's ever lost or stolen!

How To Make Money Working From Home!
A practical, Step-By-Step guide to start making money on the Internet using your computer!

Cleaning Computers - Secrets Exposed!
How To Start Your Own Profitable Computer Cleaning Business - Step By Step Business Kit!

African American Computer Education Technology Technology Recent Stories from around the internet

african american computer education technology technology

NAIROBI, Nov. 10 (Xinhua) -- Tennis superstar Serena Williams will visit Kenya later this week to open a school she has funded in collaboration with the Build African Schools Initiative and technology firm Hewlett Packard (HP). The world number three ...

Serena to visit Kenya for charity work - Xinhua News Agency

Google Earth's new layer of ancient Rome offers virtual tourists the chance to explore an ancient city at its peak. (Credit: Google) Google Earth is extending its satellite perspective to paint a picture of what the ancient city of Rome looked like ...

Read all 'Education and reference' posts in Webware - CNET News

Profession: Select Job Function ----- Technology-Related: [select below] ----- Computer Product Reseller Database Administration Development Project Management ...

Step 2 - Zd Net Asia.com

There have been two developments recently in the world of online video that aim to convey U.S. military life in Iraq back to the home front -- though for much different purposes. On Monday the New York Times ran a short feature on the redesign of the ...

Archives » November 2008 - Newsweek Blog

[See August update here .] First, last fall, there were all kinds of people, a number of them Ron Paul supporters, dashing from Internet site to Internet site suggesting that John McCain could not serve as president of the United States. That was ...

Barack Obama's birth certificate revealed here - Los Angeles Times Blogs

"Spirometry in Children with Persistent Asthma and Gastroesophageal Reflux: before and Two Years after Anti-reflux Treatment." (Abstract #1: Nov. 9 at 1:00 p.m.) - Aaron K. Kobernick, M.D., New Orleans, La., et al - Gastroesophageal reflux disease ...

Latest research on diagnosis and treatment of allergic diseases - News-Medical.Net

Following a Thursday one-sided report by correspondent John Blackstone, on Friday’s CBS Early Show, co-host Maggie Rodriguez continued to lament the passage of California’s Proposition 8, defining marriage as only between a man and a woman: "On ...

CBS ‘Early Show’ Continues to Push Gay Marriage - News Busters

New Orleans sanitation director Veronica White stormed out of a budget hearing yesterday after a City Council member accused her of withholding requested information about garbage service, saying her contradictory testimony was grounds for dismissal ...

New Orleans City Councilwoman Stacy Head accuses sanitation director ... - New Orleans Times-Picayune

Let’s start with a joke. Question: “What’s the best thing about Jerusalem?” Answer: “The road to Tel Aviv.” Just a joke, but an increasing number of secular Israeli residents of this troubled city believe it and they are leaving. In the ...

November 2008 - ABC News Blogs

• New Jersey Nets vs. Indiana Pacers • New Jersey Nets vs. Indiana Pacers • New Jersey Nets vs. Indiana Pacers Patti Sapone /The Star-Ledger Connie Smith of West Long Branch, 45, center, listens to William Winn, special assistant, office of ...