Hard Drive Crashed With In 30 Days
Nov 14, 2007
I've been buying Dell computers for probably 10 or 12 years now and have mostly been satisfied with the results. Much more so than my first Microsoft-based machine, which was a Gateway. On it, the hard drive crashed within the first 30 days. But to give credit where credit is due, they had a replacement on my doorstep within 48 hours. Since I've been such a good customer, Dell often sends me sales brochures and on every single page is always the same phrase "Dell recommends Windows Vista Home Premium".
Based on what I've read in this forum, I have to chuckle every time I read that. I must admit that I'm one of those tech groupies who always has to have the latest and greatest. My son's friends used to call me "Mr. First On The Block". That's the main reason I bought a new desktop with the Vista OS, even though I already had two perfectly good XP machines that weren't that old and with which I was perfectly satisfied. (Well, the old desktop was slowing down quite a bit, since it only had 512 megs of RAM and a 60-gig HD). I'm just glad I'm a casual computer user and don't have to depend on 'em to support myself because I'd probably be cussin' Microsoft and Vista too.
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Mar 13, 2009
I just installed Vista x64 for the first time (first time I use a 64bit Windows OS, I have used Ultimate 32bit before back in 2007) and realized updates are being installed almost EVERY day, the disc I have is already updated with Service Pack 1 so I don't understand why there are so many updates being installed all the time.
That's not the issue, the issue seems to be I'm losing around 5-10gb of hard drive space every 2 days or so, seems vista updates are HUGE, when I installed the first time (I have a 500gb drive, in reality it's 465gb) I had 451gb free fair enough, then after some updates the next day I had 440gb! where did the 11gb go? I mean 11gb in updates?Then a day later I had around 425gb! without me putting all my music, games, pictures etc etc!!, after I installed 2 games I had around 409gb which is fair considering they are big games, then I put my pictures in which is not that much, around 1gb And now, a day later without having any extra files myself I already have 398gb free!!, does Vista install something all the time that takes that much space? I know the OS after updates and such it's supposed to take approximately 15gb or so I should have (providing I had not installed my things yet) around 450gb or so.
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Apr 14, 2009
My hard drive crashed, so i bought a new one but when i try to run the recovery dvd disc, as soon as i click start it says Error 100a if problem persists contact hp. i called them and they're telling me i now need to get a new recovery disc, but i dont think they know what they're talking about and im sure they will just tell me i need to buy something else when that doesnt work
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Mar 26, 2008
I have 2 pc's with xp, each with ide drives, One crashed, so I removed the hard drive to run as a slave on my other pc to see if I could retrieve the data. When I did this, the ribbon pulled loose just enough to shut down my drive (yes on the good one). I now have to reboot with original boot disk, which I no longer have. So I go and buy Vista Home Premium, then first am able remove the data (via knoppix) from the old crashed drive (first one). So I put this drive into the 2nd pc as master, and attempt to install Vista.
I get past the "loading software" and then the "windows" progess bar screens, and the screen goes to a black screed with nothing but a mouse arrow on it.
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Jan 9, 2010
I've been using an external USB hard drive to back up my HP laptop system - backing up EVERYTHING incrementally on the drive (including the OS). If I ever had a serious problem, I could rebuild my system without having to reinstall all my software. Recently, my backup hard drive crashed - DEAD!! Before I buy another external hard drive, I would like to get some opinions on other backup strategies. I used to clone my "C" drive (about once a week) in addition to the external hard drive.
But I no longer have an extra 2 1/2" drive large enough to back up to. The cost of additional drives for backup is not an issue. I would just like to get other opinions so I can choose one that works for me. Suggestions for drive models and types are also welcome as well as software. Currently, I use software from Aquarius I.S. Consultancy for sequential backup and I cloned my "C" drive with Acronis True Image.
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Mar 31, 2009
My computer crashed and I currently have my hard drive set up externally to copy the information off of it onto another computer. I was using Windows Mail that came with Vista on my old computer when it crashed. I've been able to salvage my data, but would like to find my messages stored in my Inbox in Windows Mail. I cannot open the program (Windows Mail) currently, but will be able to open it when my new computer arrives. For now, I'm copying needed files off my hard drive and storing them temporarily on my children's computer. I do not know what folders from Windows Mail, or Windows perhaps, that I need to save in order to hopefully open my saved inbox messages.
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Feb 10, 2009
The Hard Drive LED light on my Sony Vaio keeps blinking EVERY SECOND. When it's really quiet I can hear it too, it's constantly writing. Constantly. I did my research - read all the threads on the net and so far I have disabled:
Windows index
Windows defender
Windows search
Superfetch
System Restore
Readyboost
Defragmenter
I have uninstalled google desktop.
The system is totally virus and spyware free, and the anti-virus is not scanning (schedule scan disabled). All Vista updates are installed. Nothing has helped. I've run out of things to disable. I'm running Vista Business SP1, Dual Core 2.2 Ghz, 3 Gb RAM.
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Apr 4, 2009
Never in my llife have I seen a problem with INstaller, but it's happening. In fact, this OS keeps coming up with new bummers, that I haven't had befor. It hard crashed after a few weeks of operation, and a mini hard stroke this week, forget the old blu screen of death, this one has it's one, just discised a little. I've heard one can convert back to XP, but having skipped that one, I don't know how it is. Please put on thinking caps for me as I'm stumped and every thing puiter related is getting more difficult as time goes on.
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Jun 2, 2008
My Vista Operating System Hard Disk Just crashed. It was running Vista Home Premium. My Computer is an HP 8170in media centre PC.
I have managed to salvage most data off it from the other partitions as well as the C: except the my documents which has all my user files on them. I have already tried using an XP computer to get into the hard disk but it doesnt allow me to change the securities from there. Have tried changing security ownership by using articles from the forum by
goin on the security tab in XP but its not allowing me to change this for the documents and settings. Is it located elsewhere by any chance?
Am i changing the wrong folder? At the minute it just shows the folder grayed out with no access to it... you do not have permission message and its disk size shown is 0mb. Assuming this is becuase of a security issue.
I also bought a new hard disk and used the hp restore disks to re add windows vista on that hard disk. Now on that system i cannot access my old hard disk and i get a blue screen. If i attempt to only boot from my old hard disk i get a 0x0000007b (0x78d2524 oxc0000034 ox00000000 0x00000000) error
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Jun 2, 2008
I have managed to salvage most data off it from the other partitions as well as the C: except the my documents which has all my user files on them. I have already tried using an XP computer to get into the hard disk but it doesnt allow me to change the securities from there. Have tried changing security ownership by using articles from the forum by goin on the security tab in XP but its not allowing me to change this for the documents and settings. Is it located elsewhere by any chance? Am i changing the wrong folder? At the minute it just shows the folder grayed out with no access to it... you do not have permission message and its disk size shown is 0mb. Assuming this is becuase of a security issue.
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Aug 26, 2008
My WD 120 GB passport just crashed on me last night after serving me for a well over 2 years. lost 100gig + of data. any possible to methods to retrieve it?
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Jul 29, 2009
I have a ASUS laptop running Vista Home Premium, 64 bit OS. I have several programs that I use but no loner have the insall disks for. Should I have to reformat in the future I would hate to lose them. Here's what I'm thinking: Buy a extrenal hard drive. Seagate, 1Tbit, usb, cost $90.00. Copy my hard drive to it. If I need to reformat. Reinstall Vista from my recover disk that came with the computer. Then copy files from external drive. Bingo. All my old programs would be there and working. Question is: Can this be done?
What file/folders do I need to copy to the external drive?
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May 27, 2008
Is it possible to copy my entire hard drive onto an external hard drive. Vista Premium, all the data, etc. and what would be a good software to accomplish this?
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Sep 27, 2008
I have an external hard drive, I reformated it so I could use Vista's backup.Now it seems that when my brother inlaw tries to put some music files(Itunes) that the hard disc is unavailable to his computer. At this stage it seems that Vista has conned me into destroying a perfectly good WD harddrive!I have created a second partion on the hard drive and I am reformatting that, as I write this, but the only formatting option seems to be this NTFS, and that is what I had already formatted the ExtHD to so I think this formatting will be to no avail!From what I can figure I need to format into FAT but I tried a quick format an ex-fat option was there, but the problem was the same. I am becoming more frustrated with Vista, seems I just keep running into things that should be simple and aren't!
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Mar 23, 2008
when booting up from a vista cd I accidentally had my usb external hard drive plugged in and the drive has been emptied and replaced by windows there are sintimental photos etc on the drive can anyone help me to restore them
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Jul 2, 2008
Does 'Local Disc' D mean it is a drive inside my machine or could it be my external hard drive?
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Apr 17, 2008
I was wonder if anyone know a solution for the following problem. I have a ethernet hard drive and I've never had a problem until using vista and windows server 2008. both operating systems are unable to browse the drive, instead it completely crashes explorer.exe. Windows server 2003 & XP have never had trouble.
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May 18, 2009
i bought a kit for an old hard drive. i got it to work once ealier today, and now it doesn't work. when i plug it into the usb, it will not successfully install. the kit is a rocketfish hd 35, the hard drive is seagate u8 model st313021a. the "remove hardware" icon appears in the tray, but no designated lettered drive appears on the computer.
the hard drive was part of an older tower that i couldn't get to boot. it's strange because just today i accessed the hard drive and located old pictures, music and other files that i hadn't seen in a few years. had i known this would have happened i would have started saving right away. i thought i had it working.
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Mar 26, 2008
I've upgraded my machine at some point in the last year, where I added a new 500GB drive and moved my C: partition across to it. The previous 250GB drive was left in for additional storage. Just recently (while upgrading my BIOS) I realised that my system was still booting from the 250GB drive even though Windows was on the other disk. There is a fair possibility in the not too distant future that I'll replace the 250GB disk with a larger disk, in which case I won't be able to boot. Is there a safe and reliable way to change it so that the system boots from the 500GB disk?
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Oct 6, 2009
I was starting my computer today (that has Vista), and during the start up process, a black screen came up stating that there was an error opening up my external hard drive and it was checking for errors. After it finally booted up, I went to open the hard drive files, and it was totally BLANK! I then restarted the computer, and still the hard drive is EMPTY! I had ALL my important files in there!
The ONLY thing that looks promising is that when I go to Start then to Computer, it shows the hard drive there, and it still shows that 43GB are free of 111GB of storage (same info shows by right clicking on it and going to Properties). Why would it show this if nothing is on the hard drive anymore? Is there ANYWAY to recover these files again you think???? I NEED those files!!!! Remember that the hard drive STILL PHYSICALLY WORKS. It's just that I cannot access the files on my pc at the time for some reason.......
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May 21, 2008
I just bought and installed a external hard drive. I am fairly knowlegable about computers but this is my first Ex. Hard drive and know very little about there use. So what I want to know is how to save my Family Tree Makers files to it. And once I do that how do I know for sure it is opening from my new drive and not my computer C: drive? I saved it to a DVD one time but when the time came when I needed it all that was there was a short cut but no files.
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Sep 8, 2009
I have Windows XP and Vista. I always go through "safely remove hardware" before pulling off USB drive on XP. However, I have been trying to do the same on Vista, it seems that I cannot do the same as XP. For instance, I plug in my USB on Vista and it appears as H drive on Vista, when I am ready to do "safely remove hardware", I don't see the device drive H is on the "Safely remove hardware" window, so I cannot stop the H drive. I am concerned about the Vista hardware.
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Oct 18, 2009
and you can download the new Ubuntu, Karmic Koala, Ubuntu 9.10 from
[url] and it's free and comes with access to thousands
of free programs!
What you can do with Ubuntu:
Email
Surf the web
Burn CDs.
Rip CDs.
Listen to music using the computer.
Watch vidoes/DVDs.
Scan and print.
Spreadsheets.
Presentations
Newsgroups.
HTML editing.
Games like Chess, Tetris, all kinds of solitaire, etc.
Make videos.
Download photos from a camera and organize them.
Translations from one language to another.
Use a dictionary program that's much faster than using a book
Learn how to touch type with a touch type learning program.
Edit images.
Send and receive a fax.
Take screenshots.
Create .PDF files.
Create and use a data base.
Instant messaging with over 10 different programs in one including
Windows Live Messenger.
IRC.
Bluetooth.
What you can't do with Ubuntu:
Worry about:
WPA and WGA raising their ugly heads,
DRM,
Viruses,
Root kits,
Spyware,
and
Malware.
The reasons that Ubuntu is more secure than Windows are twofold:
1. When *anything* in Ubuntu needs updating or patching, it all comes
from the same source and a little orange star appears when any updates
or patches are available. It's a known fact that anti virus apps and
anti malware apps can only deal with nasties that are known, not the new
ones. Hence, it is very important to be updated or patched and not just
the operating system but everything that is installed on the computer.
Windows has no central updating source and the user has to be checking
constantly for updates to their programs or face the possibility of
being compromised.
2. In Ubuntu, when anything wants to install, you have to key in your
password. With Windows, you have to click on "OK" or nothing at all as
is evidenced by drive by malware. Unlike Windows, the Linux kernel is
not intertwined with a browser like Windows is with Internet Explorer
and the kernel is kept away and protected from the user account.
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Apr 4, 2008
My system keeps telling me that my Windows-license will end in x days, though I have a valid Vista-copy. I have installed SP1 in september and from that date it says 'evaluation-copy' in the right-bottom corner. Does anyone know what the problem is?
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Apr 26, 2009
i have an older maxtor 250gb ide hard drive and i am trying to put it in my computer so i can reformat it and install vista ultimate, the thing is when i go to disk manager i can see the drve, feel the drive, but it wont let me initialize it or anything, it comes up as "the request could not be performed because of an I/O devise error, the disk was originally in my modded xbox and i could acces it with xp.
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Mar 23, 2008
I have a new pc with only 256MB of RAM- how hard is it to add memory? Also, how do I find out how many GB the hard drive is?
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Feb 14, 2009
I purchased a new hard drive and named it NEW-BACKUP. I did a exact disk copy from my old BACKUP drive. My wife uses the old drive now. I have renamed my new drive to BACKUP. I am doing complete system backup's pretty frequently. To verify that the backups are happening, I typed in the command "wbadmin get versions" and got a list of the backups. The disk name showed up as "NEW-BACKUP". "NEW-BACKUP" is the destination drive for the backup and renamed as "BACKUP.
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Oct 16, 2009
I just inserted a SD/MMC Card in my laptop, and it changed my external hard drive letter from F to G?, how can I change it back to F again?, as I had everything setup on the FRIVE, now nothing recognises it?
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Mar 23, 2008
Isnt Microsoft up with technology these days? I ordered the Anytime Upgrade from Home Prof to Ultimate, its a download, and I have to wait 5 days? Is this usual?
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Feb 11, 2007
Would you like to extend the activation period to the maximum 120 days instead of the 30 day period that is set by default? It is possible and legal to do this using the software licensing manager in Windows Vista and Windows 7. Simply run slmgr -rearm to get another 30 days at an administrative level command prompt. You can do this a maximum of three times before Microsoft blocks further extensions...
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Nov 22, 2008
I just installed a new hd WD500g sata to my box. Vista "sees" the new hd in device manager, but doesnt see it in "my computer. It is freshly installed and straight out of the bubble wrap,I was thinking gee, maybe it needs formatted...but i dont see that option anywhere...maybe im missing something.... i donno...first time i've run into this....usually the drives are "seen" right away.....
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