2 posts tagged “hard drives”

Well, now I've done it. My CD burner just upped and stopped working a couple of weeks ago (right after Elizabeth burned a mix CD for the mixclub), so I ordered a new drive (a DVD-burner, since even the better ones are around $30).

Today, I tried to install it.

Somehow, when I was in there replacing two plugs, I messed up something major. Now, the hard drives aren't recognized upon bootup, and I've checked all the connections. I'm really worried that I didn't ground myself well enough and I damaged the hard drives. I haven't been incredibly diligent with the backups lately, although most files don't change much. I would lose photos from the last 3 weeks or so, any minor file changes (including our wedding spreadsheet), and many MP3s that I downloaded legally over the last few months.

As I do use this computer as a backup for my work computer, my employer's tech guru is currently trying to diagnose the problem. So far, he hasn't had much luck (he can't even get the PC to boot from a USB floppy device so that he can flash the BIOS).

I guess the worst case scenario is that I lost all my data and the computer. If I didn't lose the data but the box itself is useless, I guess I can get a new PC and an external IDE case to read my old files. Not that I can necessarily afford that right now...

Edit: Somehow, he got the thing to work. He flashed the BIOS and gradually added the drives, primary (boot) first, then the second one. He's going to add the DVD burner while he's in there, and I guess it's good to go. His theory is that either the BIOS was having some trouble with one of the new components or the power supply could use some help. I guess this means I'm about to be in the market for a new PSU.

Firefox: Is FF 2.0 working well for everyone who's tried it? I've held off upgrading in case there are some show-stopping bugs, but I'd love to start taking advantage of some of the new features soon.

Hard drives and PC power: I've had this new hard drive installed for maybe a month, and I've experienced the following problem: When the computer is accessing the new drive, everything in Windows seems to slow down. I don't have this problem with my old hard drive. Both drives are IDE drives; the partition on the new drive is 241 GB in size; I also seem to have a slightly slower write speed to the new disk. I'm wondering what the cause is: 1) My power supply isn't enough to handle both drives/the new drive on top of everything else, so that's why things are slowing down; 2) the drive, one of the newer ones with Perpendicular Recording, is somehow too good for my pitiful computer; 3) Some sort of caching configuration is off (that only affects the new drive; or 4) I have a defective drive. Any ideas?