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 Tricky posted on Tuesday, 27 February, 2007 - 09:19 pm
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Just a rant. The hard disk in my main PC suddenly decided to have "bad sectors". For the techies, it means the read/write heads touched the discs, somehow. It's taken 3 long (alcohol-free) days (and a new £50 hard disc) to get back to normality. Thank god I back-up fairly often!
And can I find the receipt for the defunct disc ? Can I #£!$%!^ !@** !!!. |
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| Chris posted on Wednesday, 28 February, 2007 - 07:25 pm
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Tricky,
Sorry to hear about that.
I needed a new hard drive a few weeks ago, but fortunately a friend got me one and fitted it for a tenner! Mind you, I suspect that mine isn't as powerful as yours. Still, it does what I want it to.
Your post highlights the need to backup important files, just in case. I am currently in the process of writing a novel and, guess what, it's all on the hard drive! As soon as I finish this, I'm gonna back it all up on a floppy!
Oh and just to amuse you and prove that accidents DO happen. I spilt a big mug of tea all over my computer keyboard on Monday night and, guess what, the following morning, it wouldn't work! So, I went to Tesco and bought a new one for under a fiver! But lucky for me it was just the keyboard that was ruined and not the actual PC!!!
Right, off to back up my files!!!
See ya!
CD |
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| Mike_b posted on Thursday, 01 March, 2007 - 06:11 pm
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Whilst on hard disks how easy is it to attach another and make it the slave??
Plus what about these cheapish external hards drives GOOD OR BAD |
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| Tricky posted on Friday, 02 March, 2007 - 10:39 am
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2nd Internal drive:-
Fitting a 2nd internal hard disc is easy - if you're technically minded :-). First off, you need to check whether there's a free hard disc drive bay in the PC. Next, check whether the IDE cable (PATA - Parallel ATA - cable in new parlance) has a spare plug for the 2nd disc. The chances are that it's being used by a CD/DVD drive. The cable is a ribbon cable - about 2 inches wide - with either 2 or 3 plugs (40 pin) on it. If there's no spare plug, check the motherboard to see there's a free IDE socket. There's at least 2 on every motherboard, normally right next to each other. Just follow the existing IDE cable. If there's a free socket, you'll need another IDE cable to connect the 2nd disc to the motherboard.
You also need to check if there's a spare power lead/plug for the 2nd disc. It's a (usually) translucent 4-pin plug about an inch wide with 2 thick and 2 thin wires. If there's no spare, you'll have to get a splitter adapter.
You also have to set the "jumpers" on the discs correctly. If there's 2 drives on a single IDE cable, one has to b set to master, and the other to slave. If there's only one drive on a cable, it can be set to either, but preferrably master.
If you fit a second IDE cable and disc, you also need to have a look at the BIOS settings. The "Second IDE" might be set to "Disabled", so you'd need to change it.
2nd External Drive:-
I've never used one, so I'm not 100% sure on this (about 99.99%). As far as I know, they're Plug'n'Play, so setting one up is easy. I'm certain they use a USB port, and have their own power supply, so the most you need is a spare USB socket and USB cable. The cable is probably part of the package - not a seperate purchase.
There's probably some driver software involved too - no big deal. Disc access times will undoubtedly be slower than an internal drive, but depending on what you're using it for, it might not matter. I'd probably use one for backups and storage, before backing up to CD/DVD. I'd be wary of using it for something like video recording/editing. I have heard that you have to power them up fairly often - such as every time you switch on your PC - to make sure you don't "lose" any windows settings, but that's just hearsay.
If the faulty disc in my PC hadn't had the operating system (XP) on it, I'd have replaced it with an external hard disc. (My video recording/editing is done on a very fast SATA (3rd) drive). |
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