Question computer lags... extremely so

[ex-orbinaut]

Yeah, it does sound like the hard drive has gone. It is how I lost several Orbiter add on projects in an advanced stage of development that I was working on some years ago. Silly me, I got lax with backing up.

You can use a LiveCD (eg Ubuntu) to extract your data (via file explorer) and copy (or trying to copy) important data to another drive (USB, SD, another HDD, etc.).

True.

System Rescue CD, which I used to try and rescue some stuff from the drive, is what lead me into becoming a dedicated Linux fan/user after my HD "event". It eventually did not work to recover anything, as it was impossible to access the drive at all (it was literally dead), but you may have some luck recovering something.

 

[PeterRoss]

Well, scandisk worked the entire day yesterday and didn't get above 20%. I don't think i'll want to use that disk anymore even if I managed to reinstall windows...
On the bright side, I finally hqve an excuse to shove an ssd in there...

What's your problem with laptops? :lol: I remember it's not the first one you're having troubles with. My laptop is being constantly abused by children for several years already (last one - it was thoroughly powdered with flour), and it's still working. Well, stuff happens, I guess. There is no guarantee my laptop isn't being smashed by a hammer right this moment.:uhh:

 

[jedidia]

What's your problem with laptops?

The plural form is more essential to this problem than you think... My Wife has a laptop, I have a laptop, we have some laptops we use for workshops...

They all have pretty much one thing in common: Except for mine, they're all way beyond their designed service life. And mine is a HP Pavilion dv4, which I got from my brother in law some years ago when it was only one year old. I could not really afford such an expensive machine myself...
Anyways, the Pavilion DV4 is a nice toy, but as I noticed not really a workhorse... It's got too much power stuffed into too little place and is overall lacking in the robustment department.

Also, my wife's prior laptop was a Dell Inspiron. Dell alone says enough, really, but the inspiron is exactly the kind of fancy finakly thing that the Pavilion turned out to be. The case started to come appart long before the hardware started to give out...

So yeah... several laptops, and they're all usually beyond age (my wife's currently using a lenovo thinkpad... R60!! Looks like these things are bloody indestructible).

 

[Dantassii]

On my last project I had a hard drive die on my tower about every 2-3 years. About 2 years before they laid me off, they replaced my tower with a laptop. I informed them when they gave it too me that they were just asking for trouble as I would probably have a dead hard drive by the end of the year.

2 weeks after I got it, I had a drive head failure take out 250k of the hard drive (according to scandsk). 5 months after that another 2 Mb died. They laid me off just shy of 2 years after I got it, but I figure I was due for a complete hard drive failure any day.

Just remember when an SSD dies, you loose everything.. instantly.. So don't put anything on it that you haven't backed up or that you can't rebuild quickly.

And yes, I do back up my HUMONGOUS IMS ships every week.

Dantassii
HUMONGOUS IMS shipbuilder

 

[jedidia]

remember when an SSD dies, you loose everything.. instantly

On the other hand, they are a lot less prone to failure because no moving parts, as far as I understand it.

 

[PeterRoss]

I wonder what are you doing with your hard drives to make them crash this often. I have lots of computers under my care, and there is a class of machines which have their hard drives failing every two-three years on constant basis, but these are video servers, and their hard drives are working without rest for all these two-three years until they die. My home computers have HDDs working for god knows how many years (I've just found one IDE HDD on my family file server with 1404 days of operation time, wow...) without a fail.

 

[jedidia]

I wonder what are you doing with your hard drives to make them crash this often.

This is actually the first time a hard drive failed me in a pretty long time.

The last time with my wife's laptop wasn't a drive failure, it was a failure on the board, which, what with Dell being Dell, results in locked up bios and hardrive with a master password, which you don't know and Dell won't tell you, insisting on you sending in the machine instead. It happens enough times that there's a few threads about it on the net... :facepalm:

Then there was the problem on my wife's new (old) laptop that had to do with a windows update and made me think the disk didn't work correctly (what with the system not finding its own executables anymore).

Right now i'm working on a Toshiba antiquity I borrowed from a friend until my new disk arrives. It has a hard to locate hardware switch for the W-lan, as well as the most ridiculous keyboard layout I've ever seen. The del key is on the bottom line of keys right next to alt-gr, the $ key is where usually the enter key is, and half the time when you hit space you hit< instead. Fun typing on this thing...

Edit: Oh, you were probably directing your post at Dantassii. Never mind, then.

 

[PeterRoss]

It has a hard to locate hardware switch for the W-lan, as well as the most ridiculous keyboard layout I've ever seen. The del key is on the bottom line of keys right next to alt-gr, the $ key is where usually the enter key is, and half the time when you hit space you hit< instead. Fun typing on this thing...

I believe the people who is trying to be creative where it's not needed (i.e. inventing non-standard keyboard layouts) are deserving punishment by the law :lol: But my worst nighnmare about keyboard was'n the layout itself, it was "Power" button located right under Del. Oh, how I wished to kill the dude who decided it would be better to place it there :compbash2:

---------- Post added at 00:34 ---------- Previous post was at 00:28 ----------

By the way, in my place the most common computer failure is power supply unit, next goes motherboard - both are caused mainly by power surges in electrical supply network.

 

[jangofett287]

To be frank, if there is a power surge, its better that the PSU sacrifices itself rather than the MoBo gets fried. Replacing those things takes all day. That and I don't think I could get another copy of this MoBo, so if it dies I would have to re-install the entire system.

 

[PeterRoss]

To be frank, if there is a power surge, its better that the PSU sacrifices itself rather than the MoBo gets fried. Replacing those things takes all day. That and I don't think I could get another copy of this MoBo, so if it dies I would have to re-install the entire system.

Not every PSU is this inclined for self-sacrifice. Some of them doesn't seem to be affected at all while MB dies. And, yes, replacing MB can be a headache, especially if it's 775 socket, as it is with most workhorse computers dying around me last months.

 

[Urwumpe]

On the other hand, they are a lot less prone to failure because no moving parts, as far as I understand it.

SSDs have a limited amount of write cycles because of the used semiconductor technology.

But even this limited number of write cycles is still having the effect that a SSD on the average lasts twice as long as a HDD. But not for all eternity.

 

[Keatah]

Regardless of what storage device you use, be sure you run with backups.