On this same note, I would like to ask if anyone else has had a similar situation? As I mentioned in the above article, I have opened old, dead hard drives on several occasions and gotten them working again, without touching anything inside.
The excuse I give to anyone who asks what I did, and to myself for explaining such a phenomenon, is that HDDs just need a little fresh air once in a while. I have to wonder if there's some truth to this poor excuse of mine. Has anyone else had similar experiences where they open a drive and it begins working again, or do we all just get extremely lucky once in a while???
My incident with a set of stairs isn't quite so bad, but it's a story of bravery and luck...
My mother used to work for a lawyer in a big office, and one day they decided to relocate to a smaller one. My mom brought home a few of their computers (amongst other stuff) to store for a few weeks until the move was complete, so I helped her carry everything in. They were nothing special, just a bunch of old p133's and such (but they got the job done since this was a few years ago), but I couldn't wait to take pictures of a huge stack of computers in my house! In our garage there's a set of 3 steps to get into the house, and I lost my balance going up them with one of the desktop cases (yes I said i fell UP the stairs, you know you've done it too)... UH OH. I plugged her in just to make sure everything was functional, but the hard drive just clicked around and wouldnt boot. I tried it in a different tower just to make sure it wasnt a loose ISA (remember ISA???) card or something, and it wasn't. Needless to say my mom was pissed because there was alot of info on there she needed, so I decided to test my luck since I was already screwed... I get out my toolset and crack open the HDD and then booted it, and noticed that the arm that the magnetic heads are on wasnt moving. I gave the arm a little push and she began going back and forth like normal (if you've never seen this you should find an old HDD and try, because its an amazing sight... almost too fast for the eye to see), so I put the cover back on and she still works today. (just on an informational note, it was a 500mb Maxtor drive). I can not tell you what a relief this was, and my mother was pretty happy too.
I do NOT recommend EVER trying this with an important drive except as a last resort, but I have done it on several occasions with the same luck.
When you're on old computers that you just keep around for extras, why on earth would you go buy a whole new computer??? when i mentioned a computer's bios not supporting a boot from cdrom, this is what i was talking about. I just setup linux on a friend's laptop last week. It was an AMD K6 300mhz and it would not boot from cdrom. are you telling me i should throw this away because it's old, even though it is still 100% functional?? he just wanted to experience linux and that was a perfect computer for the job. 50% of your comments are based on the idea that you can boot from cd, so if you can't, we automagically negate half of your comments in one sweep.
NO, any school will not let you check your personal email "just for school work." My old high school (just last year) would not let us check personal email for anything, they had filters setup and such because not everyone would really be checking mail just to get school work now would they? If you went to the teacher and specifically requested it, she would usually let you check from her computer, but you cant imagine every student (500+) coming to this already busy teacher so they can check their mail. and please note that the mail reason people could not check their email was because everyone constantly brought virii onto the school network (their computers would have a virus and they wouldnt know, and instantly itd be accross the network [stupid word macros])
It is a well-known fact that the vast majority of people that use linux get it for free [beer] from the internet, this is the one of the many beauties of linux. What we have to keep in mind is the fact that with every new version of windows released, the price jumps. These days an upgrade version to WinXP can cost $100+ (isn't that what the full version of win98 used to cost??) and a full version can be as much as $280! so it's a wonder if sales are really increasing, or if they keep making more money because they keep charging more money?
Not to mention the fact that as M$ cracks down more and more on 'piracy' (one person buying win and installing it on all 3 of their computers, for example) the same windows users have to keep purchasing more and more copies, which leads to more revenue (I have also heard that they are hiking prices for contracts to universities and businesses)
So it's obvious that microsoft is making money... but does this necessarily mean they are becoming more popular??
when you buy a new HDD, how would you be able to set it up without the trusty dos boot disk (or the disk that comes with it, they dont come with cds for that stuff
what about school??? if you're in college and you type a paper in your dorm, you dont want to burn a word doc to cd just so you can print on the school's computers, and also if you type a paper at home (even gradeschoolers do it) and need to revise it at school, you use a floppy (alot of schools dont let you check personal email now so no emailing to yourself)
virus scanners always have emergency boot disks incase you get a boot virus (would you want that whole ~1mb of files on a CD!!???)
buy a new network card and you need the drivers before you can get on your network, and those come on a floppy disk
you format an old computer which you no longer have driver disks for, so you go to another computer and download all needed drivers that arent on the win(if you're using win) disk, and put those on floppy and run it to the other computer
i have been on many computers lately that wont boot from cdrom, which could be a prob when installing a new OS
sorry about the ones that are repeated from this page and such
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On this same note, I would like to ask if anyone else has had a similar situation? As I mentioned in the above article, I have opened old, dead hard drives on several occasions and gotten them working again, without touching anything inside.
The excuse I give to anyone who asks what I did, and to myself for explaining such a phenomenon, is that HDDs just need a little fresh air once in a while. I have to wonder if there's some truth to this poor excuse of mine. Has anyone else had similar experiences where they open a drive and it begins working again, or do we all just get extremely lucky once in a while???
My incident with a set of stairs isn't quite so bad, but it's a story of bravery and luck...
My mother used to work for a lawyer in a big office, and one day they decided to relocate to a smaller one. My mom brought home a few of their computers (amongst other stuff) to store for a few weeks until the move was complete, so I helped her carry everything in. They were nothing special, just a bunch of old p133's and such (but they got the job done since this was a few years ago), but I couldn't wait to take pictures of a huge stack of computers in my house! In our garage there's a set of 3 steps to get into the house, and I lost my balance going up them with one of the desktop cases (yes I said i fell UP the stairs, you know you've done it too)... UH OH. I plugged her in just to make sure everything was functional, but the hard drive just clicked around and wouldnt boot. I tried it in a different tower just to make sure it wasnt a loose ISA (remember ISA???) card or something, and it wasn't. Needless to say my mom was pissed because there was alot of info on there she needed, so I decided to test my luck since I was already screwed... I get out my toolset and crack open the HDD and then booted it, and noticed that the arm that the magnetic heads are on wasnt moving. I gave the arm a little push and she began going back and forth like normal (if you've never seen this you should find an old HDD and try, because its an amazing sight... almost too fast for the eye to see), so I put the cover back on and she still works today. (just on an informational note, it was a 500mb Maxtor drive). I can not tell you what a relief this was, and my mother was pretty happy too.
I do NOT recommend EVER trying this with an important drive except as a last resort, but I have done it on several occasions with the same luck.
When you're on old computers that you just keep around for extras, why on earth would you go buy a whole new computer??? when i mentioned a computer's bios not supporting a boot from cdrom, this is what i was talking about. I just setup linux on a friend's laptop last week. It was an AMD K6 300mhz and it would not boot from cdrom. are you telling me i should throw this away because it's old, even though it is still 100% functional?? he just wanted to experience linux and that was a perfect computer for the job.
50% of your comments are based on the idea that you can boot from cd, so if you can't, we automagically negate half of your comments in one sweep.
NO, any school will not let you check your personal email "just for school work." My old high school (just last year) would not let us check personal email for anything, they had filters setup and such because not everyone would really be checking mail just to get school work now would they? If you went to the teacher and specifically requested it, she would usually let you check from her computer, but you cant imagine every student (500+) coming to this already busy teacher so they can check their mail.
and please note that the mail reason people could not check their email was because everyone constantly brought virii onto the school network (their computers would have a virus and they wouldnt know, and instantly itd be accross the network [stupid word macros])
It is a well-known fact that the vast majority of people that use linux get it for free [beer] from the internet, this is the one of the many beauties of linux. What we have to keep in mind is the fact that with every new version of windows released, the price jumps. These days an upgrade version to WinXP can cost $100+ (isn't that what the full version of win98 used to cost??) and a full version can be as much as $280! so it's a wonder if sales are really increasing, or if they keep making more money because they keep charging more money? Not to mention the fact that as M$ cracks down more and more on 'piracy' (one person buying win and installing it on all 3 of their computers, for example) the same windows users have to keep purchasing more and more copies, which leads to more revenue (I have also heard that they are hiking prices for contracts to universities and businesses) So it's obvious that microsoft is making money... but does this necessarily mean they are becoming more popular??
when you buy a new HDD, how would you be able to set it up without the trusty dos boot disk (or the disk that comes with it, they dont come with cds for that stuff
what about school??? if you're in college and you type a paper in your dorm, you dont want to burn a word doc to cd just so you can print on the school's computers, and also if you type a paper at home (even gradeschoolers do it) and need to revise it at school, you use a floppy (alot of schools dont let you check personal email now so no emailing to yourself)
virus scanners always have emergency boot disks incase you get a boot virus (would you want that whole ~1mb of files on a CD!!???)
buy a new network card and you need the drivers before you can get on your network, and those come on a floppy disk
you format an old computer which you no longer have driver disks for, so you go to another computer and download all needed drivers that arent on the win(if you're using win) disk, and put those on floppy and run it to the other computer
i have been on many computers lately that wont boot from cdrom, which could be a prob when installing a new OS
sorry about the ones that are repeated from this page and such