 |
This won’t take long…famous last words!
17 May 2016 | by 
Below is the rather comical (comical now that is) run down of my computer adventure:
- Installed the new WD hard drive inserted Win7 CD and started the PC. The screen goes blank and PC shuts down!
- I reboot again and get a message “can’t read boot manager”
- I reboot again this time a blue screen and the message “ corrupt bios”
- I now remove the WD drive from PC and boot from the second drive in the PC (my drive for backup’s) with the Win7 CD all booted ok.
- I now figure the WD is bad but I put the WD drive back in on its own removing the Seagate drive just to make sure. Restart PC and it boots into the Win7 CD without issue.
- I now add the Seagate drive and restart and the PC screen once again goes blank and the PC shuts down.
- I Googled it and found out I may be powering both drives from the same daisy chain on the power supply and it can’t handle it. I have to power each drive from a separate daisy chain from the power supply.
- No problem I thought I will just plug in to a second daisy chain……it was too short!
- I had to move the drive down 3 bays which meant removing RAM and the video card.
- With that done the PC starts no problem and low and behold Win7 starts to install on the WD drive.
- Then all of a sudden part way through install I get a blue screen and a message “memory dump” and this is just an ongoing cycle!
- I went onto a PC forum site and was told to run a WD diagnostic program and I did and I was told my new drive was defective.
- Back to the store with bill in hand and a hard drive that is hours old.
- I was told at store that drive could not be returned as I did not have anti-static bag. I flipped and the exchange was made.
- Put the new drive in the PC and this time I ran the diagnostic program first (learned my lesson) and the drive passed.
- It then loaded Win7 without any issues and it was now time to start loading programs.
- I was told I can’t load this version as I am only running Win7 32 bit???? That’s very odd as I know without a doubt I was using the 64 bit version.
- Then it hit me……I installed my Win7 32 bit version and not the Win7 64 bit version!!!!!!
- So had to reformat the WD drive and start all over again. I installed Win7 64 bit and all went well with the software install.
- Finally I wanted to reformate the Seagate drive as it did have some programs on it from before. I wanted to use it to store my backups on.
- As I went to reformat the Seagate drive I got a message “not an active drive” whatever that means!!!!
- Back to the PC forum and I was guided on how to make the drive active and format it.
- So now I have a Seagate 1TB 32mb 7200 drive for backup and storage. The new Western Digital black 1TB 64gb 7200 drive as my main functioning drive.
So how was that for an adventure!
6 Responses to “This won’t take long…famous last words!”
Please support our generous sponsors who make AmateurRadio.com possible:
 Ham Radio Deluxe |
 Ham Radio Prep |
 KB3IFH QSL Cards  Hip Ham Shirts  HamRadioAuctions Reliance Antennas Enigma Shop |  morseDX  Ni4L Antennas  R&L Electronics antennas.us Ears to Our World |
- Matt W1MST, Managing Editor
Aahh … the wonderment of our PCs and all the nuances.
One thing always seems to beget another.
Best wishes.
73,
Nolan Kienitz
KI5IO
Plano, TX
Good evening Nolan, I figured the only reason finally things went well as because there was nothing else the PC could challenge me with.
73, Mike
Next time, use Clonezilla and simply make a backup image. It has saved my butt many, many times!
73!
Good evening Kevin, the funny thing was I had been in the process of a first time backup when the drive I was backing up from failed. Timing is everything they say.
73, Mike
After doing all that, I’m sure your not interested in doing it again for an SSD.
After switching out my 1tb Seagate for a 250g Intel SSD my boot time went from “I’m tired of waiting” to 33 seconds. Power on, Password, Desktop in 33 seconds.
My Seagate was split in half so it wasn’t to hard getting under the 250 mark for the C:
As you have large hard drives, go to grc.com and get your own copy of Spinrite. OK, so it’s $80 something, and you get that for life.
But, “it does what it says on the side of the tin.” Your 500G drive with suspect sectors can probably be recovered, well enough for life as a second drive.
It should also be run on any new drive, before it’s installed, drives these days rely on error correction to work, so it doesn’t take much extra trouble on the surface to mess with that.
Spinrite can identify “weak” sectors and if needed using repeated reads and mathematical methods recover “bad” data. Often you don’t need all the sector, just the part with your data.
It really is well worth the expenditure. It also works with all drives that a PC BIOS will recognize, regardless of what’s installed on it, so you can maintain Mac, Linux Windows, BSD, even TiVO drives etc.
No affiliation, just a long time owner and very happy user who’s but has been puled out of the fire a few times thanks to Spinrite.
73.
Dave G8KBV.