We've all done it, attempted to pinch a penny, cut a corner, recycle parts from something old into something new. Now while when it comes to electronics you USUALLY can do that, if the problem is a hard drive that is about to die, 9 times out of 10 you're better buying a brand new hard drive. This lovely screen belongs to a customer's computer I was trying to reload Thursday night going into Friday morning. I had two computers to work on a Gateway desktop that had mystically decided that it didn't want to recognize Windows XP anymore and a Toshiba Laptop that the owner promised he had put a new, non dieing hard drive in. To be fair the real dagger in my heart was the Gateway, as I would find later it would require at least 7 hours to load windows 7 on that computer. 7 hours, a despicable task because usually I can get a computer reloaded within 2 hours, regardless of the operating system so the fact that I started at 8 o'clock and finished around 2:30 am did not sit well. To make matters worse, I still had to load drivers for it's Surveillance system card, which added ANOTHER 2 hours to my total, to say I was exhausted is an understatement.
The Toshiba I treated like a rotisserie chicken I set it and forget it, came back in about an hour and 30 minutes and I got a nasty gram "Windows 7 could not be loaded on to this computer, all changes that have been made have not been saved". Excuse me, I just wasted a good hour waiting on you while I was running back and forth with Captain Molasses who might as well be visiting Nanoock in his home(Nanoock of the North, joke my mother used to use when we left the door open in the winter back in Jersey). So of course I restart windows on the Toshiba and begin the load again only to get a little orange message that leads to that pop up box. Why me? The customer and I had just had a DETAILED conversation as to why he needed a different hard drive, about the importantance of using a good drive(didn't have to be new new, it just had to be WORKING). I almost wanted to call him and ask if he had taken the surname Flecher and had his cousin 'Dung been in for a visit, it didn't matter where he got the drive it just needed to work.
And no this wasn't me just being mean a computer knows when a HD is about to die and has all sorts of nastygrams to tell you about it. When you first boot your computer up you could get a nice basic type message warning you that "You HD is about to die, please back up all your data to a new HD and replace it," which can be annoying if you didn't dilligently back up your information. That is the ALL HANDS ON DECK variety, you don't have to go looking for it, it's sitting right in your face. You could also go to your start menu> conrtol panel> Administrative tools>Event Viewer> System logs and check and see if you get a Red Circle with an X in the middle telling you HD0,HD1, HD2, etc is failing. Usually it's HD0 which is where your Operating System(or OS) tends to reside, but sometimes it's you secondary HD, or if you partition your HD it could be one partition. The issue with it being a partion on the drive and not a second HD is that if the partition is going bad than the entire HD is going bad and there isn't much you can do for it but try and retrieve your data. This is not to say a "bad block" warning is the end of your HD, sometimes you can run a check disk and the computer can clear up a bad section of data, sometimes a shutdown, a hang up or other unexpected glitch can cause data to be saved incorrectly depending on the size of you HD check disk may be able to go through and fix said data irregularity.
Another Nastygram is the "you computer has just recovered from a serious error" which should be your cue to go check you Event log, or you can go start>My Computer(or Computer for those who have Vista or Windows 7)> Right click on Computer> Scroll Down to and left click on Manage(you may get a User Access Control pop up just click yes/ok/Allow)>scroll down to and click on Disk Management and you should see a listing of all of your HD's, Cd/dvd/bluray drives, etc. Now this is a very dangerous place to be if you aren't paying attention USUALLY your C/HD0 is your boot drive, you want to be VERY CAREFUL with this drive, you pooch this drive you most likely will need a full reload. Your data may be accessible(as long as you don't format the drive), but you OS(Operating System) may be toast. Usually if a drive is either not fomatted, initiated, or ready you will get 2 pop ups, the first just initializes the drive into the computer(which you can just hit yes through most of the boxes), the second set of pop ups will be to format the new drive(if it needs it) and you actually want to pay attention here, make sure you leave the drive as NTFS first, and second check QUICK FORMAT, whether you name it or you just leave it as New Volume is completely up to you and the lettering is completely up to you, you can let it auto select the next open later that isn't A: of B: or you can select whatever letter you like for it. Just please do not format the C: drive unless you have already backed up your data or else just wish to start from scratch(which can be a good thing at times).
The one pictured above is of course the "No we refuse to load on this piece of garbage I don't care what you heard about us we have standards" nastygram(okay maybe I am paraphrasing but still), rarely do I get it but it's always a royal pain when I do. It's inconsiderate it uses up all my time and leaves no room for any type of negotiation "I want a new HD" now you could POSSIBLY use this as a data drive(if you aren't worried about you data being lost to you in the future, big if) but I wouldn't recommend it, do the Free agent trick save what you can to a new drive and use that one as a paperweight. Thats my recommendation but you can do what you like, just understand dieing is dieing.
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