Howdy folks,
Whenever I run into a problem with my Win7 machine that I can't solve, I come here and usually one or more of you have an answer. This time, however, I don't hold out much hope.
I walked away from a normally functioning Win7 system early this afternoon (I'd left it on as I frequently do) only to come back to it a few hours later to a screen informing me that the system was unable to boot properly -- I didn't write down the message, but it's one I've seen before. Basically, it can't find the boot sector on the hard drive.
So I start going through the "Repair" process and keep getting stymied. Well since I've had the system set to dual boot to WinXP as well, I finally booted XP, took a look in Windows Explorer, only to find that one of my system's two hard drives was missing. It was a 2TB drive I had installed barely a year before -- a year and 3 months, actually, to replace a 750 GB drive that had suddenly started tossing error codes, warning me of an eminent failure. Which is why I bought the 2TB drive. Can I name names? A Seagate. Never have cared for Seagates. Guess what brand of drive the used one that failed was. Uhhuh.
So, still unwilling to face the fact that my primary partition (and largest extendedl partition) had disappeared, I tossed my Linux Parted Magic (and other useful utilities) CD into the machine and had a look around. Yep, the Linux utilities found the 2nd hard drive, no problem. But they could find no trace of the 2TB drive.
I figured I'd give things one more try before I give up and write off this drive, which I know has only a 1 yr warranty, and toss it out to you folks, see if you might know of something else I could try. The Windows Repair disk is saying the Boot configuration is corrupt, that the repair action taken was partition table repair, and that the result was failed with an error code given as 0x490.
You're not gonna hurt my feelings if you tell me there's no hope. But it isn't gonna stop me from getting pissed off. I mean, tell me this -- how on earth, short of backing up your files to an online storage source, does a person back up a 2TB drive? I have a 1 TB backup drive that is full to capacity with as many backup files as it can hold from the last scare I had. Fortunately because I was able to clear a lot of "old files" off the remaining disk's partitions, this allowed me to move many more current files onto this disk's partitions, so that the crash will result in a lot of time spent reinstalling and reconfiguring software, but I don't think I lost all that much. And in case you're wondering why I have so many files -- I'm a photographer, and one moderately sized .tif file can easily take up 100MB or more. So it doesn't take all that long to fill up a really big drive. The files I've lost, though -- well, it does sting a bit cuz I dunno if I'll ever have a chance to replace them.
Oh Well. Tomorrow I shop for a NON Seagate replacement.
Whenever I run into a problem with my Win7 machine that I can't solve, I come here and usually one or more of you have an answer. This time, however, I don't hold out much hope.
I walked away from a normally functioning Win7 system early this afternoon (I'd left it on as I frequently do) only to come back to it a few hours later to a screen informing me that the system was unable to boot properly -- I didn't write down the message, but it's one I've seen before. Basically, it can't find the boot sector on the hard drive.
So I start going through the "Repair" process and keep getting stymied. Well since I've had the system set to dual boot to WinXP as well, I finally booted XP, took a look in Windows Explorer, only to find that one of my system's two hard drives was missing. It was a 2TB drive I had installed barely a year before -- a year and 3 months, actually, to replace a 750 GB drive that had suddenly started tossing error codes, warning me of an eminent failure. Which is why I bought the 2TB drive. Can I name names? A Seagate. Never have cared for Seagates. Guess what brand of drive the used one that failed was. Uhhuh.
So, still unwilling to face the fact that my primary partition (and largest extendedl partition) had disappeared, I tossed my Linux Parted Magic (and other useful utilities) CD into the machine and had a look around. Yep, the Linux utilities found the 2nd hard drive, no problem. But they could find no trace of the 2TB drive.
I figured I'd give things one more try before I give up and write off this drive, which I know has only a 1 yr warranty, and toss it out to you folks, see if you might know of something else I could try. The Windows Repair disk is saying the Boot configuration is corrupt, that the repair action taken was partition table repair, and that the result was failed with an error code given as 0x490.
You're not gonna hurt my feelings if you tell me there's no hope. But it isn't gonna stop me from getting pissed off. I mean, tell me this -- how on earth, short of backing up your files to an online storage source, does a person back up a 2TB drive? I have a 1 TB backup drive that is full to capacity with as many backup files as it can hold from the last scare I had. Fortunately because I was able to clear a lot of "old files" off the remaining disk's partitions, this allowed me to move many more current files onto this disk's partitions, so that the crash will result in a lot of time spent reinstalling and reconfiguring software, but I don't think I lost all that much. And in case you're wondering why I have so many files -- I'm a photographer, and one moderately sized .tif file can easily take up 100MB or more. So it doesn't take all that long to fill up a really big drive. The files I've lost, though -- well, it does sting a bit cuz I dunno if I'll ever have a chance to replace them.
Oh Well. Tomorrow I shop for a NON Seagate replacement.
My Computer
At a glance
Win7 Ulitmate x64AMD Phenom II X4 840 3.2 GHz16 GBATI Radion HD 4290 on the MoBo
- Computer type
- PC/Desktop
- Computer Manufacturer/Model Number
- Home built
- OS
- Win7 Ulitmate x64
- CPU
- AMD Phenom II X4 840 3.2 GHz
- Motherboard
- ASRock 890GX Pro3
- Memory
- 16 GB
- Graphics Card(s)
- ATI Radion HD 4290 on the MoBo
- Sound Card
- M-Audio Delta 66, AMD on MoBo
- Monitor(s) Displays
- LG 34", AOC 22" flat screens
- Screen Resolution
- 2560x1080, 1680x1050
- Hard Drives
- 3 TB, 750 gig, 500 gig
- PSU
- 500w
- Case
- no-name
- Cooling
- ps fan, case fan, cpu fan
- Keyboard
- Logitech
- Mouse
- Logitech
- Internet Speed
- 45+Mbps
- Antivirus
- Microsoft Security Essentials
- Browser
- Mozilla SeaMonkey, Chrome
- Other Info
- I'm a musician and a composer, so this PC is used primarily as a digital audio workstation (DAW), so sound is king. I'm also a photographer, so I also make use of it for image processing. I find the ATI Radion on the MoBo to be perfectly adequate in this respect and the AOC 22" monitor to be respectable. It's about time for an upgrade, though.
