h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Just a suggestion. I have Windows installed on an old 20GB boot drive and all my other stuff on a 200GB slave drive (Programs & stuff) or my 300GB external drive (music & video files).

It means less stress on my data drives, and if the Windows drive goes down, I just need to find the cheapest hard drive on the market, reinstall windows and change a few registry entries.

Not that this is any use to you at the minute. Sorry.

B

Sorry to hear about your news Bel. A similar thing happened to me - I lost two chapters of a book I was working on. So angry with myself!!

The horse has bolted, together with all the data. If it is any concelation I will now (right now) go and do a back-up on my system, since I've been meaning to do this for some time now! Always putting it off!!

Keep smiling!!

B
run that by me again
you have a boot drive? Is that external too?
slave drive?

OK, I'm guessing the boot and the slave are in the computer housing.

are they difficult/expensive to put in?

I think I'm going to have to do the external drive thing for music too. good idea.

B'El. Sorry about your 'puter.
Kick the family out and let them fend for themselves (is it Herbstferien where you are? Ours have been back to school for a week and a half already)

This boot and slave thing sounds interesting... (get DOWN, 2legs! )

I have an old lappy with a 20Gb drive. It's got Win 98on it...could I set this up to do the master-and-servant thing?

RF

how did I know your "oh er missus" radar would pick this convo up, RF?

Mwah ha ha hah!

*Nothing* escapes my pervy eye!

RF

Yes, you people used to have the gist of it. Any computer place will whack you a slave drive in the case, no problem. Although I'd harbour the usual reservations about PC World, of course.

The idea started two PCs ago; when I upgraded I wasn't prepared to sacrifice my large collection of - ahem - downloaded file when the hard drive was the only bit of the system functioning properly, so I asked the computer guys to fix up my old hard drive as a slave, so I could sort things out at will. Can you believe that we used to think 20GB was a large size for a hard drive?

I got the external hard drive a couple of years back when my BitTorrent habit became hard to kick.

Recently, my motherboard and processor went down, and my techie guy told me he was having difficulty installing the drivers for the replacements. He wanted to re-install windows, but this would require reformatting the hard drive.

Again, because I didn't want to lose my data (mostly downloaded games - the other 'material' is now safely on the external drive) , I suggested that he install Windows on my old hard drive (which I had backed up wiped clean by this point). This has worked pretty well, as long as you remember to install software to the E: (large, new) drive, rather than the C: (old, small, Windows) drive. I use Launchy (http://www.launchy.net/) almost exclusively on the new system, and a surprising amount will run well off the E: drive without any registry tweaks.

I can back up the E: drive onto DVD if the fancy takes me without worrying about shifting core files, and if the C: drive goes down, it's simply a case of re-installing Windows onto the smallest cheapest hard drive I can find.

B

*sits on her Matt, letting the conversation flow over her head*

Hope you're back with of healthy PC soon, m'dear.

thanks for the explanation, B

when I've got all that into German - I'll save it for when I have to take my beast into the shop (I've backed up everything I "need" so it's not going to be too much of a disaster)

Thank you all for suggestions and comfort.

Ok, brief (or not so brief)update:

I took my son (youngest son, he's somewhat computer savvy) to the shop yesterday afternoon and we bought a new hard drive. It's funny, you hardly find any internal ones anymore, but he told me an external wouldn't do for my old PC.
Ok, so he tried to boot from the Windows CD, but my PC wouldn't have any of that. So he inserted my new hard drive in his PC and installed Windows for me. All this (first trying to transfer data from my PC (old harddrive) to his, failure, shopping, installing windows etc) took a considerable amount of time, and I'm very grateful that my son did all this for me. I was quite content to do his laundry (something I had told him to do himself for days) and buy him a new (cheap) keyboard (his one lacked two or three keys) in return.

Then the big moment: new harddisk in my PC.
Power on.
Loud bang, power off, PC dead.

As you can probably imagine, I was terrified that the new harddrive could be damaged, so once again, my patient son connected it to his PC - and it was fine.
But, this was the point where he was stuck, so I had to involve my husband after all.
Now he soon found out that some condensator or whatever in the power unit had exploded, and exchanged the power unit with another one that was left from another old PC, started the PC and told me that the old harddrive was fine and the clacking sound etc was probably caused by tension fluctuations in the power unit. He ran the chckdsk (I had been there), it said all was fine (I had been there, too), then started a defragmentation of the harddrive (I hadn't done that, due to him having installed a programme and telling me this would run in the background and defragment on its own).
An hour on, and he told me the harddrive was broken after all, as it had started clacking again.
So, that was where he left things for a while.

This morning, he told me that he'll have to update BIOS on the new harddrive, and that I can't use the PC.
Sooo, I'm still dependent on my son's PC for the moment.

Sometimes it is easier to buy a new computer (which isn't very ecological) but it does stop those grey hairs from appearing. When I was young, I used to get a thrill trying to get people's old computer up and running again. But I found that 9 times out of 10, they only worked for a few weeks, then I got the blame because I helped them.

As you can imagine, I don't need this hassle any more. I leave that for the young'nes!!

I can't afford to buy a new PC, so the fixed (hopefully) old one will have to do.

I'm delighted that they've all rallied around to help you

Best of luck with it all!

Well, yes, I was surprised that there was no moaning and reproaches and questions like: 'what have you done to make it crash' etc, which was what I had expected. Usually, if I have a PC problem, the first thing I get to hear is: but I don't know what you've done to cause it. The only thing was, that my husband didn't listen to me when I tried telling him what had happened and how the PC had 'behaved'. He just cut me off, saying the old harddrive was just fine. I didn't object, though, because I really hoped he was right.

I would buy a new PSU - they are responsible for more computer failures than you realise.

Definitely not an area to skimp on or use old parts.

B

I think the old one blasted because the new harddrive requires more ampère than the old one did. The PSU that's in there now apparently is from a newer PC and should do the job - I hope.

At least there's another computer in the house, I suppose. Hope you get it fixed!

There are three!! other computers in the house, but I wouldn't dare going anywhere near the husband's PC, son #2's PC needs special skills as well as password to be switched on, and that leaves only son #1's PC - as long as he's still asleep.