Major system crash
 

not looking good here... I'm in full data recovery mode here working off a secondary system...

this is gonna be ugly...

:(

format C:

okay, I unplugged the main slave backup drives, and I got the system up.. but the fucking thing is chirping at me... :eek7

anyone ever dealt with this?

I never had a HDD chirp at me before...

sounds like a dot matrix printer working overtime.,....

mobo beeps, there is no speaker on the hdd to beep that i know of

internal speaker usually means BIOS/mobo problems

maybe ur ide controller or some other setting (did u remove the drives manually in ur CMOS when u booted up after taking the drives out?)

:helpme

I just pulled the ribbon cables out....

rebooted a few times, and now everything seems cool.... I think it was one of the backup drives failing.... I had a sneaky suspicion that one was on it's last leg....

seems to be okay now....

Sounds like what our one lead system did a couple weeks back except our noise was like a European siren. Bad bios chip. :( Don't turn it off or its dead til you replace the MB, if thats what is going on.

scared the fuck outta me though cuz it gave me the 'NTLDR MISSING' message and wouldn't boot.....


that's a baaaaad message.

it could be the bios, but I don't think it is.... I've booted a few times now... printer noises are gone and seems to be cool.... I knew that drive was going bad a while ago, but I thought I could use it for some not-so-important backup stuff...

We built a backup system that is backed up every night from this system as well as files from our deds. lolALL the content, programs and scripting saves to it. We won't let this happen again! Took us two weeks to get the new MB. First one the shipped was wrong. Grrrr

Just an old p2-333 but it holds 4-40g hard drives! Got them for next to nothing at compusa on clearance to go over to the 7200rpm models. Got the RAM for a song as well. Well worth the 150 bucks to rebuild that system.

I hear ya.... I never rely on only one drive.... I have numerous drives here.... reason it was so scary is that I don't yet have a backup large enough to dump all the data from this one big one onto if it does die.... I could save it all, but I'd have to spread it out across several drives....

guess I'll be ordering some new stuff this weekend.... heheh.... :winkwink:

Gemini, you still using Powerquest?

I would recommend that you invest in a DLT7000 drive. They are reasonably priced and far more stable than the DDS formats.

Microcenter has WD - 80g 7200's for 99.99 this week and all sorts of RAM on sale. :thumbsup Should be able to get them online as well.

:thumbsup

Hmmm powerrquest? I know the name but don't remember what it is. lol The hubby runs our network so I have no idea what all is on it. Not completely anyhow. We have over 500g's of HDs in this thing. I only use a small part of the network. :)

Drive Image.... I started using it last year when you recommended it.... worked great for a while, then one day just stopped working here... lol

it was sweet for auto backups, but I don't know why it gave up the ghost....

Oh yeah! Thought that was what it was. We still have it but I'm not sure if thats getting used now or not. He's going to have our tech write us scripts and such for doing it so nothing has to be entered into the program. Just auto run it by itself. Probably will have them for sale on a site when we get them done. :)

Amp-

I am a sales guy for a VAR during the day and work mostly with mid size enterprise groups. Not much small stuff, but not much huge stuff.

One of the IT managers gave me the greatest advise I have had...I went out and bought a 120g USB external HD and use windows scheduler to back it up every other night. There are three types of back up systems and you can read up on which methodology you like. Full, incredmental, and another one I can't remember anymore.

bottom line is this, I have had two computers belly flop and since I have this external drive with my C and D drives mirrored on it, all I have to do is plug the external drive into a USB port and I am up and going. No loss of time...something to think about....I did a little research and found the BUSLINK drive to be pretty reliable, but wish I had bought the 200G version.

One note, make sure you protect the external drive with a good UPS/surge protection unit, so you don't lose the world with a lightening bolt...I think I plunked 400 bucks down for mine.

Amp-

DLT, DAT and all the other flavors up back up systems are good, b ut I have seen a ton of trouble with them on a complete system failure. People like them because they are cheap and there are some great programs to automate the backup process. I especially like ARC serve.

I always challenge the owner of business to reformat his drive and lets restore with his tape drive...they don't take me up on it. That speaks volumes about the reliability....I would be perfectly comfortable with a format c: and restore with my external drive....they are not that expensive, around 250 bucks, but buy a good one, there are some linksys and D-link ones that I wouldn't trust.

forgot one thing.....make sure it is USB2....or it will take weeks to backup...there are even some firewire ones out, too