I help out at a primary school with ICT problems. 17 identical Dell computers that are now 4 years old.
Last night one failed with a hard drive failure. On the POST settings screen it clearly recognises it as a Maxtor Athena hard drive but will not boot up from it. If I put it in mine as a slave then it is recognised by the POST bit but not by windows or DOS. I am assuming it is probably trashed but
1) Anyone got any ideas how I can get access to it?
Like I said there are 16 other identical machines so...
2)What is the best software to image one of the other hard drives so I can get this other one working again?
Thanks in advance
edit: yes they are all running BOINC despite only being celeron 1200's. Every credit counts!
Advice wanted
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UBT - Timbo
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Hi Darren,
There's two parts to a hard drive (obviously):
The electronics
The disk(s) that rotates
Clearly the PC at boot recognises the electronics in the POST, hence why it's coming up OK.
But with Windows and DOS not seeming to recognise the FAT (most likely) which is stored on the disk surface, so it's probable that the disk is totally trashed.
There are disk editors around and recovery services around that can restore the stuff on there if it's important - but hopefully anything important has been backed-up, so given the age of the drive (4 yrs) then the cheapest best solution is to chuck it (if it contained important info, then smash it with a nice big sldege hammer - you can even "auction" the right to do this !!). Then buy a new drive (real cheap nowadays) and then re-install from the back-up.
(edit): Hopefully you've got the original OS disks to re-install from - otherwise, you need a "boot disc" to set-up a new hard drive and install a fresh OS. Ensure you allow it to have "network access" and then you should be able to copy across from another PC onto the new HDD. (/edit)
In terms if "imaging" software, there are commercial solutions available, but a suggestion I would make to you is this:
Clearly these PC's are on a network - might be the time to create a script on each PC that runs at a particular time each day, that "copies" data from each PC "working folders" to a NAS (which can be a cheap Linux box with a mega HDD). Then you've got a "back-up" of "work data" that maybe no more than one day old (which is enough for most).
Scripts should run at different times to help the NAS, and if the PC's are on 24/7, then overnight is OK.
Or you can install a cheap-ish DVD-R drive on a networked PC and then archive across to that - depends on the size of the files. Access speed is much slower than a NAS and the consumables part will build up costs wise - if you adopt a "each day, each week, each month" back-up schedule policy.
(edit): Then you can copy to any machine as and when needed (/edit)
Ultimately, it's down to what budget you have available and how you can make things run automatically in order to implement it simply.
regards,
Tim
There's two parts to a hard drive (obviously):
The electronics
The disk(s) that rotates
Clearly the PC at boot recognises the electronics in the POST, hence why it's coming up OK.
But with Windows and DOS not seeming to recognise the FAT (most likely) which is stored on the disk surface, so it's probable that the disk is totally trashed.
There are disk editors around and recovery services around that can restore the stuff on there if it's important - but hopefully anything important has been backed-up, so given the age of the drive (4 yrs) then the cheapest best solution is to chuck it (if it contained important info, then smash it with a nice big sldege hammer - you can even "auction" the right to do this !!). Then buy a new drive (real cheap nowadays) and then re-install from the back-up.
(edit): Hopefully you've got the original OS disks to re-install from - otherwise, you need a "boot disc" to set-up a new hard drive and install a fresh OS. Ensure you allow it to have "network access" and then you should be able to copy across from another PC onto the new HDD. (/edit)
In terms if "imaging" software, there are commercial solutions available, but a suggestion I would make to you is this:
Clearly these PC's are on a network - might be the time to create a script on each PC that runs at a particular time each day, that "copies" data from each PC "working folders" to a NAS (which can be a cheap Linux box with a mega HDD). Then you've got a "back-up" of "work data" that maybe no more than one day old (which is enough for most).
Scripts should run at different times to help the NAS, and if the PC's are on 24/7, then overnight is OK.
Or you can install a cheap-ish DVD-R drive on a networked PC and then archive across to that - depends on the size of the files. Access speed is much slower than a NAS and the consumables part will build up costs wise - if you adopt a "each day, each week, each month" back-up schedule policy.
(edit): Then you can copy to any machine as and when needed (/edit)
Ultimately, it's down to what budget you have available and how you can make things run automatically in order to implement it simply.
regards,
Tim
Thanks, but it became irrelevant because it is now down to the county council to get it sorted. Probably only take about 3 months then.
Fan failure over the power supply as well so it looks like the inside of the PC "cooked". Don't suppose having BOINC running helped though!
Nothing important on it anyway, files are all saved on the server
Fan failure over the power supply as well so it looks like the inside of the PC "cooked". Don't suppose having BOINC running helped though!
Nothing important on it anyway, files are all saved on the server
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UBT - Timbo
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Dazza wrote:Fan failure over the power supply as well so it looks like the inside of the PC "cooked". Don't suppose having BOINC running helped though! Nothing important on it anyway, files are all saved on the server
Yup, I had a fan fail on a PC power supply - it was/is a home-brew Dual-CPU P3/800Mhz that I set up a year or two ago to crunch SETI.
It was doing well but seemed to get very hot - thought it was because it was a smaller than average sized box, so I put in an extra fan.
But it crunched very well.
Then the PSU failed. And when I looked inside the PSU, it was a real mess - everything in there was totally cooked. So am guessing that the failure of the PSU fan some time earlier was responsible - but I never knew...and the poor old PC kept on going as long as it could....!
If anyone has a cheap P3/P4 type PSU going spare that they want to donate, let me know !! (Can't be bothered to spend £30 on a PC World supply.....).
regards,
Tim
