Dead hard disk....
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!
So today, i was making a collage in Paint Shop Pro, with some large photos.. i had my email client, about 20 web pages, Trillian, and almost a dozen or so other windows open... vim, calculator, ImageWalker, several folders... So understandably my RAM was running low... I have 1GB in there, but Task Manager was reporting only 200-300b of pysical ram free and a huge page file... So, understandable that the computer was acessing the hard disk a lot, right? It's just that once in a while, i'd move something in PSP, and it'd start accessing the hard disk constantly for ages, and the UI would grind to a halt... Ok, so it's paging! Thrashing, even... Maybe I should close a few programs :-) I tend to have a lot open at once.
Twice I had to force reboot because of that. The third time I was so sick of losing my work (and yes, I was saving regularly, but not regularly enough) I'd done a fair bit of fiddly stuff since my last save, so i thought: Well, if it's just shuffing memory around on the hard disk, it ought to finish doing it *eventually*... Then I can at least save my work before rebooting cleanly. So I went to have a cup of tea(Yes, tea) and watch TV. More than an hour later, I return, only to find it with a BSOD... a blue screen saying NO_PAGES_LEFT, etc, etc "your computer has been halted to prevent damage". So I assume it'd looped until it ran out of not only RAM but hard disk space too? *sigh* So much for saving my work.
So I reboot, resigned to starting again, yet again... but instead of the familiar Windows XP loading screen, I get "Missing operating system_".
WHAT THE HELL???
Reboot a two more times, just in case it's acting... OH NO.
Insert Ubuntu Dapper Drake live CD... /dev/hda1 has NO FILESYSTEM PRESENT.
Which means that my hard disk is DEAD... Everything GONE. I havn't made a backup of stuff on there in YEARS. Yeah, I should know better. But... I SWEAR I was planning on doing somehting soon: just today I was looking up energy-efficient CPUs for a new server I want to build.... Run Windows 2k3 as a file-server, among other things.... I would have been backing everything up in under a month's time.............
I didn't have anything of particuar importance on there... At least, nothig that i can think of at the moment. I'm sure i'll discover lots of little things soon enough... Little things people have sent me over IM that they probalby won't send again... Photos i've taken recently that aren't on my mum's computer... Old Uni assignments I want to keep just for the nostalgia... Chat logs... Old emails... Half-finished programming projects... So nothing critical like current uni assignments... that would be much worse. However, there is the pain of buying the replacement hard disk and re-installing from scratch... meanwhile that was my only computer in current use... the one i'm using now is Jonno's.
Well, I guess i'll be keeping regular backus now!! I've learnt the hard way...
...I wonder if there's any point trying to recover at least some file fragments? Not sure what's possible without going to a data recovery agency, which this isn't worth.
WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!
*sighs* 2am now... I suppose i'd better get some sleep... I have work tomorrow morning, but i needed to get this out of my system... Can't just realise everything is gone then go to sleep.
So today, i was making a collage in Paint Shop Pro, with some large photos.. i had my email client, about 20 web pages, Trillian, and almost a dozen or so other windows open... vim, calculator, ImageWalker, several folders... So understandably my RAM was running low... I have 1GB in there, but Task Manager was reporting only 200-300b of pysical ram free and a huge page file... So, understandable that the computer was acessing the hard disk a lot, right? It's just that once in a while, i'd move something in PSP, and it'd start accessing the hard disk constantly for ages, and the UI would grind to a halt... Ok, so it's paging! Thrashing, even... Maybe I should close a few programs :-) I tend to have a lot open at once.
Twice I had to force reboot because of that. The third time I was so sick of losing my work (and yes, I was saving regularly, but not regularly enough) I'd done a fair bit of fiddly stuff since my last save, so i thought: Well, if it's just shuffing memory around on the hard disk, it ought to finish doing it *eventually*... Then I can at least save my work before rebooting cleanly. So I went to have a cup of tea(Yes, tea) and watch TV. More than an hour later, I return, only to find it with a BSOD... a blue screen saying NO_PAGES_LEFT, etc, etc "your computer has been halted to prevent damage". So I assume it'd looped until it ran out of not only RAM but hard disk space too? *sigh* So much for saving my work.
So I reboot, resigned to starting again, yet again... but instead of the familiar Windows XP loading screen, I get "Missing operating system_".
WHAT THE HELL???
Reboot a two more times, just in case it's acting... OH NO.
Insert Ubuntu Dapper Drake live CD... /dev/hda1 has NO FILESYSTEM PRESENT.
Which means that my hard disk is DEAD... Everything GONE. I havn't made a backup of stuff on there in YEARS. Yeah, I should know better. But... I SWEAR I was planning on doing somehting soon: just today I was looking up energy-efficient CPUs for a new server I want to build.... Run Windows 2k3 as a file-server, among other things.... I would have been backing everything up in under a month's time.............
I didn't have anything of particuar importance on there... At least, nothig that i can think of at the moment. I'm sure i'll discover lots of little things soon enough... Little things people have sent me over IM that they probalby won't send again... Photos i've taken recently that aren't on my mum's computer... Old Uni assignments I want to keep just for the nostalgia... Chat logs... Old emails... Half-finished programming projects... So nothing critical like current uni assignments... that would be much worse. However, there is the pain of buying the replacement hard disk and re-installing from scratch... meanwhile that was my only computer in current use... the one i'm using now is Jonno's.
Well, I guess i'll be keeping regular backus now!! I've learnt the hard way...
...I wonder if there's any point trying to recover at least some file fragments? Not sure what's possible without going to a data recovery agency, which this isn't worth.
WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!
*sighs* 2am now... I suppose i'd better get some sleep... I have work tomorrow morning, but i needed to get this out of my system... Can't just realise everything is gone then go to sleep.