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Tath

Tath

New Member
ok i come home and my computer won't boot. everytime it tries it goes to the title screen "gateway fx" then goes to a black screen and says:

intel boot something something establishing link, then says unable, and insert boot disk

i went to the bios menu, tabbed over to the boot menu and under Hard drives it says there is none, i'm assuming my drive is dead.

so far I've tried different plugs for the power cord, different connections for the sata cable, a different sata cable, all to no avail.

Best buy will charge me $79 to diagnose it, but then if it turns out the drive is bad i lost basically the cost of a new drive.

it is under warranty, but i dont' want to ship it off for 30 days, they have an option of spending $19 and they send you a replacement then you ship yours in, but think that's safe? i had finance info on the drive.

anyway what do you think? do the replacement? if the drive is dead could someone pull off my info? I'm limited on funds or i'd just buy a new drive.

any help is appreciated.
 
If it is under warranty I would go that route. You should mount the drive before you send it off and copy any important files to another computer. You can do this with an external enclosure or an adapter (something like this) that allows you to connect the HD to another PC via USB. Then just browse to your My Docs folder and back it up.

Do not send it to BestBuy or patronize their techs. You might as well throw a dart at Craigslist for a tech before you go to their guys.

The data is probably safe being sent to your manufacturer, but I would def want a copy kept at home in case they have to wipe the drive and wont back it up as part of the service.

I really doubt the drive is dead, unless you are hearing clicking noises and weird sounds. Most likely Windows is corrupted and needs to be fixed or reinstalled.
 
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ok i understood files, pc and usb lol


how do I copy them if the drive won't work? it was the only drive on the pc, i'm writing this on the kids and I can't hook it up to this one as it was a sata and this one is ide

any suggestions?
 
Well that is what the adapter is for, it gives power to the drive and allows it to be mounted to another PC like it is an usb external drive. Then you can browse it like any backup drive and pull off the files.

Like I said, I am pretty sure the drive works fine, its just the windows that has problems, but that wont stop it from doing what I described to pull off files.
 
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ok sorry I didn't see the link in your first reply

so correct me if i'm wrong but if I had that, I would hook it up to my old drive, then plug it into my new computer where it would pull the data, then I hook up my new drive and it will copy it over?

just want to be sure I understand before I go to the boss and ask for teh money :)

Thank you for helping I really appreciate it

**after reading the reviews it looks like I can hook it up to the existing computer that is not functioning, and boot from the cd with the new drive hooked up and it will clone my bad drive to the new one?

thanks again just checking if I have it right
 
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I would not do a whole clone in this case but just drag and drop the files that are important to you to another PC. This would probably be the My Documents folder which if on WinXP contains your My Music and My Pictures folders.

You hook it up to the old drive, hook it up to another PC, open the OldDrive from My Computer (it becomes like the H: or K: or whatever) then drag and drop files to a folder on the C: drive of the other PC.

If you want, when you are ready to copy files off, you can call me and I can connect to the PC remotely over the internet and help you do the transfer. I do this all the time as part of my work. I can give you my phone # in pm or we can talk it through on vent.
 
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ok couple more questions if you have the patience :)

I don't really have alot of files that I can't replace, I can get my music back thru itunes, my main concern and this is where my questions come in, This comp was given to me with no hd, so I bought this one and got an oem version of vista64, I still have the install cd's sooo

if I get a new drive, can i put the os back on the new one? I wasn't sure if I could which is why I was wondering about clone, I don't want to nor can I afford to buy another os at the moment.

so if I can, i'll just get the new drive thru replacement and reinstall everything, if I can't not sure what I'll do lol

Thanks again!
 
Oh, well if you can replace all the files with no real pain, then by all means just get the replacement drive and install Vista again from the disks. No need to bother backing up the files.

In fact once you have the new drive in, you can probably just put the old drive in as a 2nd drive and the new drive might recognize it just fine to pull off files before you send it back. It might be too messed up to boot to windows but it might be just fine for mounting and pulling files off as I was saying.

ps. You may have to call Microsoft to activate the Vista license on the new HD but that's easy and is like a free 5 min call talking to a robot.
 
ok thanks for all the help!!!! really appreciate it

gonna look to back up my files in the future lol
 
one word for you tath..carbonite.com

one caveat keep the backup size below 30 gigs(so don't use it to backup your music library if it's large). I would also consider an external hdd(any of them come with automatic backup software these days).
 
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