Technology SUCKS

[Ranchero50]

Shaking fist in the air...

Darned puter in my garage died, something happened to the motherboard where it would only start up if warm. While tinkering with it the hardrive died, lost all the connection data between the mill and the puter. Lost all the original pictures of the truck and boat rebuilds. In a fit of rage managed to step on my USB wireless (not real sure how it ended up on the floor) so now it's dead...

I had another HD with Xp on but it was sort of buggered. Spent the last couple days trying to polish that turd, finally gave up and gathered up all the spare hard drives (12 or so) to see if any others had working copies of Xp. I also have a Dell 9100 that a guy gave me, HD died on him, so today I'm getting one of my good HD's with a good copy of Xp in the Dell updated. Spent an hour getting the Dell updates, now I had 93 security updates to dowload for Windows.

Fortunately the Dell has a working wireless card installed and it found my network so once this puter is working I can work on the mill (DOS based) communications again. Robroy saved me last time and I still have a hundred or so emails.

It's funny how dumb stuff can really bring you down but once it's working again you feel so much better...
Jamie

PS, there was an ad on CL for dead HD's for an art project and I have 9 that are dead

[Swegner99]

PS, there was an ad on CL for dead HD's for an art project and I have 9 that are dead

This same listing was on CL in my area, wonder if its some kind of recycling scam. Could that still be considered a scam?

[Mancar1]

Yes at times I feel that way about technology also.
Damn what a day you R having. Kinda makes me feel a little quilty for wearing the shirt I have on. It reads, "The Good Life." Naaa, I don't feel that quilty
Sure am glad you got it all squared away though.

[Ranchero50]

It is better, although I about pooped myself when the genuine advantage crap came up, wasn't sure where this version came from. But it's all good so far.

Jamie

[Madman]

Remember, this is the same technology that keeps your heart and lungs running when you go to the emergency room!

[averagef250]

I hear you!

I look at computers as a necessary evil, but as time goes on sure seems like anything that microsoft has a hand in pretty much totally sucks. WHY do all the CAD/CAM programs need windows to run? Got to be the stupidest thing out there.

Hypothetically, you have a machine shop with hundreds of thousands of bucks invested in CNC machine tools that are in themselves highly refined engineering marvels. You have to draw the parts on and rely on a Windows PC for the post processor and DNC in order to operate these machines and make a living. So all this complex stuff relies on the most jacked up problem prone operating system.

Maybe there's ways around this or I misunderstand how it really works, but windows sure makes things a hassle me.

[basketcase0302]

Swegner99 on Tue Nov 22, 201 Ranchero50 wrote:PS, there was an ad on CL for dead HD's for an art project and I have 9 that are dead
This same listing was on CL in my area, wonder if its some kind of recycling scam. Could that still be considered a scam?

Maybe it's just my "Mel Gibson conspiracy theory" but I'd never let go of a hard drive no matter how fried it may be. My spent ones typically get a 2 pound sledge to them.

[Bob]

Sometimes a little time in a freezer can get 'em going long enough to copy your stuff off of them... So I'm told by our computer guru anyway...

Personally... I've always relied on the slam the box method when mine has started growling. Works for about a month or so but it's a very noisy method and can take several attempts especially toward the end.

Another little fun fact... the sledge hammer comment made me think of... You know when you erase stuff it's still there? The box just tells itself that that space on the drive is now available to right on but it doesn't actually make it go away. Back in the good old DOS sans windows days... you could type "undelete" and get your stuff back so long as things weren't written over those files yet. Don't know how that works today? I'm not very computer literate.

[Calfdemon]

Sometimes a little time in a freezer can get 'em going long enough to copy your stuff off of them... So I'm told by our computer guru anyway....

This can work sometimes depending on how bad the drive crashes. But if you do this, make sure you put the hard drive in a sealed zip-lock baggie to keep the moisture out. You only want the frozen temperature, not the condensation that goes with it.

[68F100Merlin]

Hard drives that are not physically broken into pieces still hold all of your information on them. A person of low moral character can get them for free, pull all of the 1s and 0s off of it and by Friday have a credit card with your name on it. Never is it wise to recycle a hard drive that has not been physically damaged. I prefer a couple 1/2 holes drilled through the interior disks.

But you do what you want I'm not the hard drive police.


Oh and this is why they tell you to always have a back up.

[Ranchero50]

Hard drives that are not physically broken into pieces still hold all of your information on them. A person of low moral character can get them for free, pull all of the 1s and 0s off of it and by Friday have a credit card with your name on it. Never is it wise to recycle a hard drive that has not been physically damaged. I prefer a couple 1/2 holes drilled through the interior disks.

But you do what you want I'm not the hard drive police.


Oh and this is why they tell you to always have a back up.

Maybe but I was thinking about it after swapping the disc into another 40g HD that each HD is built differently enough that the head won't track the same disc to disc so the data is pretty much gone. My disc had scratches so I tried another and I couldn't even format the disc.

Jamie

[Ranchero50]

Frank, 'dead' is just meant they didn't have a good copy of Xp on them.

I had a RAID setup on four of the 40g's I had a few years ago, a couple 120's were customers and I had one 160g that died a few years ago that I couldn't throw away at that time and a couple others came from free puters. The 40g puter I had in the garage was a micro ATX MB of ugknown source. The Dell I built is working well other than I don't have the antenna's for the wireless, It's about 100' from the router to the garage puter so wireless was the easiest route.

The windows curse is I'm afraid if I get too updated either my CAD program won't work on Windows 7 won't want to talk to the DOS machine. We have 7 on the laptops at work and they are ok, not as robust as when they had Xp though. Seems we are so used to how terrible Vista was we don't realise how little things have improved with 7 over Xp.

[70_F100]

As long as Microsoft continues to support XP, there's no way I'll migrate to Win 7.

XP Pro is rock-solid, and a heckuva lot easier to navigate than Win 7 .

My work laptop has Win 7, and I think it really sucks!!!

[69rangerf100]

the best way to make sure that you can not retrieve any data off the hd is to put 9 self tapping screws through the drive so that even if they somehow get the drive to turn the data is not retrieveable since the sectors on the drives are broken.

side note most of the time you can still pull information off of a so called dead drive with an external usb hd adapter typically run about 15-20 bucks at a computer store. i have done this several times.

David

[70 ranger]

I think it is sort of ironic that the tie that binds us all is the simple bump! It is by todays standards so archaic compared to a new truck. We all like the simplicity of it . Yet we all have to move into the technological world in order to use this forum. I tried for a long time to avoid the computer thing.I didn't need another hobbie! It wasn't until I was working on a harley and I had to know wich way the piston went. I looked across the [censored] ( I was single) and saw that dang computer and knew it had all the answers! I got the answers pretty quick, and never looked back. I guess the only way we can enjoy our simple life is to step into the modern world and embrace these dang things!
Good luck with your computer!