Hi Folks
Yesterday was a bad day at the office (understatement!)
This old Dell Optiplex 780 suddenly decided that it couldn't open a LibreOffice file, and then the PC fell in a heap.
Wouldn't boot up into Win10, the built-in 'restore / repair' functions didn't.
Booted into Linux from a usb stick, and copied my data across to a spare hard-drive.
This morning (the copy took a while!), I downloaded a copy of EasyRE,
and booted from that. After a couple of tries, it repaired the disk to
the point that it now boots and runs Win10 again.
Really didn't want to to what MS wanted me to do and run a complete
reinstall of Win10 and all the programs.
So - two questions
1) Given the possibly flaky nature of this 1TB hard-drive - what would
you do next? My inclination is to buy another 1TB hard-drive and clone
this one to it (ASAP), then swap the drives over. Good plan?
2) As yesterday was a bit of a wake-up call - probably time to
re-evaluate my backup strategy..
My thought would be to do a disk image to a spare 1TB hard drive every
night (PC is on 24/7) - so, in the event of another catastrophe, it's
just a matter of swapping hard drives.
What do you think?
Don't want to get involved with clouds or NAS backups.
Many thanks
Adrian
On 2/27/2022 5:41 AM, Adrian Brentnall wrote:
Hi Folks
Yesterday was a bad day at the office (understatement!)
This old Dell Optiplex 780 suddenly decided that it couldn't open a
LibreOffice file, and then the PC fell in a heap.
Wouldn't boot up into Win10, the built-in 'restore / repair' functions
didn't.
Booted into Linux from a usb stick, and copied my data across to a
spare hard-drive.
This morning (the copy took a while!), I downloaded a copy of EasyRE,
and booted from that. After a couple of tries, it repaired the disk to
the point that it now boots and runs Win10 again.
Really didn't want to to what MS wanted me to do and run a complete
reinstall of Win10 and all the programs.
So - two questions
1) Given the possibly flaky nature of this 1TB hard-drive - what would
you do next? My inclination is to buy another 1TB hard-drive and clone
this one to it (ASAP), then swap the drives over. Good plan?
2) As yesterday was a bit of a wake-up call - probably time to
re-evaluate my backup strategy..
My thought would be to do a disk image to a spare 1TB hard drive every
night (PC is on 24/7) - so, in the event of another catastrophe, it's
just a matter of swapping hard drives.
What do you think?
Don't want to get involved with clouds or NAS backups.
Many thanks
Adrian
Open a "command prompt" window at the administrator level and try the following. (Start menu, type "comm", do not left click on the "Command Prompt", instead to a right click and choose "Run as administrator".)
"DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth"
followed by "SFC /scannow"
With out the quote marks on the above two entries. Both are built in utilities that come with Windows 10 and most older versions. Both
programs can take quite a while to run depending on how much, if any, corruption they are trying to repair.
Watch was the log outputs are at the end of each to see if they found anything to fix or was unable to fix something.
Normally I would suggest making a copy of the drive first but since you
just copied everything you wanted to keep I would just have at it.
Could your problems be caused by a dying drive, yes, but it could just
as easily be just a glitch brought on by a bad Microsoft update, power glitch, or anything else that can inhabit Windows machine.
2) As yesterday was a bit of a wake-up call - probably time to
re-evaluate my backup strategy..
My thought would be to do a disk image to a spare 1TB hard drive every
night (PC is on 24/7) - so, in the event of another catastrophe, it's
just a matter of swapping hard drives.
What do you think?
Don't want to get involved with clouds or NAS backups.
The EasyRE utility apparently did some "repairing" of the hard drive -
and everything seems to be working for the last 24 hours...
I've a replacement HDD on order - so plan to clone this drive to that
one when it arrives, and relegate the current one to a Linux machine in
the workshop, whose sole job is to provide background music!
OK on the many and varied possible causes of this problem...
Quite a scare, though.
On the plus side, I spent a happy couple of hours yesterday evening
cleaning out a lot of accumulated 'stuff' from the hard drive,which now
has a lot more space...
Thanks Adrian
On Mon, 28 Feb 2022 08:19:54 +0000, Adrian Brentnall wrote:<snip>
<snip>
The EasyRE utility apparently did some "repairing" of the hard drive -
and everything seems to be working for the last 24 hours...
I've a replacement HDD on order - so plan to clone this drive to that
one when it arrives, and relegate the current one to a Linux machine in
the workshop, whose sole job is to provide background music!
OK on the many and varied possible causes of this problem...
Quite a scare, though.
On the plus side, I spent a happy couple of hours yesterday evening
cleaning out a lot of accumulated 'stuff' from the hard drive,which now
has a lot more space...
Thanks Adrian
Have you had a look at the SMART data?
That is usually a good indication of the health of the hard drive.
On Tue, 01 Mar 2022 13:45:03 +0000, David wrote:
On Mon, 28 Feb 2022 08:19:54 +0000, Adrian Brentnall wrote:<snip>
<snip>
The EasyRE utility apparently did some "repairing" of the hard drive -
and everything seems to be working for the last 24 hours...
I've a replacement HDD on order - so plan to clone this drive to that
one when it arrives, and relegate the current one to a Linux machine in
the workshop, whose sole job is to provide background music!
OK on the many and varied possible causes of this problem...
Quite a scare, though.
On the plus side, I spent a happy couple of hours yesterday evening
cleaning out a lot of accumulated 'stuff' from the hard drive,which now
has a lot more space...
Thanks Adrian
Have you had a look at the SMART data?
That is usually a good indication of the health of the hard drive.
You replied to my email address!
Two SMART monitor tools which might help are:
<http://crystalmark.info/software/CrystalDiskInfo/index-e.html>
and
<http://www.acronis.com/en-eu/personal/hard-drive-health/>
No guarantees, but they are free.
Cheers
Dave R
On Tue, 01 Mar 2022 13:45:03 +0000, David wrote:
On Mon, 28 Feb 2022 08:19:54 +0000, Adrian Brentnall wrote:<snip>
<snip>
The EasyRE utility apparently did some "repairing" of the hard drive -
and everything seems to be working for the last 24 hours...
I've a replacement HDD on order - so plan to clone this drive to that
one when it arrives, and relegate the current one to a Linux machine in
the workshop, whose sole job is to provide background music!
OK on the many and varied possible causes of this problem...
Quite a scare, though.
On the plus side, I spent a happy couple of hours yesterday evening
cleaning out a lot of accumulated 'stuff' from the hard drive,which now
has a lot more space...
Thanks Adrian
Have you had a look at the SMART data?
That is usually a good indication of the health of the hard drive.
You replied to my email address!
Two SMART monitor tools which might help are:
<http://crystalmark.info/software/CrystalDiskInfo/index-e.html>
On Tue, 01 Mar 2022 13:45:03 +0000, David wrote:
Two SMART monitor tools which might help are:
<http://crystalmark.info/software/CrystalDiskInfo/index-e.html>
and
<http://www.acronis.com/en-eu/personal/hard-drive-health/>
No guarantees, but they are free.
Undeterred, I go looking inside the Optiplex 780 (SFF) for spare SATA / power connectors - only to find that there are none - and, even if there were, there's no room to physically mount the darn drive!
(Yes - shoulda checked beforehand...)
Am I right in thinking that a "SATA power & data splitter cable" will at least let me sort out the electrics - the mechanical side will probably consist of sitting the new drive on a piece of corrugated cardboard for
the duration of the clone operation...
The other options was 'to try a different external drive housing' - but
I got the impression this was a 'repeat until you get lucky' type of operation.
Adrian Brentnall <adrian@inspired-glass.com> wrote:
Undeterred, I go looking inside the Optiplex 780 (SFF) for spare SATA /
power connectors - only to find that there are none - and, even if there
were, there's no room to physically mount the darn drive!
(Yes - shoulda checked beforehand...)
Am I right in thinking that a "SATA power & data splitter cable" will at
least let me sort out the electrics - the mechanical side will probably
consist of sitting the new drive on a piece of corrugated cardboard for
the duration of the clone operation...
You can't split SATA[*] but your motherboard says it has 3 SATA data connectors, so assuming you have one for the current HDD and one for a DVD, there should be one spare. There is also an eSATA connector on the back, which is a different connector from a regular SATA but should work the same way. A power splitter cable should be fine.
The other options was 'to try a different external drive housing' - but
I got the impression this was a 'repeat until you get lucky' type of
operation.
An eSATA enclosure should be less hit and miss than a USB one (which are sometimes tetchy to boot on old machines) - eSATA is just like having an internal drive. All you need is to find one that is the appropriate size
for the drive (2.5" or 3.5") - although they're possibly rarer than they
used to be.
Theo
[*] well you can, there are things called port replicators, but mostly used for server purposes, but maybe your BIOS won't boot from them. Better not
to go there.
You can't split SATA[*] but your motherboard says it has 3 SATA data connectors, so assuming you have one for the current HDD and one for a DVD, there should be one spare. There is also an eSATA connector on the back, which is a different connector from a regular SATA but should work the same way. A power splitter cable should be fine.
I rarely use the DVD, but I expect that the DVD SATA cable won't work as
a temporary HDD SATA cable.....
This reminds me why I don't much about with PC's any more <grin>
Thanks for your help
Adrian
On 2 Mar 2022 at 22:33:05 GMT, "Adrian Brentnall" <adrian@inspired-glass.com> wrote:
I rarely use the DVD, but I expect that the DVD SATA cable won't work as
a temporary HDD SATA cable.....
I think it would - it's what I do when I need to temporarily lash an additional HD to my PC.
True Image used to be really good, but I really dislike the
subscription model for stuff I only use very occasionally. Is
Macrium generally felt to be the best alternative these days?
In article <j872fsF17t2U3@mid.individual.net>, wibble@btinternet.com
says...
...
On Tue, 01 Mar 2022 13:45:03 +0000, David wrote:
Disappointed to see that the Acronis tool above can't be found on their
Two SMART monitor tools which might help are:
<http://crystalmark.info/software/CrystalDiskInfo/index-e.html>
and
<http://www.acronis.com/en-eu/personal/hard-drive-health/>
No guarantees, but they are free.
site, and that True Image has morphed into a packaged subscription with
all sorts of baggage I wouldn't want. <snip>
On 02/03/2022 22:22, Theo wrote:
Adrian Brentnall <adrian@inspired-glass.com> wrote:
Undeterred, I go looking inside the Optiplex 780 (SFF) for spare SATA
/
power connectors - only to find that there are none - and, even if
there were, there's no room to physically mount the darn drive!
(Yes - shoulda checked beforehand...)
Am I right in thinking that a "SATA power & data splitter cable" will
at least let me sort out the electrics - the mechanical side will
probably consist of sitting the new drive on a piece of corrugated
cardboard for the duration of the clone operation...
You can't split SATA[*] but your motherboard says it has 3 SATA data
connectors, so assuming you have one for the current HDD and one for a
DVD,
there should be one spare. There is also an eSATA connector on the
back, which is a different connector from a regular SATA but should
work the same way. A power splitter cable should be fine.
The other options was 'to try a different external drive housing' -
but I got the impression this was a 'repeat until you get lucky' type
of operation.
An eSATA enclosure should be less hit and miss than a USB one (which
are sometimes tetchy to boot on old machines) - eSATA is just like
having an internal drive. All you need is to find one that is the
appropriate size for the drive (2.5" or 3.5") - although they're
possibly rarer than they used to be.
Theo
[*] well you can, there are things called port replicators, but mostly
used for server purposes, but maybe your BIOS won't boot from them.
Better not to go there.
Hi Theo Thanks for that - so I need a _power_ splitter and a
straightforward SATA cable - grand.. thanks...
Then play 'hunt the sata port' - I think I did see it while poking
around in there earlier..
And find a piece of cardboard....
I rarely use the DVD, but I expect that the DVD SATA cable won't work as
a temporary HDD SATA cable.....
This reminds me why I don't much about with PC's any more <grin>
Thanks for your help Adrian
On Wed, 02 Mar 2022 11:54:59 +0000, Philip Herlihy wrote:
In article <j872fsF17t2U3@mid.individual.net>, wibble@btinternet.com says...
...
On Tue, 01 Mar 2022 13:45:03 +0000, David wrote:
Disappointed to see that the Acronis tool above can't be found on their site, and that True Image has morphed into a packaged subscription with
Two SMART monitor tools which might help are:
<http://crystalmark.info/software/CrystalDiskInfo/index-e.html>
and
<http://www.acronis.com/en-eu/personal/hard-drive-health/>
No guarantees, but they are free.
all sorts of baggage I wouldn't want. <snip>
I found it after a bit of poke and hope on the website.
I started by going to the UK region, and worked from there.
They don't make it easy.
<https://www.acronis.com/en-eu/homecomputing/products/drive-monitor/ index.html#screenshots>
No, I've no idea why #screenshots but that seems to be the way it works at the moment.
Oh, and it doesn't seem to know much about SMART data for SSDs.
Cheers
Dave R
--
AMD FX-6300 in GA-990X-Gaming SLI-CF running Windows 7 Pro x64
... but read the motherboard spec carefully first !
I recently discovered that if I use the external eSATA connector on my motherboard then 2 of the on board SATA connectors are disabled :-\
I am told that this arrangement is quite common
On Wed, 02 Mar 2022 22:33:05 +0000, Adrian Brentnall wrote:
On 02/03/2022 22:22, Theo wrote:
Adrian Brentnall <adrian@inspired-glass.com> wrote:
Undeterred, I go looking inside the Optiplex 780 (SFF) for spare SATA >>>> /
power connectors - only to find that there are none - and, even if
there were, there's no room to physically mount the darn drive!
(Yes - shoulda checked beforehand...)
Am I right in thinking that a "SATA power & data splitter cable" will
at least let me sort out the electrics - the mechanical side will
probably consist of sitting the new drive on a piece of corrugated
cardboard for the duration of the clone operation...
You can't split SATA[*] but your motherboard says it has 3 SATA data
connectors, so assuming you have one for the current HDD and one for a
DVD,
there should be one spare. There is also an eSATA connector on the
back, which is a different connector from a regular SATA but should
work the same way. A power splitter cable should be fine.
The other options was 'to try a different external drive housing' -
but I got the impression this was a 'repeat until you get lucky' type
of operation.
An eSATA enclosure should be less hit and miss than a USB one (which
are sometimes tetchy to boot on old machines) - eSATA is just like
having an internal drive. All you need is to find one that is the
appropriate size for the drive (2.5" or 3.5") - although they're
possibly rarer than they used to be.
Theo
[*] well you can, there are things called port replicators, but mostly
used for server purposes, but maybe your BIOS won't boot from them.
Better not to go there.
Hi Theo Thanks for that - so I need a _power_ splitter and a
straightforward SATA cable - grand.. thanks...
Then play 'hunt the sata port' - I think I did see it while poking
around in there earlier..
And find a piece of cardboard....
I rarely use the DVD, but I expect that the DVD SATA cable won't work as
a temporary HDD SATA cable.....
This reminds me why I don't much about with PC's any more <grin>
Thanks for your help Adrian
Confirming that a SATA cable is just a SATA cable.
It is a good idea to get a longer one to make it easy to reach an external bare drive.
Also a power lead extension if you don't have any long power leads.
Last time I was messing around with HDD I just ran the PC with a panel off and the new HDD perched on top.
I've also done this with two external drives where I need to work on
drives from another machine.
Hopefully all very low tech and simple.
I also agree that an eSATA usually steals at least one port from the MoBo
so may well not meet your needs in this case.
HTH
Dave R
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