I feel as if I've lost a best friend today.

**Connie Jo** · 02-23-2011, 10:08 PM

In late 2003 I bought my very first in life PC. I'd never been on PC before that. I taught myself to use it, at times it was frustrating, but overall my PC became my friend. It was a blessing in so many ways, the most important being the many life lasting genuine friendships I've made through my PC. Living islolated in the remote rural country, often imprisoned in my former home...my PC was my only source of communicating with the outside world, sometimes for weeks at a time.

Last night I went to bed, shut off my now 8 yr old PC as always. Today when I turned it on it wouldn't work. I had a PC tech person come to my house to check it out...they diagnosed it as being dead, motor burned on the hard drive they said. Heck, no signs of trouble last night, but they told me a hard drive is like a lite bulb, eventually they burn out, never know when it will happen.

A friend is letting me use their old laptop until I get a new CPU, gonna shop around tomorrow I guess for a new desktop. I hadn't backed up data for a while, foolishly...so I lost many priceless photos & graphics collected in the last yr or so. They tried, nothing can be retrieved from the hard drive...it's lost forever. :(

**Hayvern** · 02-24-2011, 09:00 PM

Originally Posted by Connie Jo

Dave, I'm suppose to pick up my hard drive disc from the company. When she called me with the bad news, I told her I wanted back, sentimental reasons I guess. She told me then if I wanted to spend between $700-$1,000 she could send it off to some lab, try to let them retrieve info, but said there was no guarantee, & I'd be charged the fee whether they were successful or not. I told her no of course, but did want to pick up my hard drive.

In the meantime, my trustee called a bit ago, & she did approve my request to use trust funds for a new CPU. I'm gonna email her the info needed to order it thru Dell. My PC was a Dell, & I'm familiar with Dell as such, plus it lasted 8 yrs with few issues, so am comfortable going with Dell again. Hopefully the new one will last 8 yrs, haha. Likely take a week or so for it to arrive, but I can use Brandons old laptop till then. :)

Well you got 8 years out of that computer, that is more than I ever get out of mine, I replace them every couple of years.

It does cost a lot of money to recover data from a fried drive. They usually have good success, however it is not cheap. The work to do this is painfully tedious and hard to do.

Likely, you can pick up another hard drive for around $50.00, that old of a computer, you may have some issues with size as some of the older ones only recognized a certain size of drive.

With that old of a computer though, I just don't see it being worth it. You can buy a much better machine for less than $400 these days. I would try www.newegg.com and see what I could find.

For the future though, buy yourself an external harddrive system that has two hard drives in it that are mirrored. If you do this, and put all your data on that system, then you at least not lose anything important if one of those drives were to die on you. If both drives die, then that is another problem of course.

**tornadospotter** · 02-24-2011, 09:07 PM

Originally Posted by Hayvern

Well you got 8 years out of that computer, that is more than I ever get out of mine, I replace them every couple of years.

It does cost a lot of money to recover data from a fried drive. They usually have good success, however it is not cheap. The work to do this is painfully tedious and hard to do.

Likely, you can pick up another hard drive for around $50.00, that old of a computer, you may have some issues with size as some of the older ones only recognized a certain size of drive.

With that old of a computer though, I just don't see it being worth it. You can buy a much better machine for less than $400 these days. I would try www.newegg.com and see what I could find.

For the future though, buy yourself an external harddrive system that has two hard drives in it that are mirrored. If you do this, and put all your data on that system, then you at least not lose anything important if one of those drives were to die on you. If both drives die, then that is another problem of course.

More info on this please. This might be something I want to look into.

**Chiefster** · 02-24-2011, 10:53 PM

Unfortunately, Connie, the PC Tech is right: all hard drives have a certain limited life span; the fact that you got eight years out of your PC is actually a bit remarkable. The bad thing is that you have lost all that data you had stored on it. Sorry you are experiencing this kind of hardship. Take it from someone who has been there and done that: I know how you're feeling.

**matthewschiefs** · 02-25-2011, 01:51 PM

Originally Posted by Connie Jo

I know of others too who have had success off Ebay buying PC's, electronics, but some have had horrors too. I'd be leary mostly of buying a PC on Ebay because I'd have to cover shipping charges if it needed returned, etc.. Also, battling some sellers to replace it honorably. Anyway, looks like I'll be ordering one from Dell tomorrow...they have some good deals right now. :)

Thanks Matthew, do appreciate your suggestion though. :)

Yeah I have been ripped off through ebay before. I went to the local computer shop and the same computer there was about 350$ so I took the gamble and it just turned out well for me this time but I can understand not wanting to spend a lot of money on something online. I don't do it often but I was in a gambleing mood I guess since I have not been able to put all my arrowhead cash on the chiefs in a while

**honda522** · 02-25-2011, 07:01 PM

Computers don't last forever. I have gone thru 3 laptops in 6 years..they were cheaper ones, but I found HP makes the best.

**AussieChiefsFan** · 02-25-2011, 08:41 PM

Originally Posted by honda522

Computers don't last forever. I have gone thru 3 laptops in 6 years..they were cheaper ones, but I found HP makes the best.

I just got windows 7 but a part in the computer is overheating and causing it to freeze. We diagnosed the problem this morning (hopefully thats the problem otherwise we still dont know what it is) and my dads going to try and fix it ASAP.

So, yeah, sometimes computers last for a long time and sometimes they dont.

**Hayvern** · 02-26-2011, 02:14 AM

Originally Posted by tornadospotter

More info on this please. This might be something I want to look into.

My pleasure.

http://go.iomega.com/en-us/products/...erviewItem_tab

This is the system that I have. This system comes with two internal hard drives and it attaches to your local network of computers. I have a number of computers in the house, 7 to be honest including my work laptop, and all of these computers have access to this device.

Additionally, my DirectTV DVR and my Blueray player in the family room have access to this device as well.

The device has two hard drives in it. You have two options available to you for how you configure this, but I am only going to talk about mirroring.

You set this device up so that both hard drives store the same data on them, essentially each drive mirrors the other. If either of the drives fail, then you have some warning to go get another device and get the data off of the remaining drive. These devices are not supposed to be serviceable by the end user, but I am sure one could replace a failed drive, I would be concerned with it's ability to come back online.

So this gives you a little added protection against hard drive failure. I have been going through all of my old videos now of my kids, digitizing them and putting them all on this drive. I have 1 terrbyte of space on mine and I am at 750 gig of space used right now.

The nice thing about this is that every other machine in the house can access the data on this device. Additionally, it has some features where you can plug in your printer and have your printer networked to all of those devices as well. If you are really adventurous, it even has the ability to open the drive up on the Internet allowing you to reach the files from anywhere, password required of course. I do not use this feature.

As a sidebar, I think it is also important to point out that you can do the same configuration on most newer desktop machines as well. Most of the newer desktops, at least in the last couple of years, will allow you to carry 4 - 6 serial ATA (SATA) drives on-board. Once you plug them in, you can configure them to mirror as well and you get the same protection right on your desktop computer.

Drives are relatively inexpensive these days, so it never hurts to configure this if you have the ability, time, and money.

Word to the wise though, never rely on one single device even if you get something like this. You should always have a second copy just in case. I have the contents of this drive backing up to my desktop machine as well. I do not have my desktop mirrored like this as I am not worried about losing the drive as long as the Storecenter device is still working.

A lot of companies make these and they are well worth the investment I think.

**ratty9** · 02-27-2011, 03:27 PM

all data can be recovered loads of places do it

**Connie Jo** · 03-13-2011, 01:09 AM

Well, my new PC from Dell arrived last week, but I'm still using my friends old laptop. I've not had time to spend setting it all up, am also a bit intimidated to try doing it myself. My sons friend Dave, helped set up my original pc 8 yrs. ago, so I've not done it before. If all the programs & OS were the same as what I had before, Windows XP...I'd feel more comfortable setting it up, but it's Windows 7, and not familiar with it or the programs it comes with.

Does Windows 7 have a standard 'Paint' program as XP came with, simply called 'Paint'. Also, does W7 have 'Wordpad'?

**stricken721** · 03-14-2011, 02:31 AM

Originally Posted by Connie Jo

Well, my new PC from Dell arrived last week, but I'm still using my friends old laptop. I've not had time to spend setting it all up, am also a bit intimidated to try doing it myself. My sons friend Dave, helped set up my original pc 8 yrs. ago, so I've not done it before. If all the programs & OS were the same as what I had before, Windows XP...I'd feel more comfortable setting it up, but it's Windows 7, and not familiar with it or the programs it comes with.

Does Windows 7 have a standard 'Paint' program as XP came with, simply called 'Paint'. Also, does W7 have 'Wordpad'?

Yes and Yes!