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Topic: Strange XP problem  (Read 2441 times)

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Offline Sirgod

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Strange XP problem
« on: August 19, 2007, 07:51:47 pm »
I have two 160 gig HD's on my system. anyway, we had a storm come through last night, and I was able to boot my system, for about 10 minutes this morning. I went to copy and paste, and the PC died on me.

I tried to re-boot,  but I was missing my boot log. I tried everything, and wound up getting a partial partition on one HD, a whole 32gig. In BIOS, it shows as 160gig.

Right now, I got the second HD to show, and I'm formating it right now. It shows as 149 gig.

How in the world did I loose so much though from the first one. It didn't even show any partitions, and would not let me build one when doing an install of xp. The sad thing is, I lost everything again, the good thing is, my system is running pretty fast now. :shrugs:

any ideas on getting back the lost HD space would be most welcome.

Stephen
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Offline FCM_SFHQ_XC

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Re: Strange XP problem
« Reply #1 on: August 19, 2007, 08:02:49 pm »
Was your PC on or off during the storm?
I do find it strange though, on or off, that it would loose so much data if it was because of the storm..

If it was off during the storm though, it prob is some sort of HD failular as like my system last year failed after I turned it off one night, and the next the 20GB HDD I had back then had completly failed, thus it wouldnt boot up next morning.
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Offline Sirgod

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Re: Strange XP problem
« Reply #2 on: August 19, 2007, 08:21:35 pm »
It was on actually. Yeah I was thinking the same thing, loosing that much, or even having two HD failures at the same time, just seems strange to me.

Oh Well, I guess I can buy some new ones next month. I saw where PC Club had a 200 gig for 89 bucks. It just bothers me that I can't figure it out.

Stephen
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Offline Fedman NCC-3758

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Re: Strange XP problem
« Reply #3 on: August 19, 2007, 08:31:15 pm »


Were you wearing a grass skirt?  You may have scared the crap out of the poor thing.   :D

If you were in the process of adding info to the HD at the time of a surge due to the storm, that may explain this odd occurrence.

For future reference:
What ever you do, if you have SP2, DO NOT attempt to uninstall it.  Believe me.  I know.   :-[


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Offline FCM_SFHQ_XC

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Re: Strange XP problem
« Reply #4 on: August 19, 2007, 08:32:50 pm »
If it was on, then my educated guess is some how a electrical surge, failed to be suppressed by a surge protector/power supply somehow caused a power surge in your HDes and scrambled data all around, and probably also sent both harddrives to the point of failular. Thats only my educacted guess from what I'm reading, so I could be wrong.. having a storm then BAM! Having a failular of HDDes though makes me come to that conclusion. Id doubt you would be able to recover much of what was lost unfortunatly.
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Offline Sirgod

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Re: Strange XP problem
« Reply #5 on: August 19, 2007, 08:54:08 pm »
That's what I'm thinking SFHQ.

LOL, Fedman, earlier today, while doing the updates, the power went out while dling SP2. Took me forever to convence my system I didn't have it , and get it to re-install.

Stephen
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Offline Javora

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Re: Strange XP problem
« Reply #6 on: August 19, 2007, 09:09:52 pm »
My hard drive shows 182gb actual out of 200gb that is on the label.  Remember that companies will ad a 200gb drive and in small print list that it is the number of bytes and not the actual number of gb.  There is 1024 bytes in a Mb now multiply that by how many 160gb and you get a better idea of how much space there actually is.  Hope this helps.

Sorry if I'm not explaining myself very well, it's late and I have to walk out the door now.  I'll try to explain it better later on.
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Offline Nemesis

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Re: Strange XP problem
« Reply #7 on: August 20, 2007, 06:45:46 pm »
Quote from: Stephen NCC -73070 on August 19, 2007, 07:51:47 pm
I tried to re-boot,  but I was missing my boot log. I tried everything, and wound up getting a partial partition on one HD, a whole 32gig. In BIOS, it shows as 160gig.

Stephen

Two suggestions:

1/ Check your BIOS.  I suspect that the power outage caused enough of a fluctuation to reset some things.  Specifically look at setting the HD controllers to "Auto" that should make it attempt to identify the drive rather than using what I am guessing are false details in the BIOS.

2/  Buiy a UPS.
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Offline Commander Maxillius

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Re: Strange XP problem
« Reply #8 on: August 25, 2007, 12:21:56 pm »
Quote from: Javora on August 19, 2007, 09:09:52 pm
My hard drive shows 182gb actual out of 200gb that is on the label.  Remember that companies will ad a 200gb drive and in small print list that it is the number of bytes and not the actual number of gb.  There is 1024 bytes in a Mb now multiply that by how many 160gb and you get a better idea of how much space there actually is.  Hope this helps.

Sorry if I'm not explaining myself very well, it's late and I have to walk out the door now.  I'll try to explain it better later on.


Also note that the number on the box is pre-formatting.  The lines the drive draws on the disks (sectors) suck a pretty big portion of the disk, more on larger drives.  Example: my 60GB iPod has a 55.7GB capacity.  4.3 GB lost in formatting.
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Offline Nemesis

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Re: Strange XP problem
« Reply #9 on: August 25, 2007, 01:03:30 pm »
Quote from: Commander Maxillius on August 25, 2007, 12:21:56 pm
Also note that the number on the box is pre-formatting.  The lines the drive draws on the disks (sectors) suck a pretty big portion of the disk, more on larger drives.  Example: my 60GB iPod has a 55.7GB capacity.  4.3 GB lost in formatting.

The old binary vs base 10 issue for hard drives.

For those who don't know:

The computer industry as a whole uses the binary definition of a giga-, mega- and so forth.   Under this definition 1 megabyte = 1024 x 1024 and 1 gigabyte = 1024 x 1024 x 1024

The HD industry uses base 10 for defining giga-, mega- and so forth.  Under that definition 1 megabyte = 1000 x 1000 and 1 gigabyte = 1000 x 1000 x 1000. 

For gigabytes base 10 is around 7% under the binary definition.  Moving up to terabytes it will be close to 10 percent.
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Offline Lloyd007

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Re: Strange XP problem
« Reply #10 on: August 25, 2007, 01:09:27 pm »
Quote from: Stephen NCC -73070 on August 19, 2007, 08:21:35 pm
It was on actually. Yeah I was thinking the same thing, loosing that much, or even having two HD failures at the same time, just seems strange to me.

Oh Well, I guess I can buy some new ones next month. I saw where PC Club had a 200 gig for 89 bucks. It just bothers me that I can't figure it out.

Stephen

You can get a 500gb for less than $100 online.
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Offline Javora

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Re: Strange XP problem
« Reply #11 on: August 25, 2007, 04:56:33 pm »
Thanks Nemesis and Maxillius I knew I was forgetting something...   :thumbsup:
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Offline Dracho

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Re: Strange XP problem
« Reply #12 on: August 25, 2007, 05:14:17 pm »
My bet is that the power might have damaged your controller rather than your drives.  I'd drop 'em in another machine before I did any formatting.
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Offline Dracho

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Re: Strange XP problem
« Reply #13 on: August 25, 2007, 05:16:16 pm »
Quote from: Javora on August 19, 2007, 09:09:52 pm
My hard drive shows 182gb actual out of 200gb that is on the label.  Remember that companies will ad a 200gb drive and in small print list that it is the number of bytes and not the actual number of gb.  There is 1024 bytes in a Mb now multiply that by how many 160gb and you get a better idea of how much space there actually is.  Hope this helps.

Sorry if I'm not explaining myself very well, it's late and I have to walk out the door now.  I'll try to explain it better later on.


Or in English, marketing measures space /1000 and the system uses /1024.  The marketing number is therefore, always bigger.
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Offline Javora

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Re: Strange XP problem
« Reply #14 on: August 25, 2007, 05:35:11 pm »
Quote from: Dracho on August 25, 2007, 05:16:16 pm

Or in English...

 :P

Yeah I did muck up that post pretty bad, sorry about that all.  That's what I get for posting when I should be walking out the door for whatever reason.  I've been doing that a lot lately.  Things have been really crazy around here since my divorce.  I'll try to slow down and not post when I know I don't have time to do it.
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Offline Dracho

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Re: Strange XP problem
« Reply #15 on: August 25, 2007, 06:23:57 pm »
Quote from: Javora on August 25, 2007, 05:35:11 pm
Quote from: Dracho on August 25, 2007, 05:16:16 pm

Or in English...

 :P

Yeah I did muck up that post pretty bad, sorry about that all.  That's what I get for posting when I should be walking out the door for whatever reason.  I've been doing that a lot lately.  Things have been really crazy around here since my divorce.  I'll try to slow down and not post when I know I don't have time to do it.


LOL  .. I meant as opposed to Tech-speak
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