...some of it anyways. As part of ongoing changes I should have done a long time ago, I've gone and created another blog (here) specifically for safe-for-work anime/manga stuff. What in the world? 3 active blogs now? Well, the answer isn't so simple as it is as complicated, so let's break it down.
September 29, 2012
September 22, 2012
My 1TB HDD: 1 week later
Well it's a little more than a week but I ran into a problem I never thought I'd see:
What in the world? I run the regenerating overnight as well, so I have no idea when this happened, but waking up in the morning and seeing the drive powered off was a nightmare. Running the rescan again I found out what led to it:
Look at the "X", it's not even listed in the legend. What happened was when the program encountered a bad sector in the 2nd block, it proceeded to regenerate it, but then it encountered several more bad sectors, but instead of regenerating them, the bad sector count rapidly rose, to the point where the entire drive was listed as bad above.
I am absolutely frustrated over the lack of documentation regarding this problem, I know for a fact the entire drive is not damaged, HDD Sentinel lists it as 89% healthy with only 19 weak sectors, and I am able to still read files, albeit at only an average of 500KB/s. It took me more than 4 hours to copy 8GB of data, but the data was still intact. This leads me to think that it really is a hardware fault that not even the most powerful regenerating program can fix. What else can the program do if Western Digital is making it hard for it?
And I'm pissed, worried and totally low on moral. This changes things. I thought, like anyone else would, that with bad sectors, the logical solution is to regenerate them. But if there is a problem with the drive head, magnet, whatever is inside a hard drive, one cannot regen the sectors. I think that is my problem, and with this new development, I can't regenerate at all. It's now a race against time to save whatever files I can before the drive really dies, and that's what I don't have: time. Well, there's money too, but now I'm against time, my last chance is to RAW copy the drive into another drive, but that of course requires me to buy a new HDD, which I cannot at the moment.
And that's the part I'm frustrated about, online the general diagnosis is buy a new HDD. I'm a little sick of that these days, it sounds easy but not under circumstances like this. How was I supposed to know the Backup drive, the Plan B of all hard drive plans, would die? There is no Plan C for things like this. And what's worse, I originally thought of filing a request for a company replacement, but when it goes for review, I have no idea how much time that would take. I don't even think I can prove the drive died in the line of duty, my HDD problem earlier in the year led me to backup important documents into several drives, so that's going to be difficult.
As such, that donation link goes back up (in the links at the top of the blog). To get an idea of how much that drive means to me, I'm even considering selling my only phone. I honestly don't know how much I can get out of it because it's a Windows Mobile phone, and while it is 1Ghz, that's just about the only thing of value I have (in excellent condition) that I can part with on short notice. (It's the phone I was working on porting Android to it for XDA) Of course, I won't be able to receive calls anymore, or browse the net when mobile, but meh, tough times. You know that DS Lite Joystick mod I did? I sold that last year (without the mod of course). That was to buy a new power adapter for my Vaio after my repair job burned out.
Funny how a few months ago I was gearing up to get a new laptop. Several months later, I changed my focus on my health, and while I am maintaining a decent health (regarding my non-permanent health issues), that comes at a cost of my equipment's condition. I don't have a well paying job, to be honest. What's more, due to the nature of my work, much of it is either behind-the-scenes or kept off the record, so much of my contributions are largely kept unknown to parties involved. The question was asked before, why not change careers, but what am I to do when that's what I'm good at, contributing without a soul knowing I did. I guess a part of that comes from how I was raised: living day to day, never splurging but never giving half the effort, either.
And that's probably how my life will continue to be if I don't think of change. Not touching photoshop in nearly two weeks is leaving a bad taste in my mouth, and if I ultimately have to sell my phone, I have to fix Android before then or my work is a bust. Or well, if some of it wasn't in the HDD in question... and before all this, I renewed my internet for another 30 days, what happens after that, who knows. (it ends 15th Oct)
Donate
Well, if donations aren't so hot, buying through my Play-Asia banners (on the left) aren't a bad idea either, if your into gaming and such.
I am absolutely frustrated over the lack of documentation regarding this problem, I know for a fact the entire drive is not damaged, HDD Sentinel lists it as 89% healthy with only 19 weak sectors, and I am able to still read files, albeit at only an average of 500KB/s. It took me more than 4 hours to copy 8GB of data, but the data was still intact. This leads me to think that it really is a hardware fault that not even the most powerful regenerating program can fix. What else can the program do if Western Digital is making it hard for it?
And I'm pissed, worried and totally low on moral. This changes things. I thought, like anyone else would, that with bad sectors, the logical solution is to regenerate them. But if there is a problem with the drive head, magnet, whatever is inside a hard drive, one cannot regen the sectors. I think that is my problem, and with this new development, I can't regenerate at all. It's now a race against time to save whatever files I can before the drive really dies, and that's what I don't have: time. Well, there's money too, but now I'm against time, my last chance is to RAW copy the drive into another drive, but that of course requires me to buy a new HDD, which I cannot at the moment.
The drive is getting slower ever since the problem began (the higher the seek time the slower it is to read files)
And that's the part I'm frustrated about, online the general diagnosis is buy a new HDD. I'm a little sick of that these days, it sounds easy but not under circumstances like this. How was I supposed to know the Backup drive, the Plan B of all hard drive plans, would die? There is no Plan C for things like this. And what's worse, I originally thought of filing a request for a company replacement, but when it goes for review, I have no idea how much time that would take. I don't even think I can prove the drive died in the line of duty, my HDD problem earlier in the year led me to backup important documents into several drives, so that's going to be difficult.
As such, that donation link goes back up (in the links at the top of the blog). To get an idea of how much that drive means to me, I'm even considering selling my only phone. I honestly don't know how much I can get out of it because it's a Windows Mobile phone, and while it is 1Ghz, that's just about the only thing of value I have (in excellent condition) that I can part with on short notice. (It's the phone I was working on porting Android to it for XDA) Of course, I won't be able to receive calls anymore, or browse the net when mobile, but meh, tough times. You know that DS Lite Joystick mod I did? I sold that last year (without the mod of course). That was to buy a new power adapter for my Vaio after my repair job burned out.
Funny how a few months ago I was gearing up to get a new laptop. Several months later, I changed my focus on my health, and while I am maintaining a decent health (regarding my non-permanent health issues), that comes at a cost of my equipment's condition. I don't have a well paying job, to be honest. What's more, due to the nature of my work, much of it is either behind-the-scenes or kept off the record, so much of my contributions are largely kept unknown to parties involved. The question was asked before, why not change careers, but what am I to do when that's what I'm good at, contributing without a soul knowing I did. I guess a part of that comes from how I was raised: living day to day, never splurging but never giving half the effort, either.
And that's probably how my life will continue to be if I don't think of change. Not touching photoshop in nearly two weeks is leaving a bad taste in my mouth, and if I ultimately have to sell my phone, I have to fix Android before then or my work is a bust. Or well, if some of it wasn't in the HDD in question... and before all this, I renewed my internet for another 30 days, what happens after that, who knows. (it ends 15th Oct)
Donate
Well, if donations aren't so hot, buying through my Play-Asia banners (on the left) aren't a bad idea either, if your into gaming and such.
September 15, 2012
My ongoing HDD troubles: cont'd
Today I've been incredibly bored out of my bleeding mind, I've scanned the heck out of my drive and decided to regen the bad sectors.
I have to say, after looking at that drive, my WD 1TB is really fortunate. What I faced earlier this year dwarfs the problem I currently have with my 1TB, to think I was booting from such a drive, I'm surprised I even got any files out of it. Granted a huge chunk of my personal files were corrupted, but right now my WD looks like a cake compared to that mess.
And you know what? That Fujitsu drive still works, files can be retained on there, and I even get it to boot into an OS. And according to HDD sentinel, that drive is at 0% health. My WD is reported at 89% health, so I think the problem is not as bad as what I faced earlier this year (a lot of files were lost to corruption.). Not to mention, a quick surface scan indicates the WD is not physically damaged, most in part due to my gentle care, but yeah, the situation right now doesn't look to bad.
What is bad is if you noticed above, the hdd regen process ran 6 hours and only 0.03% completed. It looks like my original estimation of 8 weeks looks more and more nightmarishly real now. And it's really damping my mood. In case you haven't guessed by now, I'm really unhappy. Unhappy it had to happen to the newest drive I own, incredibly unhappy this had to happen on the eve of the Yukikaze episode, unhappy that many of my most rarest of files are on that drive with no idea if they are still good, I've been trying to lift my spirits because really, I don't want this ruining the one chance Yukikaze has to shine, but it's really taking a lot on me.
My oldest hard drive, I believe it's a Toshiba 80GB IDE that was in my white laptop, that drive still runs through the brutal life it currently is running (ever since 2005, the drive has never rested). In Germany I really grinded that drive to bits, and it's still great as ever. My second oldest drive, one of the 3.5inchers, also lives, and that has seen constant use since 2006 up until Dec last year when the 1TB replaced it. Even my other 3.5incher still lives, seriously I've gone through several different manufactures from Samsung to Seagate, and this being my first non-desktop WD, I'm sure you can tell why I'm incredibly wary of them right now.
I thought of consoling myself on the fact that maybe I bought a model that was affected by the Thailand floods, but this is a 2010 model, not 2011 >__>
Maybe in time I will be back to my chipper happy self, but right now I am not. Here's hoping Yukikaze will awaken my hentaitron powers with the next ep.
Speaking of being bored, reading my About Me page scares me. That thing looks like, like an obituary or a biography for a dead guy, what the heck I'm not dead, sure I'm not happy right now but I sure as heck ain't dead. And that's all in part because of the past 4 months, I've been really been spending maximum effort on my health, I haven't had a headache since July all thanks to increased sleep times in exchange for less anime time, which is why I haven't been watching much series lately. I've also been eating more healthier, which of course has the side effect of costing more but hey, I'm glad it was just a drive that failed me and not my kidney or something, if I hadn't been taking care of my health, and have some sort of organ failure, my belongings will be the least of the problems.
Look at those delays.
I didn't even feel like watching some anime, I mean what the heck the entire Summer 2012 run up to last week is on that drive, I don't even feel like watching Sword Art Online because of that, so I ended up reading manga and H manga. Ahem, even that bored me out, so I decided to revisit that interesting Fujitsu drive that died on me earlier this year.
Now that looks bad.
That's a lot of error.
And you know what? That Fujitsu drive still works, files can be retained on there, and I even get it to boot into an OS. And according to HDD sentinel, that drive is at 0% health. My WD is reported at 89% health, so I think the problem is not as bad as what I faced earlier this year (a lot of files were lost to corruption.). Not to mention, a quick surface scan indicates the WD is not physically damaged, most in part due to my gentle care, but yeah, the situation right now doesn't look to bad.
What is bad is if you noticed above, the hdd regen process ran 6 hours and only 0.03% completed. It looks like my original estimation of 8 weeks looks more and more nightmarishly real now. And it's really damping my mood. In case you haven't guessed by now, I'm really unhappy. Unhappy it had to happen to the newest drive I own, incredibly unhappy this had to happen on the eve of the Yukikaze episode, unhappy that many of my most rarest of files are on that drive with no idea if they are still good, I've been trying to lift my spirits because really, I don't want this ruining the one chance Yukikaze has to shine, but it's really taking a lot on me.
My oldest hard drive, I believe it's a Toshiba 80GB IDE that was in my white laptop, that drive still runs through the brutal life it currently is running (ever since 2005, the drive has never rested). In Germany I really grinded that drive to bits, and it's still great as ever. My second oldest drive, one of the 3.5inchers, also lives, and that has seen constant use since 2006 up until Dec last year when the 1TB replaced it. Even my other 3.5incher still lives, seriously I've gone through several different manufactures from Samsung to Seagate, and this being my first non-desktop WD, I'm sure you can tell why I'm incredibly wary of them right now.
I thought of consoling myself on the fact that maybe I bought a model that was affected by the Thailand floods, but this is a 2010 model, not 2011 >__>
Maybe in time I will be back to my chipper happy self, but right now I am not. Here's hoping Yukikaze will awaken my hentaitron powers with the next ep.
Speaking of being bored, reading my About Me page scares me. That thing looks like, like an obituary or a biography for a dead guy, what the heck I'm not dead, sure I'm not happy right now but I sure as heck ain't dead. And that's all in part because of the past 4 months, I've been really been spending maximum effort on my health, I haven't had a headache since July all thanks to increased sleep times in exchange for less anime time, which is why I haven't been watching much series lately. I've also been eating more healthier, which of course has the side effect of costing more but hey, I'm glad it was just a drive that failed me and not my kidney or something, if I hadn't been taking care of my health, and have some sort of organ failure, my belongings will be the least of the problems.
September 14, 2012
My ongoing HDD troubles
In case you haven't heard, my 1 TeraByte external Hard Drive met an unfortunate sector problem Tuesday morning. This was very unexpected, as the drive was only for storage, particularly backing up each day in my life as time goes on. I did not grind this drive with high random reads and writes daily, and I most certainly treated it with care, keeping it free of dust and such.
At first I thought it was the USB ports on the laptop that I'm borrowing. But they didn't kill my older hard drives that I retired, which makes it even more frustrating is that this 1TB drive is not even a year old and it already has a fault. It was intended to backup two 3.5inch portable drives that I had to retire due to their size and low GB count (one of them is an 80GB, the other is a 250GB). I traveled with these, they came with me everywhere I went in Germany, all the way to Asia, and they still work, and yet this Western Digital drive is choking. So I figured if it wasn't the USB ports, and I treated it with care, what went wrong?
Then I remembered reviews. I generally prefer Newegg feedbacks because most of the people buying there are power users who know what they are doing, and looking at the drive that I own, I see that I am not alone in problems with this drive. My case seems to be a rather simple one: while I was doing the standard backing up of my files, it stopped copying yet the drive light kept blinking. Now everytime I plug the drive in, Windows will give that message that the drive should be checked. I've done that several times already, but the problem remains: there are still bad sectors. Bad sectors that might need to be regenerated just to get the drive back to normal.
And by normal I mean back to it's normal speed. As you can see above, I can see my files, but that's the time it takes for one 400mb file. One little file that I have no idea how my connection managed 400mb, but that's how long it takes. You know how long it took to copy 8GB from my drive? More than 4 hours. 4 hours! I don't have that much time to spend on copying files, so I need to regenerate the sectors. It took me 1 week to scan and regen my 160GB drive that died on me earlier this year, and if we times that 8, it would take me a little more than 2 months o__O.
It's rather problematic that I moved the entire Summer 2012 Anime that I have into the 1TB drive the night before it choked. To be honest, that isn't really important. I mean I know how much Anime means to me but what concerns me mostly is that this 1TB drive is my backup drive, which includes work as well, but it also includes the ultra rare XDA-developers work that I have done the past two years, I am the only known soul on Earth that contains the archives for several phones, and without these files I have absolutely no way of sharing my work for the community, which I was to slowly upload as time goes on.
The solution I've come up with is to guess which area of the drive is affected, scan it, and then regen that particular area only. That's the only way I can save the drive now, but that's the new problem: I need another drive to clone the files, which I don't have, and it being the middle of the month, I can't afford this. Especially when I canceled saving up for a new computer a couple of months ago due to new circumstances, but I never factored my hard drive because not only was it a rarely used, well cared for drive, but it is only 10 months old. I can't RMA it because it would cost me a heck of a lot of heck just to send it to them.
The problem (yellow warning)
At first I thought it was the USB ports on the laptop that I'm borrowing. But they didn't kill my older hard drives that I retired, which makes it even more frustrating is that this 1TB drive is not even a year old and it already has a fault. It was intended to backup two 3.5inch portable drives that I had to retire due to their size and low GB count (one of them is an 80GB, the other is a 250GB). I traveled with these, they came with me everywhere I went in Germany, all the way to Asia, and they still work, and yet this Western Digital drive is choking. So I figured if it wasn't the USB ports, and I treated it with care, what went wrong?
Then I remembered reviews. I generally prefer Newegg feedbacks because most of the people buying there are power users who know what they are doing, and looking at the drive that I own, I see that I am not alone in problems with this drive. My case seems to be a rather simple one: while I was doing the standard backing up of my files, it stopped copying yet the drive light kept blinking. Now everytime I plug the drive in, Windows will give that message that the drive should be checked. I've done that several times already, but the problem remains: there are still bad sectors. Bad sectors that might need to be regenerated just to get the drive back to normal.
It's rather problematic that I moved the entire Summer 2012 Anime that I have into the 1TB drive the night before it choked. To be honest, that isn't really important. I mean I know how much Anime means to me but what concerns me mostly is that this 1TB drive is my backup drive, which includes work as well, but it also includes the ultra rare XDA-developers work that I have done the past two years, I am the only known soul on Earth that contains the archives for several phones, and without these files I have absolutely no way of sharing my work for the community, which I was to slowly upload as time goes on.
The solution I've come up with is to guess which area of the drive is affected, scan it, and then regen that particular area only. That's the only way I can save the drive now, but that's the new problem: I need another drive to clone the files, which I don't have, and it being the middle of the month, I can't afford this. Especially when I canceled saving up for a new computer a couple of months ago due to new circumstances, but I never factored my hard drive because not only was it a rarely used, well cared for drive, but it is only 10 months old. I can't RMA it because it would cost me a heck of a lot of heck just to send it to them.
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