Georgia Fiero Club Forum
General Discussion and Announcements => General Discussion => Topic started by: GTRS Fiero on August 23, 2020, 07:51:46 pm
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Yesterday afternoon, the laptop I use for the newsletters started behaving oddly. I got to a stopping point with what I was doing, and did a test. The laptop crashed. Blue screen with frown. I rebooted it. No boot device available. Joy. So, I grabbed a new drive. Tried cloning the old drive, but can't get the drive to stay up. So, a full reload is in my future. Joy.
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What method did you use to clone the drive, and did you do it with it still in the laptop, or removed?
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I tried R-Drive. Unfortunately, the bad drive usually does not detect in the BIOS, or the program. After maybe 20 tries, I did get it to detect, but it errored out during the cloning. R-Drive is a good product, but not free.
I think the drive electronics died. There is no clacking noise. The drive does spin up. I was tempted to swap the control board. I may try the freezer method.
I tried with the drive in the laptop, but it really doesn't matter.
If it was the mechanicals, I'd try Pineapple, or Gear Replicator.
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Suggestion: Remove the drive from the computer and connect it to a USB adapter. Do the same with the target drive. Connect both to a Linux system and use the "dd" command to copy the drive. I have duplicated a number of drives that way, and it always works.
Caution: The dd command is dangerous, and will blindly over-write the target, so make sure you specify the correct drive as target.
Actually, you don't need a Linux system. I have Tiny Core Linux (http://tinycorelinux.net/) (actually Micro Core -- the non GUI version) on a USB key that I can boot on any system, and then use it to run dd and duplicate drives.
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I have used dd, as well as various frontzends that manipilate dd.
For the heck of it, I disassembled the laptop to remove the drive, which would have to be done, anyway. The old drive will not come up on the USB adapter.
I also have a self-contained copy device. It does not detect the old drive.
This is just a loss of some hours of work. Everything was backed up, except about 1,600 pictures in my downloads folder (edits done to pictures I had taken). Still, it will take 4 hours to reload the system, plus some configuuration
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The drive may be locked up with what some call "stiction". Shake it vigorously and try detecting it again. What do you have to lose if it's dead?
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The drive spins up. It isn't the motor.
The system does not get a response from the electronics.
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I did try TopNotch's method. No dice. I tried the freezer method. No dice.
Soldering is not my strong suit, but I'm going to try swapping the drive electronics. I really only want the stuff that was in my downloads folder, but it isn't the end of the world if I don't get that stuff.
Meanwhile, the laptop is reloaded with the new drive. OS, drivers, FTP application, graphics applications, Office applications, browsers, backup software. The restore/sync is almost complete. Most of my settings are in place. PDF applications are installed. I had to change some fonts. I missed a few browser tabs.
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The drive came up. I got some fonts copied off, which allowed me to continue work on the newsletter. I wanted to get some images, but have to reset some permissions, first.