Teknawligie!
I just scored me a blue screen of death! And a bad one, too, hard disk failure(ing).
I figured I’d ask, though I’m pretty sure I know the 2 answers, and am currently efforting it, can it still be backed up with help of the boot disk?
I think I know what caused it. I opened it up (it’s a laptop), waking it from standby to a neverending pile of warnings from AVG, not virus or anything related (I’ve kept the wifi disabled since the move) but from some sort of missing or corrupt or whatever file or something (should’ve written that down).
I powered off when it became apparent that that would not stop and windows wouldn’t return, only to be greeted by blue screens, even in safe mode. I’m currently running diagnostics from the CD, hoping for the best.
Any advice/suggestions/etc?
And by 2 answers, I meant:
- No, you’re SOL
- Buy a Mac @JohnHutch
Comments
Hard disk failures are inevitable, even with macs! Best thing you can do is keep good backups.
Depending on what sort of hard drive failure, if you have shit you need to get off there that isn’t backed up, you can try the freezer trick. Get that drive as cold as humanly possible (i.e., pop it in the freezer in a zip-lock bag), plug it into the machine, and start copying before it overheats. You can try setting up fans or putting the machine on top of an air conditioning vent or something, too, to keep the heat down.
Can I put the whole laptop in? Or does it require disassembly?
Evan said:Can I put the whole laptop in? Or does it require disassembly?
Hrm. While I can’t think of anything in the machine itself that it’d damage, I’m not sure how well the screen would handle freezing temps. Hard drives usually aren’t too difficult to take out anyhow.
Reading into it has led me to believe it is a data corruption, and not mechanical failure, so I don’t think freezing will help.
Naturally, I had already put it in the freezer.
Apparently this program testdisk can be used, but they seem to have an extremely loose definition of “average computer user.”
I’ll probably just take it somewhere.
Data corruption happens as hard drives fail. Failing can often be a several week or even month process. I wouldn’t rule out failure just yet.
So should I try it then?
Depends on how much you want that data.
I chickened out, took it to someone. I had some unbacked up mortgage stuff on the partition, didn’t want to risk it.