Temporary Hard Drive Replacement

Stumpy

My internal hard drive is apparently in the process of it's death throes.

My PC is from Mesh, purchases about 2 years ago and still within its 3 years back to base warranty.

For quite some time when I switch it on, I'd get a strange clunking noise when it loaded up, which I put down to one of the fans doing weird things - thought nothing of it (its has several case fans in addition to the usual CPU, etc fans)

Anyway, recently it has started clunking during disc access ... not all the time, not even that regularly, but a few times a day. When this happens, it will now clunk 2 or 3 times, during which time the screen briefly freezes.

I've put a message on the Mesh forum about it, and their techy guys have told me that the hard drive is about to give up ... I should backup and either send the entire base back to them, or take out the hard drive and send that to them.

Now, as you'll probably understand, I'm reluctant to be without a working PC for up to 2 weeks (5 working days they reckon it takes, from them receiving the old one - but they're not known for their fast turn around times).

They won't do a straight transfer of my data off the faulty hard drive to the new one, they will simply send a new one out, I'm assuming as they would normally ship new PCs .. with the OS and startup software and nothing else (not quite sure why it takes them 5 days to do that!).

I have been considering recently getting an external USB drive to use for backup and wondered, if I bought one now, would if be possible to make a complete copy of my current hard drive, then use the external one to boot from and run as if it was my internal one ... exactly the same files, settings, etc, just in a different location. Then take the faulty one out, send it off to Mesh to get replaced, get the replacement, install it, then restore the entire contents from the external drive to the new internal drive, and start booting back from that one again.

I've had a brief google for it, and it sort of seems possible - there is mirror/ghosting/image software out there, but I'm not sure if it creates an image that I can then just use like the original, or if it is just for backup/restore purposes.

Help!!

And obviously, I'd like to spend as little as possible on this .... I'm looking at around about £50 for the hard drive, which seems like it will about cover it ... my current hard drive is about 230g, although only about half of that is used (at the moment).

Seagull

Hi Stumpy, are you using a desktop pc or a laptop ? I'm guessing that as you have a 230 gig hard drive that it's a desktop unit ?

I've never tried to clone to a usb drive,so I'm unsure if you'll be able to just copy the failing drive and expect the system to recognize the usb as C:, I've a feeling that the bios may allocate a different drive letter, but I may well be wrong on that point so hopefully someone else may clear that point up.

Another option is to buy a large enough internal drive and clone to that, then send off your faulty drive for replacement you'll then be able to continue using your pc and it's installed software. Again I'm assuming you have a desktop, I don't know how much laptop drives are, or if you can have 2 drives connected at the same time ?

If you don't mind using a pc without all your standard software for a while, you could download and use one of the live Linux cd's, it runs without the need of a hard drive.

Free cloning software here.

Linux distro's here.

Red_Rose_Exile

SATA or IDE, I would imagine IDE

This page has a list of FREE drive imaging applications

I like self image the best, but I haven't tried it on a Vista Machine, so not sure if it supports it. If you do use it make sure you create a partition on your new drive the same size as your old one

So that leaves you £50 to spend on a hard drive, like this one

Red_Rose_Exile

lol seagull you beat me to it

Seagull

Great minds !

Stumpy

Thanks for the replies guys. I think I've resigned myself to the fact that I'm not going to be able to do what I wanted with the external hard drive.

My PC is a decent sized desktop (well, desk-under really!). Um ... Sata, IDE? Vaguely understand that they're types of hard drive (connections?), but how do I find out, and do I need to know?!

The other thing is, I've had a look at the current hard drive in there ... Mesh PC's have the advantage of being very easy to get into, and access things. The hard drive is on a little rail thing ... you just push some catches and slide the drive out. BUT, the last time I ever did anything vaguely technical with hard drives, they didn't look like this one. This doesn't have the giant grey cable but two much smaller ones.

If I simply get a second internal drive, will it be easy enough to fit and come with all the requisite cables and connections to fit into this sliding bay thing?

And is there still all this mucking about with master and slave settings? (last time I saw a hard drive for installation, it had a set of 6 (or 8?) pins that you had to cover depending on if it was master or slave, but this one only had three pins at the back, and I'm not entirely sure that's what they were for!!!

(you can see know why I like the USB route, can't you!)

I'm starting to think that I'm just going to have to resign myself to some hassle - back up everything and his dog elsewhere, nick my kids computer and keep my fingers crossed I don't get much work in!

albertross_2

It will be a sata drive, the old type with the thick grey ribbon cable are pata.

ebuyer sell them cheaply.

If it's clunking, backup while you can to DVD etc.

Red_Rose_Exile

IDE connection




SATA Connection



and it the sata that it sounds like you have

You may think it is hard work, but let me assure you, it will be a lot easier in the long run

Seagull

Stumpy wrote: »

My PC is a decent sized desktop (well, desk-under really!). Um ... Sata, IDE? Vaguely understand that they're types of hard drive (connections?), but how do I find out, and do I need to know?!

Check here.

Stumpy wrote: »

The other thing is, I've had a look at the current hard drive in there ... Mesh PC's have the advantage of being very easy to get into, and access things. The hard drive is on a little rail thing ... you just push some catches and slide the drive out. BUT, the last time I ever did anything vaguely technical with hard drives, they didn't look like this one. This doesn't have the giant grey cable but two much smaller ones.

The rails are probably just screwed to the side of the hard drive, they should be easily removed.

Stumpy wrote: »

If I simply get a second internal drive, will it be easy enough to fit and come with all the requisite cables and connections to fit into this sliding bay thing?

I think the cables will be an extra but they're not expensive, usually just a few £'s.

Stumpy wrote: »

And is there still all this mucking about with master and slave settings? (last time I saw a hard drive for installation, it had a set of 6 (or 8?) pins that you had to cover depending on if it was master or slave, but this one only had three pins at the back, and I'm not entirely sure that's what they were for!!!

The new drive should have a diagram showing the pin settings for slave/master.

Stumpy

Haha!! yes, little red cably things!!

Yes, apparently the rails just unscrew, as the guy from mesh suggested I take those off before returning the hard drive - he obviously didn't have a great deal of faith in them returning the new one with them fitted. But if I got a second internal hard drive, would that come with the rails, or would I have to buy seperate?

I'm assuming also that, should I buy a second internal hard drive, and the rails and the cables, that it would be easy enough to work out where to plug the cables into? I'm also assuming that, as there is space for 3 hard drives, there should be the "sockets" for three lots of cables ...

I'm fairly confident that, should I get another drive, it will have instructions, either in manual form or simply printed on the drive, regarding the master/slave settings - but the current one doesn't appear to have these.

Are some now automatic, or have i just not looked hard enough?!

I've been trying to backup now since lunchtime - I don't know whether it is just because I have a lot of data, or whether the problem with the hard drive is causing problems backing up, I'm just keeping my fingers crossed it lives long enough to transfer all my stuff!!