Dee vs the PC

[Dee]

No, not the Politically Correct. Not today at least.

I have spent the last 24 hours reinstalling things on my computer. For some unknown reason it decided to crash about this time yesterday. UGH! I'm sure those who have experienced the joy will understand when I say it's frustrating to say the least.

And now it's time for lunch, which will be pizza (because I deserve it). :p

[david uk]

well I'm glad you am back online, my friend

and yes you do deserve pizza!

:) :) :)

[RedjackRyan]

Been there and done that. Enjoy the pizza, you earned it as well as deserve it.

[Mimi]

My computer at school crashed today. It's quite an old one and the experts say it was the final crash. Fortunately it's a school for IT specialists and I'll be provided with a new and better one very soon.

Had a crash like yours at home last summer and yes, I know what means.

Enjoy your pizza!

MIMI

[DaveM]

I was expecting an account of a cage match.....

[Amy in Vermont]

My heart bleeds for you Dee.

I deal with these kinds of failures many time a day. We send at least 5 hard drives a year out for data recovery. No matter how many times we tell people to back their data up to our servers, they don't. Data recovery on a laptop hard drive averages $2000 a shot.

Yesterday, as I sat down to start preparing organizing stuff for tax season, my laptop drive started making suspicious ticking noises. I immediatley fired up my external hard drive and did a back up of the important stuff. By the time I was done, the noises had stopped, and the drive passed diags, but better safe than sorry.

[Dee]

I just now finished reinstalling all my software programs. I don't have an external drive, but I found some CDs on which I had burned a lot of irreplaceable files. Like most of my digital photos, for example. I could have lived without them, but of course it's nice to have them.

I still have no idea what happened to cause this havoc. I've reinstalled on the same hard disc and it seems to be working fine today. Even now it still has 145GB of free space.

[diver_boy]

while you're at it dee, wanna do mine? lol
usually when i get tired of my pc, i get a new one. lol
this time i may actually just take the time and do what you've done.

[DaveM]

Semi-irrelevant question: as we have some techno-savvy folks on here I wonder if they might be able to help.

Until 1997 I used a Commodore 128 as my primary word processing machine (still have it in fact and it would still serve nicely in that capacity). I used the machine for around 12 years and, using the tools of the time, saved literally hundreds of manuscripts (including the full text of two novels) onto 5 1/4" discs using a computer that was probably obsolete the day I bought it.

There's a lot of garbage on those discs, but there is also material I'd like to have access to (all of the text and working notes for my first book, for example, which I am planning to reissue via publication on demand). Should I be unable to convert all those files into something that might be readable on a modern machine, about the only alternative I have is to print out thousands of pages on a 10 cps daisy wheel printer, which I estimate would be a full-time job for at least six months.

Might a data conversion company be able to help me? And if so, anyone have any idea on cost? I don't expect it to be cheap, but that material is worth a lot to me.

[RedjackRyan]

Interesting question Dave, .. I have no idea if any such service exists but you could possibly find an answer at http://www.commodore128.org/

[DaveM]

Thanks, Cap'n.

[Amy in Vermont]

Dave:

Contact OnTrack (http://www.ontrackdatarecovery.com/). These are the folks that do all of our data recovery and they can at least give you an idea of what's involved. There's 2 issues here. The first is getting the data off of the disks. Alot depends on what condition they are in. The second is converting the data to a useful modern format. I don't know what's involved there or if they do that sort of thing, but they are nice folks to work with.