Problem with system restore/recover.

"R. Giggs." <> wrote in message
news:aaFgs.24846$4...
>
> "Paul" <> wrote in message
> news:k5u39j$nfq$...
>> R. Giggs. wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> I am doing a chkdsk on the bad drive, past phase one on phase two but i
>>> remember
>>> that takes forever so I may have to abort. Don't think it reports error
>>> untill the end
>>> so probably best to abort and try something else.
>>
>> I wouldn't run CHKDSK on a disk that is demonstrating
>> bad sectors.
>>
>> The only thing I would want to do with a bad disk,
>> is get the data off it, as best as possible. When
>> the data is copied, sector by sector to a good disk,
>> then I'd run CHKDSK. If the disk is damaged, there's
>> no sense doing a file by file copy, because there
>> could be a lot of directory damage. Whereas a sector
>> by sector copy, isn't trying to interpret the data.
>> Only later, when you use other file/directory oriented
>> tools, will you be finding out how really busted it is.
>> But when a disk is sick, you try to get as many
>> sectors of it off as possible.
>>
>> If I had to do that, I'd try something like ddrescue
>> as mentioned here. The first pass of this, keeps track
>> of what has been successfully copied. Subsequent passes
>> are supposed to use the log file, to figure out what
>> remains to be copied. In a sense, this is a "persistent"
>> version of the regular "dd" copier.
>>
>> "Antonio Diaz's GNU ddrescue"
>>
>> http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/Damaged_Hard_Disk
>>
>> If the regular version of "dd" copies the whole disk,
>> and does not stop on an error, then you don't need
>> ddrescue. But if "dd" can't finish, then you know
>> there is damage causing actual CRC errors. And then,
>> you need to work around them, and get the data on
>> either side of the sector that is really damaged
>> (no longer recoverable).
>>
>> *******
>>
>> I can find other references to such a tool:
>>
>> There is a windows version of the Diaz program here, but
>> it's compiled under Cygwin. I don't know how easy that
>> is to set up. You might want to read up on Cygwin first.
>> When I use ported tools, I usually try for a gnuwin32
>> version. ( http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/packages.html )
>> This one is built under Cygwin.
>>
>> http://gd.tuwien.ac.at/gnu/gnu-win32/release/ddrescue/
>>
>> There is another program here, along similar lines.
>> I don't know anything about this, because I just found it.
>> It has a GUI, which is a major improvement compared
>> to the ddrescue command line approach.
>>
>> http://www.datarescue.com/photorescue/v3/drdd.htm
>>
>> Paul
>>
>
>
> LOL!! I can't believe my eyes!!!
>
> I was just googling lost file, in particular "half folder missing" and I
> came across this:-
>
> http://www.pchell.com/support/unhidefiles.shtml
>
>
>
>
> Which says:-
> ===============
> To Unhide files and folders that Windows Diagnostic, Windows XP Restore
> and other malware hide
>
> For Windows XP
>
> 1) Click on Start, Run
> 2) Type CMD and press Enter
> 3) At the command prompt type the following and press Enter
>
> CD \
>
> 4) Now the command prompt should show the root folder of the hard drive.
> Most likely C:\
> 5) At the command prompt type the following and press Enter
>
> ATTRIB -H *.* /S /D
>
> This command will unhide the files that are currently hidden. Because the
> important system files have a system attribute attached to them as well,
> the above command will not work for them and they will be skipped and kept
> hidden from prying eyes.
>
> This command will take some time, so dont be afraid if it takes anywhere
> from a few minutes to half an hour to finish. What the command does is
> simple. It removes the hidden attribute from all files on the hard drive.
> The /S parameter tells it to search the current folder and all subfolders,
> while the /D parameter processes tthe folders as well.
>
> 6) Type Exit and press Enter when the procedure is complete. Then reboot
> your computer
> ====================
>
> Anyhow, I didn't do all that I just ran CMD and went to G: where all the
> missing files
> were, then I typed DIR and all the files seem to be there!!!
>
> Do I didn't really do anything other than do a DIR on the damaged folder!?
>
> When I look again from windows all the files are listed as well!!
>
>
> !!!!!!!?????????!!!!!!!
>

Anyhow I may as well back them up whilst they are there, the I can try a
boot
on that drive, which should be interesting.

 

R. Giggs. wrote:
> "R. Giggs." <> wrote in message
> news:aaFgs.24846$4...
>> "Paul" <> wrote in message
>> news:k5u39j$nfq$...
>>> R. Giggs. wrote:
>>>
>>>> I am doing a chkdsk on the bad drive, past phase one on phase two but i
>>>> remember
>>>> that takes forever so I may have to abort. Don't think it reports error
>>>> untill the end
>>>> so probably best to abort and try something else.
>>> I wouldn't run CHKDSK on a disk that is demonstrating
>>> bad sectors.
>>>
>>> The only thing I would want to do with a bad disk,
>>> is get the data off it, as best as possible. When
>>> the data is copied, sector by sector to a good disk,
>>> then I'd run CHKDSK. If the disk is damaged, there's
>>> no sense doing a file by file copy, because there
>>> could be a lot of directory damage. Whereas a sector
>>> by sector copy, isn't trying to interpret the data.
>>> Only later, when you use other file/directory oriented
>>> tools, will you be finding out how really busted it is.
>>> But when a disk is sick, you try to get as many
>>> sectors of it off as possible.
>>>
>>> If I had to do that, I'd try something like ddrescue
>>> as mentioned here. The first pass of this, keeps track
>>> of what has been successfully copied. Subsequent passes
>>> are supposed to use the log file, to figure out what
>>> remains to be copied. In a sense, this is a "persistent"
>>> version of the regular "dd" copier.
>>>
>>> "Antonio Diaz's GNU ddrescue"
>>>
>>> http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/Damaged_Hard_Disk
>>>
>>> If the regular version of "dd" copies the whole disk,
>>> and does not stop on an error, then you don't need
>>> ddrescue. But if "dd" can't finish, then you know
>>> there is damage causing actual CRC errors. And then,
>>> you need to work around them, and get the data on
>>> either side of the sector that is really damaged
>>> (no longer recoverable).
>>>
>>> *******
>>>
>>> I can find other references to such a tool:
>>>
>>> There is a windows version of the Diaz program here, but
>>> it's compiled under Cygwin. I don't know how easy that
>>> is to set up. You might want to read up on Cygwin first.
>>> When I use ported tools, I usually try for a gnuwin32
>>> version. ( http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/packages.html )
>>> This one is built under Cygwin.
>>>
>>> http://gd.tuwien.ac.at/gnu/gnu-win32/release/ddrescue/
>>>
>>> There is another program here, along similar lines.
>>> I don't know anything about this, because I just found it.
>>> It has a GUI, which is a major improvement compared
>>> to the ddrescue command line approach.
>>>
>>> http://www.datarescue.com/photorescue/v3/drdd.htm
>>>
>>> Paul
>>>
>>
>> LOL!! I can't believe my eyes!!!
>>
>> I was just googling lost file, in particular "half folder missing" and I
>> came across this:-
>>
>> http://www.pchell.com/support/unhidefiles.shtml
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Which says:-
>> ===============
>> To Unhide files and folders that Windows Diagnostic, Windows XP Restore
>> and other malware hide
>>
>> For Windows XP
>>
>> 1) Click on Start, Run
>> 2) Type CMD and press Enter
>> 3) At the command prompt type the following and press Enter
>>
>> CD \
>>
>> 4) Now the command prompt should show the root folder of the hard drive.
>> Most likely C:\
>> 5) At the command prompt type the following and press Enter
>>
>> ATTRIB -H *.* /S /D
>>
>> This command will unhide the files that are currently hidden. Because the
>> important system files have a system attribute attached to them as well,
>> the above command will not work for them and they will be skipped and kept
>> hidden from prying eyes.
>>
>> This command will take some time, so dont be afraid if it takes anywhere
>> from a few minutes to half an hour to finish. What the command does is
>> simple. It removes the hidden attribute from all files on the hard drive.
>> The /S parameter tells it to search the current folder and all subfolders,
>> while the /D parameter processes tthe folders as well.
>>
>> 6) Type Exit and press Enter when the procedure is complete. Then reboot
>> your computer
>> ====================
>>
>> Anyhow, I didn't do all that I just ran CMD and went to G: where all the
>> missing files
>> were, then I typed DIR and all the files seem to be there!!!
>>
>> Do I didn't really do anything other than do a DIR on the damaged folder!?
>>
>> When I look again from windows all the files are listed as well!!
>>
>>
>> !!!!!!!?????????!!!!!!!
>>
>
> Anyhow I may as well back them up whilst they are there, the I can try a
> boot
> on that drive, which should be interesting.

There is actually a utility called "unhide.exe". It does the
attribute change intelligently, only unhiding things that
are supposed to be unhidden. if you apply that to a data-only
partition, then it probably doesn't matter.

http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/forums/topic405109.html

Again, I have no first hand experience using that program,
or with the malware that caused it in the first place. You've
probably already scanned the PC on occasion for malware, and
would have located something like that.

Paul

 

R. Giggs. wrote:

> Anyway I was going to get a new PC today but it looks like the choice is
> severly limited.
>
> I was woried about being left without a PC,
> However as this seems to be a physical problem I am less worried, if I have
> problems with this drive the syetm restyore or recovery should work.
>
> Here is one of my best options for a PC
> http://www.comet.co.uk/p/Computer-Base-Units/buy-HP-P6-2364EA-Computer-Base-Unit/124470
>
> It's HP and I could pick it up today I think, but it is unclear, it says
> available in my area
> but they may mean for delivery.
> Small hard drive, 500gb and only 4gb memory. But you can upgrade those I
> suppose.

I think the base model of the HP P6, may be using the GPU
inside the processor. The processor has its own graphics
core. And by doing that, they can make a computer with
no graphics card. The GPU inside the CPU is too weak for
decent gaming, and would be similar to low-end laptop graphics.

So you're paying £469.99, presumably for a computer with no
good graphics card in it. The processor is worth about $182 USD.

http://ark.intel.com/products/65509/Intel-Core-i5-3330-Processor-6M-Cache-up-to-3_20-GHz

If all you do is web browser and email, then the base configuration
would be fine. If you play Crysis 12 hours a day, that's not the
right configuration for it, and you'll need to buy a separate
video card to be happy with it. There's probably enough
performance in that CPU to be happy with it. (Quad core at 3.2GHz,
no Hyperthreading.)

Paul

 

"Paul" <> wrote in message
news:k5vd8q$m28$...
> R. Giggs. wrote:
>> "R. Giggs." <> wrote in message
>> news:aaFgs.24846$4...
>>> "Paul" <> wrote in message
>>> news:k5u39j$nfq$...
>>>> R. Giggs. wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> I am doing a chkdsk on the bad drive, past phase one on phase two but
>>>>> i remember
>>>>> that takes forever so I may have to abort. Don't think it reports
>>>>> error untill the end
>>>>> so probably best to abort and try something else.
>>>> I wouldn't run CHKDSK on a disk that is demonstrating
>>>> bad sectors.
>>>>
>>>> The only thing I would want to do with a bad disk,
>>>> is get the data off it, as best as possible. When
>>>> the data is copied, sector by sector to a good disk,
>>>> then I'd run CHKDSK. If the disk is damaged, there's
>>>> no sense doing a file by file copy, because there
>>>> could be a lot of directory damage. Whereas a sector
>>>> by sector copy, isn't trying to interpret the data.
>>>> Only later, when you use other file/directory oriented
>>>> tools, will you be finding out how really busted it is.
>>>> But when a disk is sick, you try to get as many
>>>> sectors of it off as possible.
>>>>
>>>> If I had to do that, I'd try something like ddrescue
>>>> as mentioned here. The first pass of this, keeps track
>>>> of what has been successfully copied. Subsequent passes
>>>> are supposed to use the log file, to figure out what
>>>> remains to be copied. In a sense, this is a "persistent"
>>>> version of the regular "dd" copier.
>>>>
>>>> "Antonio Diaz's GNU ddrescue"
>>>>
>>>> http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/Damaged_Hard_Disk
>>>>
>>>> If the regular version of "dd" copies the whole disk,
>>>> and does not stop on an error, then you don't need
>>>> ddrescue. But if "dd" can't finish, then you know
>>>> there is damage causing actual CRC errors. And then,
>>>> you need to work around them, and get the data on
>>>> either side of the sector that is really damaged
>>>> (no longer recoverable).
>>>>
>>>> *******
>>>>
>>>> I can find other references to such a tool:
>>>>
>>>> There is a windows version of the Diaz program here, but
>>>> it's compiled under Cygwin. I don't know how easy that
>>>> is to set up. You might want to read up on Cygwin first.
>>>> When I use ported tools, I usually try for a gnuwin32
>>>> version. ( http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/packages.html )
>>>> This one is built under Cygwin.
>>>>
>>>> http://gd.tuwien.ac.at/gnu/gnu-win32/release/ddrescue/
>>>>
>>>> There is another program here, along similar lines.
>>>> I don't know anything about this, because I just found it.
>>>> It has a GUI, which is a major improvement compared
>>>> to the ddrescue command line approach.
>>>>
>>>> http://www.datarescue.com/photorescue/v3/drdd.htm
>>>>
>>>> Paul
>>>>
>>>
>>> LOL!! I can't believe my eyes!!!
>>>
>>> I was just googling lost file, in particular "half folder missing" and I
>>> came across this:-
>>>
>>> http://www.pchell.com/support/unhidefiles.shtml
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Which says:-
>>> ===============
>>> To Unhide files and folders that Windows Diagnostic, Windows XP Restore
>>> and other malware hide
>>>
>>> For Windows XP
>>>
>>> 1) Click on Start, Run
>>> 2) Type CMD and press Enter
>>> 3) At the command prompt type the following and press Enter
>>>
>>> CD \
>>>
>>> 4) Now the command prompt should show the root folder of the hard drive.
>>> Most likely C:\
>>> 5) At the command prompt type the following and press Enter
>>>
>>> ATTRIB -H *.* /S /D
>>>
>>> This command will unhide the files that are currently hidden. Because
>>> the important system files have a system attribute attached to them as
>>> well, the above command will not work for them and they will be skipped
>>> and kept hidden from prying eyes.
>>>
>>> This command will take some time, so dont be afraid if it takes anywhere
>>> from a few minutes to half an hour to finish. What the command does is
>>> simple. It removes the hidden attribute from all files on the hard
>>> drive. The /S parameter tells it to search the current folder and all
>>> subfolders, while the /D parameter processes tthe folders as well.
>>>
>>> 6) Type Exit and press Enter when the procedure is complete. Then reboot
>>> your computer
>>> ====================
>>>
>>> Anyhow, I didn't do all that I just ran CMD and went to G: where all the
>>> missing files
>>> were, then I typed DIR and all the files seem to be there!!!
>>>
>>> Do I didn't really do anything other than do a DIR on the damaged
>>> folder!?
>>>
>>> When I look again from windows all the files are listed as well!!
>>>
>>>
>>> !!!!!!!?????????!!!!!!!
>>>
>>
>> Anyhow I may as well back them up whilst they are there, the I can try a
>> boot
>> on that drive, which should be interesting.
>
> There is actually a utility called "unhide.exe". It does the
> attribute change intelligently, only unhiding things that
> are supposed to be unhidden. if you apply that to a data-only
> partition, then it probably doesn't matter.
>
> http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/forums/topic405109.html
>
> Again, I have no first hand experience using that program,
> or with the malware that caused it in the first place. You've
> probably already scanned the PC on occasion for malware, and
> would have located something like that.
>
> Paul
>

 

"R. Giggs." <> wrote in message
news:XgHgs.19545$4...
>
> "Paul" <> wrote in message
> news:k5vd8q$m28$...
>> R. Giggs. wrote:
>>> "R. Giggs." <> wrote in message
>>> news:aaFgs.24846$4...
>>>> "Paul" <> wrote in message
>>>> news:k5u39j$nfq$...
>>>>> R. Giggs. wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> I am doing a chkdsk on the bad drive, past phase one on phase two but
>>>>>> i remember
>>>>>> that takes forever so I may have to abort. Don't think it reports
>>>>>> error untill the end
>>>>>> so probably best to abort and try something else.
>>>>> I wouldn't run CHKDSK on a disk that is demonstrating
>>>>> bad sectors.
>>>>>
>>>>> The only thing I would want to do with a bad disk,
>>>>> is get the data off it, as best as possible. When
>>>>> the data is copied, sector by sector to a good disk,
>>>>> then I'd run CHKDSK. If the disk is damaged, there's
>>>>> no sense doing a file by file copy, because there
>>>>> could be a lot of directory damage. Whereas a sector
>>>>> by sector copy, isn't trying to interpret the data.
>>>>> Only later, when you use other file/directory oriented
>>>>> tools, will you be finding out how really busted it is.
>>>>> But when a disk is sick, you try to get as many
>>>>> sectors of it off as possible.
>>>>>
>>>>> If I had to do that, I'd try something like ddrescue
>>>>> as mentioned here. The first pass of this, keeps track
>>>>> of what has been successfully copied. Subsequent passes
>>>>> are supposed to use the log file, to figure out what
>>>>> remains to be copied. In a sense, this is a "persistent"
>>>>> version of the regular "dd" copier.
>>>>>
>>>>> "Antonio Diaz's GNU ddrescue"
>>>>>
>>>>> http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/Damaged_Hard_Disk
>>>>>
>>>>> If the regular version of "dd" copies the whole disk,
>>>>> and does not stop on an error, then you don't need
>>>>> ddrescue. But if "dd" can't finish, then you know
>>>>> there is damage causing actual CRC errors. And then,
>>>>> you need to work around them, and get the data on
>>>>> either side of the sector that is really damaged
>>>>> (no longer recoverable).
>>>>>
>>>>> *******
>>>>>
>>>>> I can find other references to such a tool:
>>>>>
>>>>> There is a windows version of the Diaz program here, but
>>>>> it's compiled under Cygwin. I don't know how easy that
>>>>> is to set up. You might want to read up on Cygwin first.
>>>>> When I use ported tools, I usually try for a gnuwin32
>>>>> version. ( http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/packages.html )
>>>>> This one is built under Cygwin.
>>>>>
>>>>> http://gd.tuwien.ac.at/gnu/gnu-win32/release/ddrescue/
>>>>>
>>>>> There is another program here, along similar lines.
>>>>> I don't know anything about this, because I just found it.
>>>>> It has a GUI, which is a major improvement compared
>>>>> to the ddrescue command line approach.
>>>>>
>>>>> http://www.datarescue.com/photorescue/v3/drdd.htm
>>>>>
>>>>> Paul
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> LOL!! I can't believe my eyes!!!
>>>>
>>>> I was just googling lost file, in particular "half folder missing" and
>>>> I came across this:-
>>>>
>>>> http://www.pchell.com/support/unhidefiles.shtml
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Which says:-
>>>> ===============
>>>> To Unhide files and folders that Windows Diagnostic, Windows XP Restore
>>>> and other malware hide
>>>>
>>>> For Windows XP
>>>>
>>>> 1) Click on Start, Run
>>>> 2) Type CMD and press Enter
>>>> 3) At the command prompt type the following and press Enter
>>>>
>>>> CD \
>>>>
>>>> 4) Now the command prompt should show the root folder of the hard
>>>> drive. Most likely C:\
>>>> 5) At the command prompt type the following and press Enter
>>>>
>>>> ATTRIB -H *.* /S /D
>>>>
>>>> This command will unhide the files that are currently hidden. Because
>>>> the important system files have a system attribute attached to them as
>>>> well, the above command will not work for them and they will be skipped
>>>> and kept hidden from prying eyes.
>>>>
>>>> This command will take some time, so dont be afraid if it takes
>>>> anywhere from a few minutes to half an hour to finish. What the command
>>>> does is simple. It removes the hidden attribute from all files on the
>>>> hard drive. The /S parameter tells it to search the current folder and
>>>> all subfolders, while the /D parameter processes tthe folders as well.
>>>>
>>>> 6) Type Exit and press Enter when the procedure is complete. Then
>>>> reboot your computer
>>>> ====================
>>>>
>>>> Anyhow, I didn't do all that I just ran CMD and went to G: where all
>>>> the missing files
>>>> were, then I typed DIR and all the files seem to be there!!!
>>>>
>>>> Do I didn't really do anything other than do a DIR on the damaged
>>>> folder!?
>>>>
>>>> When I look again from windows all the files are listed as well!!
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> !!!!!!!?????????!!!!!!!
>>>>
>>>
>>> Anyhow I may as well back them up whilst they are there, the I can try a
>>> boot
>>> on that drive, which should be interesting.
>>
>> There is actually a utility called "unhide.exe". It does the
>> attribute change intelligently, only unhiding things that
>> are supposed to be unhidden. if you apply that to a data-only
>> partition, then it probably doesn't matter.
>>
>> http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/forums/topic405109.html
>>
>> Again, I have no first hand experience using that program,
>> or with the malware that caused it in the first place. You've
>> probably already scanned the PC on occasion for malware, and
>> would have located something like that.
>>
>> Paul
>>
>
>

I thought I had already replied to this but the reply dos not seem to be
there.
I again had problems trying to boot with the bad drive connected, even after
disconnecting
I got the same error mesage, maybe I had not powered down long enough to
to clear the memory and it remembered the problem.
Yeterday I powered off again for longer and booted on one goood driver
briefly then rebooted
with both connected and it boooted with both drives again.

Iam just on the one drive now and I might have problemss
getting it to boot with both again, but I will try the same procedure.
It seems to follow a different boot up path probably because the bios tests
detect the problem,
and then the bios is not cleared because it still how power form the
capacitors which have not
run down yet.

But rither way it does not look like itis going to be prectical to use that
driver again.

 

"Paul" <> wrote in message
news:k5vdi7$nh0$...
> R. Giggs. wrote:
>
>> Anyway I was going to get a new PC today but it looks like the choice is
>> severly limited.
>>
>> I was woried about being left without a PC,
>> However as this seems to be a physical problem I am less worried, if I
>> have
>> problems with this drive the syetm restyore or recovery should work.
>>
>> Here is one of my best options for a PC
>> http://www.comet.co.uk/p/Computer-Base-Units/buy-HP-P6-2364EA-Computer-Base-Unit/124470
>>
>> It's HP and I could pick it up today I think, but it is unclear, it says
>> available in my area
>> but they may mean for delivery.
>> Small hard drive, 500gb and only 4gb memory. But you can upgrade those I
>> suppose.
>
> I think the base model of the HP P6, may be using the GPU
> inside the processor. The processor has its own graphics
> core. And by doing that, they can make a computer with
> no graphics card. The GPU inside the CPU is too weak for
> decent gaming, and would be similar to low-end laptop graphics.
>
> So you're paying £469.99, presumably for a computer with no
> good graphics card in it. The processor is worth about $182 USD.



I think it is the ACER there which has no graphics card, the HP one does
http://www.comet.co.uk/p/Computer-Base-Units/buy-ACER-AXC-600-Computer-Base-Unit/123800


THe ACER above has twice the memory and hard drive for just £20 more, howver
if you expand
the specification you see it is has no graphics card.
>
> http://ark.intel.com/products/65509/Intel-Core-i5-3330-Processor-6M-Cache-up-to-3_20-GHz
>
> If all you do is web browser and email, then the base configuration
> would be fine. If you play Crysis 12 hours a day, that's not the
> right configuration for it, and you'll need to buy a separate
> video card to be happy with it. There's probably enough
> performance in that CPU to be happy with it. (Quad core at 3.2GHz,
> no Hyperthreading.)

I don't really do any gaming at all so maybe I would be better off with the
ACER
which had more storage and memory.

I am always inclided to go for the best cpu.
The next best there costs £849.99 which is basically another £400 which is
almost
double the price and not great value for money.



>
> Paul
>

 

>> I think the base model of the HP P6, may be using the GPU
>> inside the processor. The processor has its own graphics
>> core. And by doing that, they can make a computer with
>> no graphics card. The GPU inside the CPU is too weak for
>> decent gaming, and would be similar to low-end laptop graphics.
>>
>> So you're paying £469.99, presumably for a computer with no
>> good graphics card in it. The processor is worth about $182 USD.
>
>
>
> I think it is the ACER there which has no graphics card, the HP one does
> http://www.comet.co.uk/p/Computer-Base-Units/buy-ACER-AXC-600-Computer-Base-Unit/123800
>
>
> THe ACER above has twice the memory and hard drive for just £20 more,
> howver if you expand
> the specification you see it is has no graphics card.
>>
>> http://ark.intel.com/products/65509/Intel-Core-i5-3330-Processor-6M-Cache-up-to-3_20-GHz
>>
>> If all you do is web browser and email, then the base configuration
>> would be fine. If you play Crysis 12 hours a day, that's not the
>> right configuration for it, and you'll need to buy a separate
>> video card to be happy with it. There's probably enough
>> performance in that CPU to be happy with it. (Quad core at 3.2GHz,
>> no Hyperthreading.)
>
> I don't really do any gaming at all so maybe I would be better off with
> the ACER
> which had more storage and memory.
>
> I am always inclided to go for the best cpu.
> The next best there costs £849.99 which is basically another £400 which
> is almost
> double the price and not great value for money.
>
>
>
>>
>> Paul
>>
>
>
>
http://www.argos.co.uk/static/Product/partNumber/5087152.htm#pdpFullProductInformation


Another one here odd thing is it is descrived as a duel core i5 but as far
as I am aware
i5 means quad core.

and an i7 here £535.99 but I think that only has onboard graphics.
http://www.argos.co.uk/static/Product/partNumber/018497.htm#pdpFullProductInformation



However this one seems to
http://www.argos.co.uk/static/Product/partNumber/018501.htm#pdpFullProductInformation

or at least I thought so, but I think I have been mistaken about some of the
descriptions.

It says it has Intell HD 2000 , which I thoght was a graphics card but is
realy onboard graphics.
I think I was confused about that regarding the earlier HP machine I linked
here. But then again perhaps not,
the terminology is a bit confusing there is intel hd 2000 which i thnk is
onboard and intel hd 1.7 GB
which is a graphics cars.

I have not looked at specs for a long time so I am unfamliar with a lot of
stuff, also I am not sure
if some of the shops know what they are selling or make mistakes as ARGOs
desribes a dual core i5
which I think is a mistake. ARGO are not an specialist electricall, just a
general catalog type box shifting store
but usually cheap. I have never heard of the Zoostormm brand they sell, it
sounds really cheap


This one however ha a graphics card and is i7
http://www.argos.co.uk/static/Product/partNumber/018510.htm

 

R. Giggs. wrote:
>>> I think the base model of the HP P6, may be using the GPU
>>> inside the processor. The processor has its own graphics
>>> core. And by doing that, they can make a computer with
>>> no graphics card. The GPU inside the CPU is too weak for
>>> decent gaming, and would be similar to low-end laptop graphics.
>>>
>>> So you're paying £469.99, presumably for a computer with no
>>> good graphics card in it. The processor is worth about $182 USD.
>>
>>
>> I think it is the ACER there which has no graphics card, the HP one does
>> http://www.comet.co.uk/p/Computer-Base-Units/buy-ACER-AXC-600-Computer-Base-Unit/123800
>>
>>
>> THe ACER above has twice the memory and hard drive for just £20 more,
>> howver if you expand
>> the specification you see it is has no graphics card.
>>> http://ark.intel.com/products/65509/Intel-Core-i5-3330-Processor-6M-Cache-up-to-3_20-GHz
>>>
>>> If all you do is web browser and email, then the base configuration
>>> would be fine. If you play Crysis 12 hours a day, that's not the
>>> right configuration for it, and you'll need to buy a separate
>>> video card to be happy with it. There's probably enough
>>> performance in that CPU to be happy with it. (Quad core at 3.2GHz,
>>> no Hyperthreading.)
>> I don't really do any gaming at all so maybe I would be better off with
>> the ACER
>> which had more storage and memory.
>>
>> I am always inclided to go for the best cpu.
>> The next best there costs £849.99 which is basically another £400 which
>> is almost
>> double the price and not great value for money.
>>
>>
>>
>>> Paul
>>>
>>
>>
> http://www.argos.co.uk/static/Product/partNumber/5087152.htm#pdpFullProductInformation
>
>
> Another one here odd thing is it is descrived as a duel core i5 but as far
> as I am aware
> i5 means quad core.
>
> and an i7 here £535.99 but I think that only has onboard graphics.
> http://www.argos.co.uk/static/Product/partNumber/018497.htm#pdpFullProductInformation
>
>
>
> However this one seems to
> http://www.argos.co.uk/static/Product/partNumber/018501.htm#pdpFullProductInformation
>
> or at least I thought so, but I think I have been mistaken about some of the
> descriptions.
>
> It says it has Intell HD 2000 , which I thoght was a graphics card but is
> realy onboard graphics.
> I think I was confused about that regarding the earlier HP machine I linked
> here. But then again perhaps not,
> the terminology is a bit confusing there is intel hd 2000 which i thnk is
> onboard and intel hd 1.7 GB
> which is a graphics cars.
>
> I have not looked at specs for a long time so I am unfamliar with a lot of
> stuff, also I am not sure
> if some of the shops know what they are selling or make mistakes as ARGOs
> desribes a dual core i5
> which I think is a mistake. ARGO are not an specialist electricall, just a
> general catalog type box shifting store
> but usually cheap. I have never heard of the Zoostormm brand they sell, it
> sounds really cheap
>
>
> This one however ha a graphics card and is i7
> http://www.argos.co.uk/static/Product/partNumber/018510.htm

Your last link, says "GT520" and that's a separate video card.
You can get some idea of the performance level, just from the price
of such a card. Brand new, the price of that video card is $50,
so it's not a great gamer card. What it gives you, is the
ability to play with software programs that use CUDA, but
the card would not be a powerhouse. It's probably slightly
better than an Intel built-in graphics solution.

In the charts here, the highest end cards are 14x strong
than the GT520

http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu.php?gpu=GeForce+GT+520

You can look up Intel processor model numbers on ark.intel.com,
to find out how many cores and threads, and what clock speeds
are supported.

Paul

 

"Paul" <> wrote in message
news:k621ij$mv4$...
> R. Giggs. wrote:
>>>> I think the base model of the HP P6, may be using the GPU
>>>> inside the processor. The processor has its own graphics
>>>> core. And by doing that, they can make a computer with
>>>> no graphics card. The GPU inside the CPU is too weak for
>>>> decent gaming, and would be similar to low-end laptop graphics.
>>>>
>>>> So you're paying £469.99, presumably for a computer with no
>>>> good graphics card in it. The processor is worth about $182 USD.
>>>
>>>
>>> I think it is the ACER there which has no graphics card, the HP one does
>>> http://www.comet.co.uk/p/Computer-Base-Units/buy-ACER-AXC-600-Computer-Base-Unit/123800
>>>
>>>
>>> THe ACER above has twice the memory and hard drive for just £20 more,
>>> howver if you expand
>>> the specification you see it is has no graphics card.
>>>> http://ark.intel.com/products/65509/Intel-Core-i5-3330-Processor-6M-Cache-up-to-3_20-GHz
>>>>
>>>> If all you do is web browser and email, then the base configuration
>>>> would be fine. If you play Crysis 12 hours a day, that's not the
>>>> right configuration for it, and you'll need to buy a separate
>>>> video card to be happy with it. There's probably enough
>>>> performance in that CPU to be happy with it. (Quad core at 3.2GHz,
>>>> no Hyperthreading.)
>>> I don't really do any gaming at all so maybe I would be better off with
>>> the ACER
>>> which had more storage and memory.
>>>
>>> I am always inclided to go for the best cpu.
>>> The next best there costs £849.99 which is basically another £400 which
>>> is almost
>>> double the price and not great value for money.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>> Paul
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>> http://www.argos.co.uk/static/Product/partNumber/5087152.htm#pdpFullProductInformation
>>
>>
>> Another one here odd thing is it is descrived as a duel core i5 but as
>> far as I am aware
>> i5 means quad core.
>>
>> and an i7 here £535.99 but I think that only has onboard graphics.
>> http://www.argos.co.uk/static/Product/partNumber/018497.htm#pdpFullProductInformation
>>
>>
>>
>> However this one seems to
>> http://www.argos.co.uk/static/Product/partNumber/018501.htm#pdpFullProductInformation
>>
>> or at least I thought so, but I think I have been mistaken about some of
>> the descriptions.
>>
>> It says it has Intell HD 2000 , which I thoght was a graphics card but
>> is realy onboard graphics.
>> I think I was confused about that regarding the earlier HP machine I
>> linked here. But then again perhaps not,
>> the terminology is a bit confusing there is intel hd 2000 which i thnk is
>> onboard and intel hd 1.7 GB
>> which is a graphics cars.
>>
>> I have not looked at specs for a long time so I am unfamliar with a lot
>> of stuff, also I am not sure
>> if some of the shops know what they are selling or make mistakes as
>> ARGOs desribes a dual core i5
>> which I think is a mistake. ARGO are not an specialist electricall, just
>> a general catalog type box shifting store
>> but usually cheap. I have never heard of the Zoostormm brand they sell,
>> it sounds really cheap
>>
>>
>> This one however ha a graphics card and is i7
>> http://www.argos.co.uk/static/Product/partNumber/018510.htm
>
> Your last link, says "GT520" and that's a separate video card.
> You can get some idea of the performance level, just from the price
> of such a card. Brand new, the price of that video card is $50,
> so it's not a great gamer card. What it gives you, is the
> ability to play with software programs that use CUDA, but
> the card would not be a powerhouse. It's probably slightly
> better than an Intel built-in graphics solution.
>
> In the charts here, the highest end cards are 14x strong
> than the GT520
>
> http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu.php?gpu=GeForce+GT+520

My currrent card a
Radeon HD 3450 had a passmark of 130 against 382 for theGT520, so that
would
be 3 times faster than mine, which is a pretty basic card, the fact it had
no fan was a bonus for me
as my PC was anoisey enough, althougth I cured that by cleaning out my
heatsink, probably saved
a fair bit on electricity too going by the noise it generated.
I certainly do not have a probllem with graphics as far as I am aware, I
don't play any grapical games.
My only real concern would be if the lack of a card slowed the PC.
Actually I think the real reason I got a card for my PC was to enable me to
use two monitors, so
that is a consideraton, however I could use the card from this machine for
that if required.


I could not find a passmark for the inbuilt intel hd2000 graphics but
comparing to
to cards it was compared to which I could find I estimate if would have a
passmark of 260, so
there does not seem much point paying extra for something just 50% faster,
unless perhaps
it allows you to use two monitors, I think there are 2 port on the on board
intel hd 2000 machines
according to picture I saw but I could be wrong on that, might have been a
machine with a card in it.

>
> You can look up Intel processor model numbers on ark.intel.com,
> to find out how many cores and threads, and what clock speeds
> are supported.
>
> Paul

 

R. Giggs. wrote:

>
> My currrent card a
> Radeon HD 3450 had a passmark of 130 against 382 for theGT520, so that
> would
> be 3 times faster than mine, which is a pretty basic card, the fact it had
> no fan was a bonus for me
> as my PC was anoisey enough, althougth I cured that by cleaning out my
> heatsink, probably saved
> a fair bit on electricity too going by the noise it generated.
> I certainly do not have a probllem with graphics as far as I am aware, I
> don't play any grapical games.
> My only real concern would be if the lack of a card slowed the PC.
> Actually I think the real reason I got a card for my PC was to enable me to
> use two monitors, so
> that is a consideraton, however I could use the card from this machine for
> that if required.
>
>
> I could not find a passmark for the inbuilt intel hd2000 graphics but
> comparing to
> to cards it was compared to which I could find I estimate if would have a
> passmark of 260, so
> there does not seem much point paying extra for something just 50% faster,
> unless perhaps
> it allows you to use two monitors, I think there are 2 port on the on board
> intel hd 2000 machines
> according to picture I saw but I could be wrong on that, might have been a
> machine with a card in it.
>
<<snip>>

The chart on that site, does have some entries for the Intel HD series.
But the labels on the chart, almost looks like they were entered by the
users, rather than being read straight from Device Manager by the
benchmark tool.

http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu_list.php

Intel HD >a 4000 461
Intel HD 200 320
Intel HD 3000 331
Intel HD 4000 525

The HD 4000 may be stronger than the GT 520, but there might
still be reasons to own the GT 520 instead. The software/driver
side of Intel stuff, while it's improved, just doesn't keep up
with the other graphics companies.

Paul

 

"Paul" <> wrote in message
news:k62ps9$qvu$...
> R. Giggs. wrote:
>
>>
>> My currrent card a
>> Radeon HD 3450 had a passmark of 130 against 382 for theGT520, so that
>> would
>> be 3 times faster than mine, which is a pretty basic card, the fact it
>> had no fan was a bonus for me
>> as my PC was anoisey enough, althougth I cured that by cleaning out my
>> heatsink, probably saved
>> a fair bit on electricity too going by the noise it generated.
>> I certainly do not have a probllem with graphics as far as I am aware, I
>> don't play any grapical games.
>> My only real concern would be if the lack of a card slowed the PC.
>> Actually I think the real reason I got a card for my PC was to enable me
>> to use two monitors, so
>> that is a consideraton, however I could use the card from this machine
>> for that if required.
>>
>>
>> I could not find a passmark for the inbuilt intel hd2000 graphics but
>> comparing to
>> to cards it was compared to which I could find I estimate if would have a
>> passmark of 260, so
>> there does not seem much point paying extra for something just 50%
>> faster, unless perhaps
>> it allows you to use two monitors, I think there are 2 port on the on
>> board intel hd 2000 machines
>> according to picture I saw but I could be wrong on that, might have been
>> a machine with a card in it.
>>
> <<snip>>
>
> The chart on that site, does have some entries for the Intel HD series.
> But the labels on the chart, almost looks like they were entered by the
> users, rather than being read straight from Device Manager by the
> benchmark tool.
>
> http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu_list.php
>
> Intel HD >a 4000 461
> Intel HD 200 320
> Intel HD 3000 331
> Intel HD 4000 525
>
> The HD 4000 may be stronger than the GT 520, but there might
> still be reasons to own the GT 520 instead. The software/driver
> side of Intel stuff, while it's improved, just doesn't keep up
> with the other graphics companies.
>
> Paul
>

Thanks for that, that could come in useful, one of the problems is often the
graphics
are not clearly specified if indeed thay are specified at all.
This is another machine I have been looking, I was quite surprised to find
it as the store is
a department type store, many such store and indeed other retailed have
stopped stocking
computers at all so my by in store option are rather restricted.
Even he so called specialist computer stores have a very limited range
available, howver
for some reason they like to advestise computers they cannot actually
suppply!!
This was the machine.

http://www.johnlewis.com/231496996/Product.aspx

I was quite surprise to find an i7 for under £600 there as it is a store
renown for good service
( most staff are shareholders) and thus tends to be a bit more expensive
than the box shifters.
Hard to find a detailed specification for it though.

Mean while I cleared data off my 500gb extrenal drive withthe idea of
replacing the failed drive with
it, howver when I opened it up I found it i snot SATA but PATA so I think
I'd neeed an adapter.

I also wanted to put the failed drive inthe housing to see if I could have a
look at it that way, just
curious to investigate it;s odd problems.


I found the SMART data I took from it from a coupleof months ago, I don't
think it
indicates any problems but I am not good at understanding it, I do not it
says error retreiving
SMART data at the end though.

*** DiskCheckup V3.1 Build: 1005 Report ***

SysInfo DLL Version:
SysInfo v1.0 Build: 1028
Time of export:
21:59:30 30-Aug-2012

Device information:
Device ID: 0
Interface: ATA
Device Capacity: 238472
MB
Serial Number:
S08BJ10L440410
Model Number:
SAMSUNG SP2514N
Firmware Revision:
VF900-33
Partitions:
C: 232329 MB
D: 6130 MB

ATA information:

Disk geometry:
Cylinders: 32301
Tracks/Cylinder: 240
Sectors/Track: 63
Bytes/Sector: 512
Total disk sectors:
488397168
Logical sector size: 512
Physical sector size: 512
Media rotation rate: N/A
Buffer size: 8192
KB
ECC size: 4
Bytes

Standards compliance:
ATA8-ACS Supported: No
ATA/ATAPI-7 Supported: Yes
ATA/ATAPI-6 Supported: Yes
ATA/ATAPI-5 Supported: Yes
ATA/ATAPI-4 Supported: Yes
World Wide ID:
50000F001B440410

Feature support:
SMART supported: Yes
SMART enabled: Yes
SMART self-test supported: Yes
SMART error log supported: Yes
LBA supported: Yes
IORDY supported: Yes
CFast supported: No
DMA supported: Yes
Maximum Multiword DMA mode supported: 2
Multiword DMA selected: None
Maximum UltraDMA mode supported: 6
UltraDMA selected: 5
Maximum PIO mode supported: 4
SATA Compliance: No
Trusted Computing supported: No
Host Protected Area (HPA) supported: Yes
Read look-ahead supported: Yes
Read look-ahead enabled: Yes
Write cache supported: Yes
Write cache enabled: Yes
Power management supported: Yes
Security mode supported: Yes
Security mode enabled: No
Device Configuration Overlay (DCO) supported: Yes
48bit Addressing supported: Yes
Auto Acoustic Managment (AAM) supported: Yes
Auto Acoustic Managment (AAM) enabled: Yes
Recommended AAM level:
Maximum performance
Current AAM level:
Minimum acoustic emanation level
Power-up in Standby (PUIS) supported: Yes
Power-up in Standby (PUIS) enabled: No
Advanced Power Management (APM) supported: No
CompactFlash Association (CFA) supported: No
General Purpose Logging (GPL) supported: Yes
Streaming supported: Yes
Media card pass through supported: No
Extended power conditions supported: No
Extended status reporting supported: No
Write-read-verify supported: No
Free-fall control supported: No
TRIM command supported: No
SCT command transport supported: No
NV Cache enabled: No
NV Cache Power Management supported: No

SMART ATTRIBUTES:
ID Description Status Value Worst
Threshold Raw Value TEC
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 Raw Read Error Rate OK 100 100 51
0 N.A.
3 Spin Up Time OK 100 100 25
6208 N.A.
4 Start/Stop Count OK 92 92 0
8501 N.A.
5 Reallocated Sector Count OK 253 253 10
0 N.A.
7 Seek Error Rate OK 253 253 51
0 N.A.
8 Seek Time Performance OK 253 253 15
0 N.A.
9 Power On Time OK 100 100 0
34391 N.A.
10 Spin Retry Count OK 253 253 51
0 N.A.
11 Calibration Retry Count OK 253 2 0
0 N.A.
12 Power Cycle Count OK 96 96 0
4149 N.A.
190 Temperature Difference from 100 OK 127 100 0
37 N.A.
194 Temperature OK 127 100 0
37 C N.A.
195 Hardware ECC Recovered OK 100 100 0
9971601 N.A.
196 Reallocation Event Count OK 253 253 0
0 N.A.
197 Current Pending Sector Count OK 253 253 0
0 N.A.
198 Uncorrectable Sector Count OK 253 253 0
0 N.A.
199 UltraDMA CRC Error Count OK 200 200 0
0 N.A.
200 Write Error Count OK 100 100 0
0 N.A.
201 Off Track Errors OK 100 100 0
0 N.A.

SMART HISTORY:
Error retrieving history
==========================================


Anyhow I an reluctant to boot with it on as a slave drive as it is hard to
boot, it detects the drive problem
and report them but I should still be able to continue to boot up on the
good master drive but that seem
to just hang for ever when I press F1 to continue, or indeed F2 to quit.

The only way I can get it to boot up is to press ESC at boot-up to go to a
boot menu
which allows me to select which drive to boot from, however that does not
allways work
and sometimes has led to it rebooting when booting up on my good drive which
puts me off
messing around with it as I have no backup, really, however I did select
boot from last known good
configuration, but that failed too, but then I just did a straight boot and
it booted OK.
Hence I don't like to mess too much with it, but curiousity sometimes gets
the better of me.

I had also been looking for at another drive for it, I though I might be
able to pick up
a relatively small capacity one cheaply, but again little choice, I can get
500gb for £60
which seems poor value when for another £20 I can get 2TB!!!
Error retrieving history

Error retrieving history

Error retrieving history

Error retrieving history

Error retrieving history

Error retrieving history

Error retrieving history

Error retrieving history

Error retrieving history

Error retrieving history

Error retrieving history

Error retrieving history

 

R. Giggs. wrote:

>
> Thanks for that, that could come in useful, one of the problems is often the
> graphics
> are not clearly specified if indeed thay are specified at all.
> This is another machine I have been looking, I was quite surprised to find
> it as the store is
> a department type store, many such store and indeed other retailed have
> stopped stocking
> computers at all so my by in store option are rather restricted.
> Even he so called specialist computer stores have a very limited range
> available, howver
> for some reason they like to advestise computers they cannot actually
> suppply!!
> This was the machine.
>
> http://www.johnlewis.com/231496996/Product.aspx
>
> I was quite surprise to find an i7 for under £600 there as it is a store
> renown for good service
> ( most staff are shareholders) and thus tends to be a bit more expensive
> than the box shifters.
> Hard to find a detailed specification for it though.

That machine appeared on Amazon about a year ago, judging by
the date of the reviews. It could well be out of stock by now.
Sometimes, machines like this appear, because they're clearance
items. Companies acquire clearance items from the manufacturer,
a bulk lot of them, and when they're gone, that's it.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/product-rev.../275-4881420-1501401?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=1

It's worth reading the reviews on that page as well. One customer
finds the case is too small. Hard to fit a video card in it.

>
> I found the SMART data I took from it from a coupleof months ago, I don't
> think it
> indicates any problems but I am not good at understanding it, I do not it
> says error retreiving
> SMART data at the end though.
>
> *** DiskCheckup V3.1 Build: 1005 Report ***
>
> Model Number: SAMSUNG SP2514N
> Firmware Revision: VF900-33

> SMART ATTRIBUTES:
> ID Description Status Value Worst Threshold Raw Value
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 5 Reallocated Sector Count OK 253 253 10 0
> 197 Current Pending Sector Count OK 253 253 0 0

Both raw values there are "0", so it's fine. I use those two
as "danger" indicators. The smart readout tool usually colors
entries that are abnormal, but sometimes the warning shown
is not an important one. But those two hint at the condition
of the platters and surfaces.

>
> Anyhow I an reluctant to boot with it on as a slave drive as it is hard to
> boot, it detects the drive problem
> and report them but I should still be able to continue to boot up on the
> good master drive but that seem
> to just hang for ever when I press F1 to continue, or indeed F2 to quit.
>
> The only way I can get it to boot up is to press ESC at boot-up to go to a
> boot menu
> which allows me to select which drive to boot from, however that does not
> allways work
> and sometimes has led to it rebooting when booting up on my good drive which
> puts me off
> messing around with it as I have no backup, really, however I did select
> boot from last known good
> configuration, but that failed too, but then I just did a straight boot and
> it booted OK.
> Hence I don't like to mess too much with it, but curiousity sometimes gets
> the better of me.
>
> I had also been looking for at another drive for it, I though I might be
> able to pick up
> a relatively small capacity one cheaply, but again little choice, I can get
> 500gb for £60
> which seems poor value when for another £20 I can get 2TB!!!

If you're buying a boot drive, the capacity isn't too important. And
after the flooding in Thailand, that upset all the disk pricing. You
can still find drives, where a small drive costs more than a big drive.
The drive prices have been all over the place. At one point, about
a third of what Newegg was selling, were refurbs (and listed as such).
Sort of a "take a chance" drive. And that's because of the shortage,
it was hard to get a steady supply of anything good. Even now, at
my favorite local supplier, certain drive models are still
missing in action.

What I consider a bit surprising, is I'm still seeing IDE drives available.
And models that had disappeared before the flooding. I don't know
why some of them have come back. It's not like you dig up
lily pads, and find them underneath

Paul

 

"R. Giggs." <> wrote in message
news:NMfis.31205$4...
>
> "Paul" <> wrote in message
> news:k62ps9$qvu$...
>> R. Giggs. wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> My currrent card a
>>> Radeon HD 3450 had a passmark of 130 against 382 for theGT520, so that
>>> would
>>> be 3 times faster than mine, which is a pretty basic card, the fact it
>>> had no fan was a bonus for me
>>> as my PC was anoisey enough, althougth I cured that by cleaning out my
>>> heatsink, probably saved
>>> a fair bit on electricity too going by the noise it generated.
>>> I certainly do not have a probllem with graphics as far as I am aware, I
>>> don't play any grapical games.
>>> My only real concern would be if the lack of a card slowed the PC.
>>> Actually I think the real reason I got a card for my PC was to enable me
>>> to use two monitors, so
>>> that is a consideraton, however I could use the card from this machine
>>> for that if required.
>>>
>>>
>>> I could not find a passmark for the inbuilt intel hd2000 graphics but
>>> comparing to
>>> to cards it was compared to which I could find I estimate if would have
>>> a passmark of 260, so
>>> there does not seem much point paying extra for something just 50%
>>> faster, unless perhaps
>>> it allows you to use two monitors, I think there are 2 port on the on
>>> board intel hd 2000 machines
>>> according to picture I saw but I could be wrong on that, might have been
>>> a machine with a card in it.
>>>
>> <<snip>>
>>
>> The chart on that site, does have some entries for the Intel HD series.
>> But the labels on the chart, almost looks like they were entered by the
>> users, rather than being read straight from Device Manager by the
>> benchmark tool.
>>
>> http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu_list.php
>>
>> Intel HD >a 4000 461
>> Intel HD 200 320
>> Intel HD 3000 331
>> Intel HD 4000 525
>>
>> The HD 4000 may be stronger than the GT 520, but there might
>> still be reasons to own the GT 520 instead. The software/driver
>> side of Intel stuff, while it's improved, just doesn't keep up
>> with the other graphics companies.
>>
>> Paul
>>
>
> Thanks for that, that could come in useful, one of the problems is often
> the graphics
> are not clearly specified if indeed thay are specified at all.
> This is another machine I have been looking, I was quite surprised to find
> it as the store is
> a department type store, many such store and indeed other retailed have
> stopped stocking
> computers at all so my by in store option are rather restricted.
> Even he so called specialist computer stores have a very limited range
> available, howver
> for some reason they like to advestise computers they cannot actually
> suppply!!
> This was the machine.
>
> http://www.johnlewis.com/231496996/Product.aspx
>
> I was quite surprise to find an i7 for under £600 there as it is a store
> renown for good service
> ( most staff are shareholders) and thus tends to be a bit more expensive
> than the box shifters.
> Hard to find a detailed specification for it though.
>
> Mean while I cleared data off my 500gb extrenal drive withthe idea of
> replacing the failed drive with
> it, howver when I opened it up I found it i snot SATA but PATA so I think
> I'd neeed an adapter.
>
> I also wanted to put the failed drive inthe housing to see if I could have
> a look at it that way, just
> curious to investigate it;s odd problems.
>
>
> I found the SMART data I took from it from a coupleof months ago, I don't
> think it
> indicates any problems but I am not good at understanding it, I do not it
> says error retreiving
> SMART data at the end though.
>
> *** DiskCheckup V3.1 Build: 1005 Report ***
>
> SysInfo DLL Version: SysInfo v1.0 Build: 1028
> Time of export: 21:59:30 30-Aug-2012
>
> Device information:
> Device ID: 0
> Interface: ATA
> Device Capacity:
> 238472 MB
> Serial Number: S08BJ10L440410
> Model Number: SAMSUNG SP2514N
> Firmware Revision: VF900-33
> Partitions:
> C: 232329 MB
> D: 6130 MB
>
> ATA information:
>
> Disk geometry:
> Cylinders: 32301
> Tracks/Cylinder: 240
> Sectors/Track: 63
> Bytes/Sector: 512
> Total disk sectors: 488397168
> Logical sector size: 512
> Physical sector size: 512
> Media rotation rate: N/A
> Buffer size: 8192
> KB
> ECC size: 4
> Bytes
>
> Standards compliance:
> ATA8-ACS Supported: No
> ATA/ATAPI-7 Supported: Yes
> ATA/ATAPI-6 Supported: Yes
> ATA/ATAPI-5 Supported: Yes
> ATA/ATAPI-4 Supported: Yes
> World Wide ID: 50000F001B440410
>
> Feature support:
> SMART supported: Yes
> SMART enabled: Yes
> SMART self-test supported: Yes
> SMART error log supported: Yes
> LBA supported: Yes
> IORDY supported: Yes
> CFast supported: No
> DMA supported: Yes
> Maximum Multiword DMA mode supported: 2
> Multiword DMA selected: None
> Maximum UltraDMA mode supported: 6
> UltraDMA selected: 5
> Maximum PIO mode supported: 4
> SATA Compliance: No
> Trusted Computing supported: No
> Host Protected Area (HPA) supported: Yes
> Read look-ahead supported: Yes
> Read look-ahead enabled: Yes
> Write cache supported: Yes
> Write cache enabled: Yes
> Power management supported: Yes
> Security mode supported: Yes
> Security mode enabled: No
> Device Configuration Overlay (DCO) supported: Yes
> 48bit Addressing supported: Yes
> Auto Acoustic Managment (AAM) supported: Yes
> Auto Acoustic Managment (AAM) enabled: Yes
> Recommended AAM level: Maximum performance
> Current AAM level: Minimum acoustic emanation level
> Power-up in Standby (PUIS) supported: Yes
> Power-up in Standby (PUIS) enabled: No
> Advanced Power Management (APM) supported: No
> CompactFlash Association (CFA) supported: No
> General Purpose Logging (GPL) supported: Yes
> Streaming supported: Yes
> Media card pass through supported: No
> Extended power conditions supported: No
> Extended status reporting supported: No
> Write-read-verify supported: No
> Free-fall control supported: No
> TRIM command supported: No
> SCT command transport supported: No
> NV Cache enabled: No
> NV Cache Power Management supported: No
>
> SMART ATTRIBUTES:
> ID Description Status Value Worst
> Threshold Raw Value TEC
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 1 Raw Read Error Rate OK 100 100
> 51 0 N.A.
> 3 Spin Up Time OK 100 100
> 25 6208 N.A.
> 4 Start/Stop Count OK 92 92 0
> 8501 N.A.
> 5 Reallocated Sector Count OK 253 253
> 10 0 N.A.
> 7 Seek Error Rate OK 253 253
> 51 0 N.A.
> 8 Seek Time Performance OK 253 253
> 15 0 N.A.
> 9 Power On Time OK 100 100 0
> 34391 N.A.
> 10 Spin Retry Count OK 253 253
> 51 0 N.A.
> 11 Calibration Retry Count OK 253 2 0
> 0 N.A.
> 12 Power Cycle Count OK 96 96 0
> 4149 N.A.
> 190 Temperature Difference from 100 OK 127 100
> 0 37 N.A.
> 194 Temperature OK 127 100
> 0 37 C N.A.
> 195 Hardware ECC Recovered OK 100 100
> 0 9971601 N.A.
> 196 Reallocation Event Count OK 253 253
> 0 0 N.A.
> 197 Current Pending Sector Count OK 253 253
> 0 0 N.A.
> 198 Uncorrectable Sector Count OK 253 253
> 0 0 N.A.
> 199 UltraDMA CRC Error Count OK 200 200
> 0 0 N.A.
> 200 Write Error Count OK 100 100
> 0 0 N.A.
> 201 Off Track Errors OK 100 100
> 0 0 N.A.
>
> SMART HISTORY:
> Error retrieving history
> ==========================================
>
>
> Anyhow I an reluctant to boot with it on as a slave drive as it is hard to
> boot, it detects the drive problem
> and report them but I should still be able to continue to boot up on the
> good master drive but that seem
> to just hang for ever when I press F1 to continue, or indeed F2 to quit.
>
> The only way I can get it to boot up is to press ESC at boot-up to go to
> a boot menu
> which allows me to select which drive to boot from, however that does not
> allways work
> and sometimes has led to it rebooting when booting up on my good drive
> which puts me off
> messing around with it as I have no backup, really, however I did select
> boot from last known good
> configuration, but that failed too, but then I just did a straight boot
> and it booted OK.
> Hence I don't like to mess too much with it, but curiousity sometimes gets
> the better of me.
>
> I had also been looking for at another drive for it, I though I might be
> able to pick up
> a relatively small capacity one cheaply, but again little choice, I can
> get 500gb for £60
> which seems poor value when for another £20 I can get 2TB!!!
> Error retrieving history
>
> Error retrieving history
>
> Error retrieving history
>
> Error retrieving history
>
> Error retrieving history
>
> Error retrieving history
>
> Error retrieving history
>
> Error retrieving history
>
> Error retrieving history
>
> Error retrieving history
>
> Error retrieving history
>
> Error retrieving history
>
>

I just noticed I had system restore turned off.


I had turned it off when I was doing my clone. maybe I forgot to turn it
back on.

 

"Paul" <> wrote in message
news:k6c6pg$if$...
> R. Giggs. wrote:
>
>>
>> Thanks for that, that could come in useful, one of the problems is often
>> the graphics
>> are not clearly specified if indeed thay are specified at all.
>> This is another machine I have been looking, I was quite surprised to
>> find it as the store is
>> a department type store, many such store and indeed other retailed have
>> stopped stocking
>> computers at all so my by in store option are rather restricted.
>> Even he so called specialist computer stores have a very limited range
>> available, howver
>> for some reason they like to advestise computers they cannot actually
>> suppply!!
>> This was the machine.
>>
>> http://www.johnlewis.com/231496996/Product.aspx
>>
>> I was quite surprise to find an i7 for under £600 there as it is a store
>> renown for good service
>> ( most staff are shareholders) and thus tends to be a bit more expensive
>> than the box shifters.
>> Hard to find a detailed specification for it though.
>
> That machine appeared on Amazon about a year ago, judging by
> the date of the reviews. It could well be out of stock by now.
> Sometimes, machines like this appear, because they're clearance
> items. Companies acquire clearance items from the manufacturer,
> a bulk lot of them, and when they're gone, that's it.


THe one I listed has a stock count and it is now down to 4, I know it was
more than that
when I looked earlier either 6 or8. SO I may have to get a move on if I want
one, but
I don't like buying under pressure.

The John Lewis one also has good reviews, the only negative comment is
" would have given it 5 stars if it had wifi, also the price is a bit steep.
"

wel compared to a lot of i7's I have seem it is a pretty good price, that
reviewer is pretty hard to please!!

A more positive comment is " Although the John Lewis website says it has a
wired keyboard and mouse, in fact it comes with both as wireless."

Also you listed an i5 on amazon, this one is the i7

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Acer-Aspire...1_1?s=computers&ie=UTF8&qid=1351263381&sr=1-1


I note it specifies a graphics card, Nvidia GeForce GT530, it's also a
differet speed
2600 v 3300 so It may be different from the John Lewis one.





>
> http://www.amazon.co.uk/product-rev.../275-4881420-1501401?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=1
>
> It's worth reading the reviews on that page as well. One customer
> finds the case is too small. Hard to fit a video card in it.

Yes, certainly the cases are small a few companies are maning machines with
these
small cases now, it's a bit of a double edged sword, I woudl appreciated the
space saving
and compactness but fiddling around inside them must be a bit of a
nightmare, but I don't
know as I have never had a look inside.


>
>>
>> I found the SMART data I took from it from a coupleof months ago, I don't
>> think it
>> indicates any problems but I am not good at understanding it, I do not it
>> says error retreiving
>> SMART data at the end though.
>>
>> *** DiskCheckup V3.1 Build: 1005 Report ***
>>
>> Model Number: SAMSUNG SP2514N
>> Firmware Revision: VF900-33
>
>> SMART ATTRIBUTES:
>> ID Description Status Value Worst Threshold Raw
>> Value
>> -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> 5 Reallocated Sector Count OK 253 253 10 0
>> 197 Current Pending Sector Count OK 253 253 0 0
>
> Both raw values there are "0", so it's fine. I use those two
> as "danger" indicators. The smart readout tool usually colors
> entries that are abnormal, but sometimes the warning shown
> is not an important one. But those two hint at the condition
> of the platters and surfaces.

The thing was with my machine was it went very quickly only a few months
after being supposedly fine so I am not totally convinced it is a real drive
problem
rather something caused by a virus/malware. I never found anything when I
scanned
but then half the drive was missing, or seamingly so.
I mean stuff appeared when viewed through MSDOS which was not there under
windows. That does not sound like a faulty drive to me. Why would one
program
find files but not another? It does not make sense.
Then there is also this business about the SMART program saying the drive
is not
a SMART drive now, how can that be? I was thinking perhaps that SMART stores
it's
info in a file on the drive and that file has gone missing or is corrupted,
however I do not
know how SMART works, apparently there is no definitive standard and each
manufcaturer
does it it's own way and I have no idea where this smart info is stored ont
eh drive, I assume it
must be stored on it somewhere.

I think I will have anothe go at booting with the drivie connected, but I
don't like
doing that because it has means I have to power off when it becomes 'stuck'
when trying
to boot, but I might be able to avoid this by trying to go straight into the
BIOS at BIOS
and then specifying to boot from the good drive, whcih usually works.


>
>>
>> Anyhow I an reluctant to boot with it on as a slave drive as it is hard
>> to boot, it detects the drive problem
>> and report them but I should still be able to continue to boot up on the
>> good master drive but that seem
>> to just hang for ever when I press F1 to continue, or indeed F2 to quit.
>>
>> The only way I can get it to boot up is to press ESC at boot-up to go to
>> a boot menu
>> which allows me to select which drive to boot from, however that does not
>> allways work
>> and sometimes has led to it rebooting when booting up on my good drive
>> which puts me off
>> messing around with it as I have no backup, really, however I did select
>> boot from last known good
>> configuration, but that failed too, but then I just did a straight boot
>> and it booted OK.
>> Hence I don't like to mess too much with it, but curiousity sometimes
>> gets the better of me.
>>
>> I had also been looking for at another drive for it, I though I might
>> be able to pick up
>> a relatively small capacity one cheaply, but again little choice, I can
>> get 500gb for £60
>> which seems poor value when for another £20 I can get 2TB!!!
>
> If you're buying a boot drive, the capacity isn't too important. And
> after the flooding in Thailand, that upset all the disk pricing. You
> can still find drives, where a small drive costs more than a big drive.
> The drive prices have been all over the place. At one point, about
> a third of what Newegg was selling, were refurbs (and listed as such).
> Sort of a "take a chance" drive. And that's because of the shortage,
> it was hard to get a steady supply of anything good. Even now, at
> my favorite local supplier, certain drive models are still
> missing in action.

Not realy so much a boot drive I need but more space, the current
drive is only 60gb which does not give me much space to work with without
connecting a USB drive.
I have oredered some SATA connector cables so I can use my 500GB
external USB drive as an internal drive, so if that works I guess I will not
need a new internal drive.
I just though I might be able to pick u a cheap IDE drive from somewhere
local but nobody
seems to seel them.

The drive shortage problem may explina why the store have so few PC's
available for collection, or maybe it is just costly for them to stock them.



>
> What I consider a bit surprising, is I'm still seeing IDE drives
> available.

As I said I can't find any IDE drives available locally they are all SATA
and I don't have the cables for the yet, although there is a connector on
the board.
Indeed most of the hard drives available seem to be external drives and they
will
surely be SATA inside.


> And models that had disappeared before the flooding. I don't know
> why some of them have come back. It's not like you dig up
> lily pads, and find them underneath
>
> Paul

 

>
> The thing was with my machine was it went very quickly only a few months
> after being supposedly fine so I am not totally convinced it is a real
> drive problem
> rather something caused by a virus/malware. I never found anything when I
> scanned
> but then half the drive was missing, or seamingly so.
> I mean stuff appeared when viewed through MSDOS which was not there under
> windows. That does not sound like a faulty drive to me. Why would one
> program
> find files but not another? It does not make sense.
> Then there is also this business about the SMART program saying the drive
> is not
> a SMART drive now, how can that be? I was thinking perhaps that SMART
> stores it's
> info in a file on the drive and that file has gone missing or is
> corrupted, however I do not
> know how SMART works, apparently there is no definitive standard and each
> manufcaturer
> does it it's own way and I have no idea where this smart info is stored
> ont eh drive, I assume it
> must be stored on it somewhere.
>
> I think I will have anothe go at booting with the drivie connected, but I
> don't like
> doing that because it has means I have to power off when it becomes
> 'stuck' when trying
> to boot, but I might be able to avoid this by trying to go straight into
> the BIOS at BIOS
> and then specifying to boot from the good drive, whcih usually works.
>


I have managed to boot up again with the bad drive connect, but it is rather
difficult to do.
I think I can get to the boot menu if I press ESC quickly during boot up at
least it worked this
time, sometimes it does not seem to work though, maybe I was too slow
pressing ESC
and it starts doing it's SMART test, once it gets that far it seems there is
nothing you can do but
reboot, the two option F1 to exit and F2 to continue (or similar) just lead
to a black screen
with a curser top right which just seems to sit there and do nothing. Maybe
if I waited ages it might
do something but the longest I have wited is 10 minutes, which seems along
time.

Anyway I download Active Hard disk monitor from here
http://www.disk-monitor.com/
It seems quite a useful tool, anyway on it it says SMART info is disabled
for the drive, but it
also says SMART not supported. However as I have retrieved the SMART info
for the drive
before and indeed posted it here the drive certainly does or rather should
support SMART.
I am thinking maybe there might be and option to enable or disable SMART in
the BIOS, however
it would have to do that individually for each drive as SMART works on the
other drive.
I have a feeling there will not be such and option though, I certainly do
not recall seeing one
but then I don't recall much about the BIOS at all.
I am not even sure if I cna get intot he BIOS witht he bad drive connected
but I will have to
try, I am not sure if it has an option saying BIOS, it may be that it is
under press F1 for set-up,
I will have to have a look. However I am just ruuning the drive scan feature
on this disk monitor tool
so I will wait untill that has finished, it's about 85% completed and has
found no errors which seems
to verify my suspicion that there is nothing physcally wrong with the drive.
I will also see if I can get any info from Samsung about the SMART info on
the bad drive, but I have
a feeling I won't be able to.
Actually the drive scan has just found 4 bad blocks!!
If I click on the bad blocks it reveals a list of bad sectors within them.
I am not sure how bad this is, there are only 4 bad blocks out of 4770 so
lest than 0.1%
is that a bad drive??

 

"R. Giggs." <> wrote in message
news:6hGis.72862$4...
> >
>> The thing was with my machine was it went very quickly only a few months
>> after being supposedly fine so I am not totally convinced it is a real
>> drive problem
>> rather something caused by a virus/malware. I never found anything when I
>> scanned
>> but then half the drive was missing, or seamingly so.
>> I mean stuff appeared when viewed through MSDOS which was not there under
>> windows. That does not sound like a faulty drive to me. Why would one
>> program
>> find files but not another? It does not make sense.
>> Then there is also this business about the SMART program saying the
>> drive is not
>> a SMART drive now, how can that be? I was thinking perhaps that SMART
>> stores it's
>> info in a file on the drive and that file has gone missing or is
>> corrupted, however I do not
>> know how SMART works, apparently there is no definitive standard and each
>> manufcaturer
>> does it it's own way and I have no idea where this smart info is stored
>> ont eh drive, I assume it
>> must be stored on it somewhere.
>>
>> I think I will have anothe go at booting with the drivie connected, but I
>> don't like
>> doing that because it has means I have to power off when it becomes
>> 'stuck' when trying
>> to boot, but I might be able to avoid this by trying to go straight into
>> the BIOS at BIOS
>> and then specifying to boot from the good drive, whcih usually works.
>>
>
>
> I have managed to boot up again with the bad drive connect, but it is
> rather difficult to do.
> I think I can get to the boot menu if I press ESC quickly during boot up
> at least it worked this
> time, sometimes it does not seem to work though, maybe I was too slow
> pressing ESC
> and it starts doing it's SMART test, once it gets that far it seems there
> is nothing you can do but
> reboot, the two option F1 to exit and F2 to continue (or similar) just
> lead to a black screen
> with a curser top right which just seems to sit there and do nothing.
> Maybe if I waited ages it might
> do something but the longest I have wited is 10 minutes, which seems along
> time.
>
> Anyway I download Active Hard disk monitor from here
> http://www.disk-monitor.com/
> It seems quite a useful tool, anyway on it it says SMART info is disabled
> for the drive, but it
> also says SMART not supported. However as I have retrieved the SMART info
> for the drive
> before and indeed posted it here the drive certainly does or rather should
> support SMART.
> I am thinking maybe there might be and option to enable or disable SMART
> in the BIOS, however
> it would have to do that individually for each drive as SMART works on the
> other drive.
> I have a feeling there will not be such and option though, I certainly do
> not recall seeing one
> but then I don't recall much about the BIOS at all.
> I am not even sure if I cna get intot he BIOS witht he bad drive connected
> but I will have to
> try, I am not sure if it has an option saying BIOS, it may be that it is
> under press F1 for set-up,
> I will have to have a look. However I am just ruuning the drive scan
> feature on this disk monitor tool
> so I will wait untill that has finished, it's about 85% completed and has
> found no errors which seems
> to verify my suspicion that there is nothing physcally wrong with the
> drive.
> I will also see if I can get any info from Samsung about the SMART info on
> the bad drive, but I have
> a feeling I won't be able to.
> Actually the drive scan has just found 4 bad blocks!!
> If I click on the bad blocks it reveals a list of bad sectors within them.
> I am not sure how bad this is, there are only 4 bad blocks out of 4770 so
> lest than 0.1%
> is that a bad drive??
>

I seem to have figured out how to get intot he bios and boot menu now
without too
much troube, which means I can keep the bad drive in and boot up fairly
easilly.

I went into the bios to look at the SMART setting, on the good drive I can
look at
the SMART info and run a SMART test, however on the bad drive it says
either disabled or not supported, which I took a note of the wording.
Also the screen you go to to look at the SMART status for that drive seems
to
hang sometimes even when you are doing nothing other than tabing through
some
of the options there, but not changing anything, maybe something causes it
to try and
access the drive and that casues it to hang.
Anyhow I don't seem to be able to disable SMART tests.

So not too sure what to do now, I may try to run a chkdsk on that drive, but
they often
take ages and sometimes just do not complete or say the test could not
complete.

I could also try formatting the drive and see if that helps.
It could be that maybe there is a chip on the drive which is damage, the
SMART chip
perhaps is there is one. I noticed the IDE conector looked a bit discoloured
in the centre
like it had got hot or something but that's a but far fetched.

If chkdsk or formatting does not clear the problem(s) I guess I can still
use the drive for
unimportant stuff such as recording TV stuff I would probably delete
eventually anyway.

 

R. Giggs. wrote:
> "R. Giggs." <> wrote in message
> news:6hGis.72862$4...
>>> The thing was with my machine was it went very quickly only a few months
>>> after being supposedly fine so I am not totally convinced it is a real
>>> drive problem
>>> rather something caused by a virus/malware. I never found anything when I
>>> scanned
>>> but then half the drive was missing, or seamingly so.
>>> I mean stuff appeared when viewed through MSDOS which was not there under
>>> windows. That does not sound like a faulty drive to me. Why would one
>>> program
>>> find files but not another? It does not make sense.
>>> Then there is also this business about the SMART program saying the
>>> drive is not
>>> a SMART drive now, how can that be? I was thinking perhaps that SMART
>>> stores it's
>>> info in a file on the drive and that file has gone missing or is
>>> corrupted, however I do not
>>> know how SMART works, apparently there is no definitive standard and each
>>> manufcaturer
>>> does it it's own way and I have no idea where this smart info is stored
>>> ont eh drive, I assume it
>>> must be stored on it somewhere.
>>>
>>> I think I will have anothe go at booting with the drivie connected, but I
>>> don't like
>>> doing that because it has means I have to power off when it becomes
>>> 'stuck' when trying
>>> to boot, but I might be able to avoid this by trying to go straight into
>>> the BIOS at BIOS
>>> and then specifying to boot from the good drive, whcih usually works.
>>>
>>
>> I have managed to boot up again with the bad drive connect, but it is
>> rather difficult to do.
>> I think I can get to the boot menu if I press ESC quickly during boot up
>> at least it worked this
>> time, sometimes it does not seem to work though, maybe I was too slow
>> pressing ESC
>> and it starts doing it's SMART test, once it gets that far it seems there
>> is nothing you can do but
>> reboot, the two option F1 to exit and F2 to continue (or similar) just
>> lead to a black screen
>> with a curser top right which just seems to sit there and do nothing.
>> Maybe if I waited ages it might
>> do something but the longest I have wited is 10 minutes, which seems along
>> time.
>>
>> Anyway I download Active Hard disk monitor from here
>> http://www.disk-monitor.com/
>> It seems quite a useful tool, anyway on it it says SMART info is disabled
>> for the drive, but it
>> also says SMART not supported. However as I have retrieved the SMART info
>> for the drive
>> before and indeed posted it here the drive certainly does or rather should
>> support SMART.
>> I am thinking maybe there might be and option to enable or disable SMART
>> in the BIOS, however
>> it would have to do that individually for each drive as SMART works on the
>> other drive.
>> I have a feeling there will not be such and option though, I certainly do
>> not recall seeing one
>> but then I don't recall much about the BIOS at all.
>> I am not even sure if I cna get intot he BIOS witht he bad drive connected
>> but I will have to
>> try, I am not sure if it has an option saying BIOS, it may be that it is
>> under press F1 for set-up,
>> I will have to have a look. However I am just ruuning the drive scan
>> feature on this disk monitor tool
>> so I will wait untill that has finished, it's about 85% completed and has
>> found no errors which seems
>> to verify my suspicion that there is nothing physcally wrong with the
>> drive.
>> I will also see if I can get any info from Samsung about the SMART info on
>> the bad drive, but I have
>> a feeling I won't be able to.
>> Actually the drive scan has just found 4 bad blocks!!
>> If I click on the bad blocks it reveals a list of bad sectors within them.
>> I am not sure how bad this is, there are only 4 bad blocks out of 4770 so
>> lest than 0.1%
>> is that a bad drive??
>>
>
> I seem to have figured out how to get intot he bios and boot menu now
> without too
> much troube, which means I can keep the bad drive in and boot up fairly
> easilly.
>
> I went into the bios to look at the SMART setting, on the good drive I can
> look at
> the SMART info and run a SMART test, however on the bad drive it says
> either disabled or not supported, which I took a note of the wording.
> Also the screen you go to to look at the SMART status for that drive seems
> to
> hang sometimes even when you are doing nothing other than tabing through
> some
> of the options there, but not changing anything, maybe something causes it
> to try and
> access the drive and that casues it to hang.
> Anyhow I don't seem to be able to disable SMART tests.
>
> So not too sure what to do now, I may try to run a chkdsk on that drive, but
> they often
> take ages and sometimes just do not complete or say the test could not
> complete.
>
> I could also try formatting the drive and see if that helps.
> It could be that maybe there is a chip on the drive which is damage, the
> SMART chip
> perhaps is there is one. I noticed the IDE conector looked a bit discoloured
> in the centre
> like it had got hot or something but that's a but far fetched.
>
> If chkdsk or formatting does not clear the problem(s) I guess I can still
> use the drive for
> unimportant stuff such as recording TV stuff I would probably delete
> eventually anyway.
>
>

The BIOS setting for SMART, I think the purpose of that, is for
the BIOS to read the SMART table during POST. If the BIOS sees
something bad, it is supposed to warn you at the BIOS level. It
is present, with the idea you get a warning as soon as possible.

The setting does not disable SMART for while you're in Windows.
The setting is for determining whether the BIOS is to check
for dangerous indications or not, in the SMART.

SMART requires passthru to work. Depending on the hardware
and driver used, there have been cases where there is no software
path for the SMART command to get through. That might account
for the monitoring software you were using, putting up such a message
("Smart disabled").

Have you tried the SMART screen (Health Tab) in HDTune ?
It doesn't continuously monitor health, and only reads out
the table of info from the disk, when the Health Tab is running.
Version 2.55 is free and good enough for things like the SMART info.

http://www.hdtune.com/files/hdtune_255.exe

The disk stores data in "clusters" of sectors. If Windows does
integrity checking, if a bad sector is found, it should cause
the whole cluster to be marked off-limits. So the smallest
storage unit, from a hardware perspective, is a sector. But
for management purposes, and for performance, larger groups
of them are used. On my FAT32 partition, I think it's around
32K per cluster or 64 sectors of 512 bytes each. One bad
sector, would cause the other 63 next to it to be rejected
as well, as far as FAT32 is concerned. Free space on the
disk is managed in clusters as well. So you can't really
allocate just 512 bytes. It was done that way, partially,
so any tables used to manage storage space, wouldn't
take as many resources.

If you were scanning at the sector level, there would be
millions of sectors. Take the drive capacity in bytes,
divide by 512 byte sectors and see how large a number
that is. When counted in clusters, it's a slightly
smaller number.

The ATA drives have automatic sector sparing. If a sector
is flaky, the controller substitutes a spare sector for
the bad one. When an area of the disk runs out of spares,
that's when a CRC error will finally be reported. (As it's
no longer possible to make it seem like a good sector is
present.) When a sector is spared, that tends to slow the
disk down. If you see lots of "spikes" in a transfer
rate curve, that hints there has been a fair amount of
repair to the disk already. If you get to the point
that surface scans are masking off whole clusters,
then chances are the two SMART "danger parameters" I listed
in a previous post, are also showing non-zero raw data,
and the disk is "ripe".

Paul

 

"Paul" <> wrote in message
news:k6ft0u$q4o$...
> R. Giggs. wrote:
>> "R. Giggs." <> wrote in message
>> news:6hGis.72862$4...
>>>> The thing was with my machine was it went very quickly only a few
>>>> months
>>>> after being supposedly fine so I am not totally convinced it is a real
>>>> drive problem
>>>> rather something caused by a virus/malware. I never found anything when
>>>> I scanned
>>>> but then half the drive was missing, or seamingly so.
>>>> I mean stuff appeared when viewed through MSDOS which was not there
>>>> under
>>>> windows. That does not sound like a faulty drive to me. Why would one
>>>> program
>>>> find files but not another? It does not make sense.
>>>> Then there is also this business about the SMART program saying the
>>>> drive is not
>>>> a SMART drive now, how can that be? I was thinking perhaps that SMART
>>>> stores it's
>>>> info in a file on the drive and that file has gone missing or is
>>>> corrupted, however I do not
>>>> know how SMART works, apparently there is no definitive standard and
>>>> each manufcaturer
>>>> does it it's own way and I have no idea where this smart info is stored
>>>> ont eh drive, I assume it
>>>> must be stored on it somewhere.
>>>>
>>>> I think I will have anothe go at booting with the drivie connected, but
>>>> I don't like
>>>> doing that because it has means I have to power off when it becomes
>>>> 'stuck' when trying
>>>> to boot, but I might be able to avoid this by trying to go straight
>>>> into the BIOS at BIOS
>>>> and then specifying to boot from the good drive, whcih usually works.
>>>>
>>>
>>> I have managed to boot up again with the bad drive connect, but it is
>>> rather difficult to do.
>>> I think I can get to the boot menu if I press ESC quickly during boot up
>>> at least it worked this
>>> time, sometimes it does not seem to work though, maybe I was too slow
>>> pressing ESC
>>> and it starts doing it's SMART test, once it gets that far it seems
>>> there is nothing you can do but
>>> reboot, the two option F1 to exit and F2 to continue (or similar) just
>>> lead to a black screen
>>> with a curser top right which just seems to sit there and do nothing.
>>> Maybe if I waited ages it might
>>> do something but the longest I have wited is 10 minutes, which seems
>>> along time.
>>>
>>> Anyway I download Active Hard disk monitor from here
>>> http://www.disk-monitor.com/
>>> It seems quite a useful tool, anyway on it it says SMART info is
>>> disabled for the drive, but it
>>> also says SMART not supported. However as I have retrieved the SMART
>>> info for the drive
>>> before and indeed posted it here the drive certainly does or rather
>>> should support SMART.
>>> I am thinking maybe there might be and option to enable or disable SMART
>>> in the BIOS, however
>>> it would have to do that individually for each drive as SMART works on
>>> the other drive.
>>> I have a feeling there will not be such and option though, I certainly
>>> do not recall seeing one
>>> but then I don't recall much about the BIOS at all.
>>> I am not even sure if I cna get intot he BIOS witht he bad drive
>>> connected but I will have to
>>> try, I am not sure if it has an option saying BIOS, it may be that it is
>>> under press F1 for set-up,
>>> I will have to have a look. However I am just ruuning the drive scan
>>> feature on this disk monitor tool
>>> so I will wait untill that has finished, it's about 85% completed and
>>> has found no errors which seems
>>> to verify my suspicion that there is nothing physcally wrong with the
>>> drive.
>>> I will also see if I can get any info from Samsung about the SMART info
>>> on the bad drive, but I have
>>> a feeling I won't be able to.
>>> Actually the drive scan has just found 4 bad blocks!!
>>> If I click on the bad blocks it reveals a list of bad sectors within
>>> them.
>>> I am not sure how bad this is, there are only 4 bad blocks out of 4770
>>> so lest than 0.1%
>>> is that a bad drive??
>>>
>>
>> I seem to have figured out how to get intot he bios and boot menu now
>> without too
>> much troube, which means I can keep the bad drive in and boot up fairly
>> easilly.
>>
>> I went into the bios to look at the SMART setting, on the good drive I
>> can look at
>> the SMART info and run a SMART test, however on the bad drive it says
>> either disabled or not supported, which I took a note of the wording.
>> Also the screen you go to to look at the SMART status for that drive
>> seems to
>> hang sometimes even when you are doing nothing other than tabing through
>> some
>> of the options there, but not changing anything, maybe something causes
>> it to try and
>> access the drive and that casues it to hang.
>> Anyhow I don't seem to be able to disable SMART tests.
>>
>> So not too sure what to do now, I may try to run a chkdsk on that drive,
>> but they often
>> take ages and sometimes just do not complete or say the test could not
>> complete.
>>
>> I could also try formatting the drive and see if that helps.
>> It could be that maybe there is a chip on the drive which is damage, the
>> SMART chip
>> perhaps is there is one. I noticed the IDE conector looked a bit
>> discoloured in the centre
>> like it had got hot or something but that's a but far fetched.
>>
>> If chkdsk or formatting does not clear the problem(s) I guess I can still
>> use the drive for
>> unimportant stuff such as recording TV stuff I would probably delete
>> eventually anyway.
>
> The BIOS setting for SMART, I think the purpose of that, is for
> the BIOS to read the SMART table during POST. If the BIOS sees
> something bad, it is supposed to warn you at the BIOS level. It
> is present, with the idea you get a warning as soon as possible.
>
> The setting does not disable SMART for while you're in Windows.
> The setting is for determining whether the BIOS is to check
> for dangerous indications or not, in the SMART.
>
> SMART requires passthru to work. Depending on the hardware
> and driver used, there have been cases where there is no software
> path for the SMART command to get through. That might account
> for the monitoring software you were using, putting up such a message
> ("Smart disabled").
>
> Have you tried the SMART screen (Health Tab) in HDTune ?
> It doesn't continuously monitor health, and only reads out
> the table of info from the disk, when the Health Tab is running.
> Version 2.55 is free and good enough for things like the SMART info.
>
> http://www.hdtune.com/files/hdtune_255.exe
>
> The disk stores data in "clusters" of sectors. If Windows does
> integrity checking, if a bad sector is found, it should cause
> the whole cluster to be marked off-limits. So the smallest
> storage unit, from a hardware perspective, is a sector. But
> for management purposes, and for performance, larger groups
> of them are used. On my FAT32 partition, I think it's around
> 32K per cluster or 64 sectors of 512 bytes each. One bad
> sector, would cause the other 63 next to it to be rejected
> as well, as far as FAT32 is concerned. Free space on the
> disk is managed in clusters as well. So you can't really
> allocate just 512 bytes. It was done that way, partially,
> so any tables used to manage storage space, wouldn't
> take as many resources.
>
> If you were scanning at the sector level, there would be
> millions of sectors. Take the drive capacity in bytes,
> divide by 512 byte sectors and see how large a number
> that is. When counted in clusters, it's a slightly
> smaller number.
>
> The ATA drives have automatic sector sparing. If a sector
> is flaky, the controller substitutes a spare sector for
> the bad one. When an area of the disk runs out of spares,
> that's when a CRC error will finally be reported. (As it's
> no longer possible to make it seem like a good sector is
> present.) When a sector is spared, that tends to slow the
> disk down. If you see lots of "spikes" in a transfer
> rate curve, that hints there has been a fair amount of
> repair to the disk already. If you get to the point
> that surface scans are masking off whole clusters,
> then chances are the two SMART "danger parameters" I listed
> in a previous post, are also showing non-zero raw data,
> and the disk is "ripe".
>
> Paul

Just a quick update, I will reply in more detail later.
I ran chkdsk with it set to fic errors, it ran right through to complete all
stages,
In the eevent log I can see a list of errors it found, verious types
including
stuff like - recieving orphaned file chcp.com into(292230 into directory
file (2383730 or similar,
unfortunatly i cant seem to save the file so I can post it.

Anyhow the drive is stil being report as not a SMART drive so I expect the
boot problem
will stil be there. I am not sur what the chkdsk has done with the lost
files, are they repaired
or stil lost?

I am running the other drive check program to see if it stiill report the 4
bad bocks.
Actually I just noticed one of the files it 'recieved' (in the error list)
was chkdsk.exe,
the file I was running!!!!!!! HOwever I think the errors were listed under
minor iconistancies,
It's a shame i cant save the file to post it.

Will report back more later.

 

R. Giggs. wrote:

>
> Just a quick update, I will reply in more detail later.
> I ran chkdsk with it set to fic errors, it ran right through to complete all
> stages,
> In the eevent log I can see a list of errors it found, verious types
> including
> stuff like - recieving orphaned file chcp.com into(292230 into directory
> file (2383730 or similar,
> unfortunatly i cant seem to save the file so I can post it.
>
> Anyhow the drive is stil being report as not a SMART drive so I expect the
> boot problem
> will stil be there. I am not sur what the chkdsk has done with the lost
> files, are they repaired
> or stil lost?
>
> I am running the other drive check program to see if it stiill report the 4
> bad bocks.
> Actually I just noticed one of the files it 'recieved' (in the error list)
> was chkdsk.exe,
> the file I was running!!!!!!! HOwever I think the errors were listed under
> minor iconistancies,
> It's a shame i cant save the file to post it.
>
> Will report back more later.
>

On my C: drive, orphan files are place in C:\FOUND.000,
but without proper file names. There is no guarantee that
everything lost, is recoverable.

Paul

 

"Paul" <> wrote in message
news:k6ft0u$q4o$...
> R. Giggs. wrote:
>> "R. Giggs." <> wrote in message
>> news:6hGis.72862$4...
>>>> The thing was with my machine was it went very quickly only a few
>>>> months
>>>> after being supposedly fine so I am not totally convinced it is a real
>>>> drive problem
>>>> rather something caused by a virus/malware. I never found anything when
>>>> I scanned
>>>> but then half the drive was missing, or seamingly so.
>>>> I mean stuff appeared when viewed through MSDOS which was not there
>>>> under
>>>> windows. That does not sound like a faulty drive to me. Why would one
>>>> program
>>>> find files but not another? It does not make sense.
>>>> Then there is also this business about the SMART program saying the
>>>> drive is not
>>>> a SMART drive now, how can that be? I was thinking perhaps that SMART
>>>> stores it's
>>>> info in a file on the drive and that file has gone missing or is
>>>> corrupted, however I do not
>>>> know how SMART works, apparently there is no definitive standard and
>>>> each manufcaturer
>>>> does it it's own way and I have no idea where this smart info is stored
>>>> ont eh drive, I assume it
>>>> must be stored on it somewhere.
>>>>
>>>> I think I will have anothe go at booting with the drivie connected, but
>>>> I don't like
>>>> doing that because it has means I have to power off when it becomes
>>>> 'stuck' when trying
>>>> to boot, but I might be able to avoid this by trying to go straight
>>>> into the BIOS at BIOS
>>>> and then specifying to boot from the good drive, whcih usually works.
>>>>
>>>
>>> I have managed to boot up again with the bad drive connect, but it is
>>> rather difficult to do.
>>> I think I can get to the boot menu if I press ESC quickly during boot up
>>> at least it worked this
>>> time, sometimes it does not seem to work though, maybe I was too slow
>>> pressing ESC
>>> and it starts doing it's SMART test, once it gets that far it seems
>>> there is nothing you can do but
>>> reboot, the two option F1 to exit and F2 to continue (or similar) just
>>> lead to a black screen
>>> with a curser top right which just seems to sit there and do nothing.
>>> Maybe if I waited ages it might
>>> do something but the longest I have wited is 10 minutes, which seems
>>> along time.
>>>
>>> Anyway I download Active Hard disk monitor from here
>>> http://www.disk-monitor.com/
>>> It seems quite a useful tool, anyway on it it says SMART info is
>>> disabled for the drive, but it
>>> also says SMART not supported. However as I have retrieved the SMART
>>> info for the drive
>>> before and indeed posted it here the drive certainly does or rather
>>> should support SMART.
>>> I am thinking maybe there might be and option to enable or disable SMART
>>> in the BIOS, however
>>> it would have to do that individually for each drive as SMART works on
>>> the other drive.
>>> I have a feeling there will not be such and option though, I certainly
>>> do not recall seeing one
>>> but then I don't recall much about the BIOS at all.
>>> I am not even sure if I cna get intot he BIOS witht he bad drive
>>> connected but I will have to
>>> try, I am not sure if it has an option saying BIOS, it may be that it is
>>> under press F1 for set-up,
>>> I will have to have a look. However I am just ruuning the drive scan
>>> feature on this disk monitor tool
>>> so I will wait untill that has finished, it's about 85% completed and
>>> has found no errors which seems
>>> to verify my suspicion that there is nothing physcally wrong with the
>>> drive.
>>> I will also see if I can get any info from Samsung about the SMART info
>>> on the bad drive, but I have
>>> a feeling I won't be able to.
>>> Actually the drive scan has just found 4 bad blocks!!
>>> If I click on the bad blocks it reveals a list of bad sectors within
>>> them.
>>> I am not sure how bad this is, there are only 4 bad blocks out of 4770
>>> so lest than 0.1%
>>> is that a bad drive??
>>>
>>
>> I seem to have figured out how to get intot he bios and boot menu now
>> without too
>> much troube, which means I can keep the bad drive in and boot up fairly
>> easilly.
>>
>> I went into the bios to look at the SMART setting, on the good drive I
>> can look at
>> the SMART info and run a SMART test, however on the bad drive it says
>> either disabled or not supported, which I took a note of the wording.
>> Also the screen you go to to look at the SMART status for that drive
>> seems to
>> hang sometimes even when you are doing nothing other than tabing through
>> some
>> of the options there, but not changing anything, maybe something causes
>> it to try and
>> access the drive and that casues it to hang.
>> Anyhow I don't seem to be able to disable SMART tests.
>>
>> So not too sure what to do now, I may try to run a chkdsk on that drive,
>> but they often
>> take ages and sometimes just do not complete or say the test could not
>> complete.
>>
>> I could also try formatting the drive and see if that helps.
>> It could be that maybe there is a chip on the drive which is damage, the
>> SMART chip
>> perhaps is there is one. I noticed the IDE conector looked a bit
>> discoloured in the centre
>> like it had got hot or something but that's a but far fetched.
>>
>> If chkdsk or formatting does not clear the problem(s) I guess I can still
>> use the drive for
>> unimportant stuff such as recording TV stuff I would probably delete
>> eventually anyway.
>
> The BIOS setting for SMART, I think the purpose of that, is for
> the BIOS to read the SMART table during POST. If the BIOS sees
> something bad, it is supposed to warn you at the BIOS level. It
> is present, with the idea you get a warning as soon as possible.
>
> The setting does not disable SMART for while you're in Windows.
> The setting is for determining whether the BIOS is to check
> for dangerous indications or not, in the SMART.
>
> SMART requires passthru to work. Depending on the hardware
> and driver used, there have been cases where there is no software
> path for the SMART command to get through. That might account
> for the monitoring software you were using, putting up such a message
> ("Smart disabled").
>
> Have you tried the SMART screen (Health Tab) in HDTune ?
> It doesn't continuously monitor health, and only reads out
> the table of info from the disk, when the Health Tab is running.
> Version 2.55 is free and good enough for things like the SMART info.
>
> http://www.hdtune.com/files/hdtune_255.exe




That says the drive does support SMART, it's ticked in the supported
features anyway, but it may just know such drives shoudl support SMART.
It does not show any SMART data though as it does for the good drive.

It passed the quick test but I expect it wouild fail the full test.


>
> The disk stores data in "clusters" of sectors. If Windows does
> integrity checking, if a bad sector is found, it should cause
> the whole cluster to be marked off-limits. So the smallest
> storage unit, from a hardware perspective, is a sector. But
> for management purposes, and for performance, larger groups
> of them are used. On my FAT32 partition, I think it's around
> 32K per cluster or 64 sectors of 512 bytes each. One bad
> sector, would cause the other 63 next to it to be rejected
> as well, as far as FAT32 is concerned. Free space on the
> disk is managed in clusters as well. So you can't really
> allocate just 512 bytes. It was done that way, partially,
> so any tables used to manage storage space, wouldn't
> take as many resources.


When I ran my scanner, Active Hard dDrive monitor, it
had the drive diviede into about 4770 blocks of size
50mb which multiplies out to about 250gb.
>
> If you were scanning at the sector level, there would be
> millions of sectors. Take the drive capacity in bytes,
> divide by 512 byte sectors and see how large a number
> that is. When counted in clusters, it's a slightly
> smaller number.


Yes the drive scanner I have has a number of options for the check block
size, from 1 sector 512, through 128 sectors of 64kb to 512 sectors of
256kb.
The scan I ran had aout 4770 blocks of 50mb, but I am not sure how that fits
in with the previus sentence.
The maths gets a bit confusing for me however the first block, when you
hover on
it says from says from sectora 1 to 102399, the last sector is number
488,345,600,
so they are each 1/2Kb ie 512 bytes.


I think maybe I understand it a bit moree now, it would be impractical to
list
1/2 a billion sectors I suppose. Also difficult to manage a list of sectors
so the
system uses clusters instead.

It does look as if onloy a small percentage of the drive has problems,
something
I would expect the system to cope with.


>
> The ATA drives have automatic sector sparing. If a sector
> is flaky, the controller substitutes a spare sector for
> the bad one. When an area of the disk runs out of spares,
> that's when a CRC error will finally be reported. (As it's
> no longer possible to make it seem like a good sector is
> present.) When a sector is spared, that tends to slow the
> disk down. If you see lots of "spikes" in a transfer
> rate curve, that hints there has been a fair amount of
> repair to the disk already. If you get to the point
> that surface scans are masking off whole clusters,
> then chances are the two SMART "danger parameters" I listed
> in a previous post, are also showing non-zero raw data,
> and the disk is "ripe".

Well I am not too sure about what all this means, I understood chkdsk had
ran
through and repaired the disk, does that mean the disk is OK, I mean the
scanner shows 4 bad blocks, so are these not being used now as they are
marked
as bad? I think maybe they are. Of course I can't get any SMART data, so it
looks
like itis not so smart after all (lol).
One thing I can try is to see it it will boot now chkdsk has ran, I mean it
may still
report the SMART probelem but I might be able to continue after that is
detected, someting
that has not worked previusly, I really do not know what is going on there.

Another thing is that I have to do a hard reset when in that condition ie
power off.
The powering off may actually be causing problems on the disk surface. I am
thinking maybe it
tries to run a chkdsk after that, but whatever it tries to do seems to take
a loong time.
Maybe I could try it overnight and see if it finally gets past what ever it
is it is doing, however
I could not tolerate such a wait every time I boot up, althoughh I now avoid
that by selecting the boot menu
at startup which lets me bypass the probems.

So the only other thing I can think of is a reformat to see if that helps.

I don't realy understand why the SMART stuff does not work

I think I will probably back up the bad drive again, I don't think the last
effort
got everything although I have all the important stuff, but it's a bit of a
pain to
do as I have to piece together what I did, might be easier to do the whole
lot
over night, then maybe try a reformat.
Might also try and find out a bit more about why SMART is not working but
sounds like a lot of hard work, might be easier to admit defeat lol.

>
> Paul