OT: Hard disk mirror with Paragon on USB stick?

[Joerg]

Hello All,

The hard drive in my wife's laptop seems to be on its last leg. Motor
spools up to less than half the rpm and stays there (pretty constantly).
After an hour of warm-up a power cycle usually brings it to life at full
rpm. Sound like it'll croak soon. No XP disks came with this machine,
meaning I must mirror :-(

I tried installing "Paragon Drive Backup 9.0 Express" on a USB stick but
it must have written DLLs to this PC's drive. Darn. Meaning it does not
start off a USB stick. But it has to because the laptop will have to get
off the ground with a completely empty new hard drive.

Has anyone ever sucessfully run Paragon off a USB stick? Or a CD?

 

[Martin Brown]

Hello All,

The hard drive in my wife's laptop seems to be on its last leg. Motor spools up to less than half the rpm and stays there (pretty constantly). Afteran hour of warm-up a power cycle usually brings it to life at full rpm. Sound like it'll croak soon. No XP disks came with this machine, meaning I must mirror :-(

Are you sure there isn't a "system restore" CD or something with words
to that effect that includes a custom version of Doze that will only
work with that brand / model of portable PC and is preconfigured?
(NB it may not show any obvious MS markings even for main brands)

If you have a valid activation code for XP registered to this machine
you should in principle at least be able to reinstall from any XP CD
with the usual pain and suffering of installing FP1, FP2 and FP3 too.

Wise to do the first two offline, a pre FP1 version of XP would not
last long enough to do anything on the internet these days before it
was harvested by a botnet.

I tried installing "Paragon Drive Backup 9.0 Express" on a USB stick but it must have written DLLs to this PC's drive. Darn. Meaning it does not start off a USB stick. But it has to because the laptop will have to get off the ground with a completely empty new hard drive.

Has anyone ever sucessfully run Paragon off a USB stick? Or a CD?

It ought to work provided that you booted from the USB stick or CD.
Otherwise all sorts of registry settings will end up in the machine
registry of the OS that booted the system. The days when you could
copy a program onto removable media and expect it to run are long
gone.

If you count your time into the equation the quickest cheapest
solution is buy a suitably big external HD and mirror the old portable
drive onto it with Paragon already installed on the portable. Make the
external HD the primary boot media to check it and then remove and
replace the half dead drive. Mirror it back and you are done - at
least in theory.

If the USB drive is big enough you could do the same with that but
64GB thumbnail drives are still a bit pricy so it's more expensive.

And even then it may still be more cost effective to buy a new
portable. The cute 10" micro laptops are going for about £250 here for
Xmas, and their bigger cousins for about £100 more for a decent
specimen.

Regards,
Martin Brown

 

[Baron]

Joerg Inscribed thus:

Hello All,

The hard drive in my wife's laptop seems to be on its last leg. Motor
spools up to less than half the rpm and stays there (pretty
constantly). After an hour of warm-up a power cycle usually brings it
to life at full rpm. Sound like it'll croak soon. No XP disks came
with this machine, meaning I must mirror :-(

I tried installing "Paragon Drive Backup 9.0 Express" on a USB stick
but it must have written DLLs to this PC's drive. Darn. Meaning it
does not start off a USB stick. But it has to because the laptop will
have to get off the ground with a completely empty new hard drive.

Has anyone ever sucessfully run Paragon off a USB stick? Or a CD?

Boot the machine from a Linux live CD and copy the hidden partition or
any other data for that matter to your USB device.

 

[Joerg]

Are you sure there isn't a "system restore" CD or something with words
to that effect that includes a custom version of Doze that will only
work with that brand / model of portable PC and is preconfigured?
(NB it may not show any obvious MS markings even for main brands)

A lot of disks came with it but not that one. There were these disks:

Client drivers
WordPerfect
DVD drivers
Some Cyberlink DVD stuff
Microsoft Money

If you have a valid activation code for XP registered to this machine
you should in principle at least be able to reinstall from any XP CD
with the usual pain and suffering of installing FP1, FP2 and FP3 too.

There is a really long MS XP product key number but no XP CD.

Wise to do the first two offline, a pre FP1 version of XP would not
last long enough to do anything on the internet these days before it
was harvested by a botnet.

It ought to work provided that you booted from the USB stick or CD.
Otherwise all sorts of registry settings will end up in the machine
registry of the OS that booted the system. The days when you could
copy a program onto removable media and expect it to run are long
gone.

I am afraid it did those registry entries without asking when I
installed it on the stick.

If you count your time into the equation the quickest cheapest
solution is buy a suitably big external HD and mirror the old portable
drive onto it with Paragon already installed on the portable. Make the
external HD the primary boot media to check it and then remove and
replace the half dead drive. Mirror it back and you are done - at
least in theory.

Afraid it's too late. The laptop did not get off the ground this
morning. The equivalent of finding a huge puddle of transmission fluid
under your car :-(

If the USB drive is big enough you could do the same with that but
64GB thumbnail drives are still a bit pricy so it's more expensive.

And even then it may still be more cost effective to buy a new
portable. The cute 10" micro laptops are going for about £250 here for
Xmas, and their bigger cousins for about £100 more for a decent
specimen.

I just bought a $500 version, arrived two days ago. Samsung NC-10, typed
an OO document yesterday night. Remaining battery capacity 87%. Sweet!

 

[Joerg]

Hi Joerg,



If there wasn't a recovery CD, there's a good chance that either...

1) There's a recovery partition, and pressing some magical key combination
like Ctrl+F11 at boot (this is what older Dells used) activates it.
...or...
2) There might be an option somewhere buried in the Start Menu that allows you
to manually create a restore CD. I've used Sony laptops that were this way...
either create your own restore CDs, or if you had to do a complete re-install,
you called up Sony and forked over something like $30 for their copies. :-(


Ah, well, then the above it moot at this point. Hopefully you were able to
backup her data files prior to the final death spiral?

Except I always forgot the bookmarks because I don't use such stuff much
myself. Dang.

I doubt she'll be unhappy with a new laptop for Xmas here...

Sure, but all she needs is email and web. And we don't like to throw
things away if they can be repaired. I'll go look for a small low cost
laptop drive. She never needed more than 1-2GB for data and pictures so
there is no point in buying a $100 super-sized drive. Tonight I'll set
up web mail access for her from the lab, that gives me some time to fix
it. As luck has it work has piled up to right before Christmas.

 

[Joerg]

There's an old wives tale that says refrigerate the drive for awhile.
Then it should spin up long enough to extract a back-up.

Thanks. Although it did work better after warm-up but I may give that a
shot. Might take a beer out. Just to make room for the drive, of course ...

I haven't tried it... I've always been lucky and heard the bearing
noise early enough to get a back-up ;-)

This was the topper: Didn't want to boot, HD definitely spinning at less
than half the rated rpm. _No_ warnings regarding the HD. This morning
rrrrr-tat-tat-rrrr ... screeeeee ... and now it said "Imminent hard disk
failure" on the screen. Great. I design my warning circuits and routines
a wee bit better than that. Call from client: "The 2nd yellow LED is
blinking sometimes but the unit works" ... "Your mains circuit may have
surges on it" ... <silence> ... "Oh, that's probably why we had one of
those function generators blow out this morning"

 

[[email protected]]

Joerg Inscribed thus:





Boot the machine from a Linux live CD and copy the hidden partition or
any other data for that matter to your USB device.

I seccond that suggestion (for next time). Joerg you should download
the iso images for Knoppix, and maybe also Damn Small Linux livecds.
If you learn how to use them, these can be very useful in situations
like that. The dd command can be used to make images and restore
them. I find much less problems with this approach than with
commercial software like Ghost that likes to mess with the computer's
hard drive.

Chris

 

[Ecnerwal]

The freezer does sometimes work.

The sharp rap on the side of the drive (as it's in the startup sequence
- won't work once it's given up trying to start) does sometimes work.

If you can get it to go at all, my experience is that they are often
more likely to work when in a vertical orientation, so I often end up
with laptops on edge while trying to slurp data out as they expire.

Once it's good and dead, get out your tiny torx (or buy a set, but don't
spend too much) and open the drive for the head actuator magnet or
magnets - nice toys, just watch your fingers. If you are either a true
heathen or have a clean room you can try the final desperate measure of
spinning the drive up by hand with the case open - given that this
guarantees contaminating the drive, barring the cleanroom, it's a very
desperate measure, and unlikely to work if the other methods have not
worked.

Worst one I've had - drive that went to an equatorial country for a
while. Tiny ants chewed through the rubber seal (between the lid and the
case of the drive) and set up a nest inside the drive. I ziplocked,
mothballed, and froze that one, but the drive was not recoverable (by
normal folks with normal money to spend, anyway).

 

[Joerg]

Thermal expansion is one method that might work, sure.

You can also unstick the heads by banging the side of the drive against
a table (near the connector, edgeways rather than broadside). That
causes a sudden angular acceleration of the case (and so the heads) with
respect to the platters, and will frequently work. 'Taint a sure thing,
but it's a lot better than giving up.

Well, since mirroring seems to be a rather bearish job there ain't much
to get off of it. I only forgot to backup her bookmarks.

Seem laptops have gone to SATA drives as well these days and this is
(AFAIK) an ATA drive. Chances to pick that up at a local store are slim
I guess.

Heck, maybe those things could run off a USB stick instead. At least
then there aren't any mechanical parts that can go kaputt.

 

[Ecnerwal]

For about $10 (perhaps less) there seem to be CF <-> ATA (PATA, IDE)
adapters available, which would solve your solid-state desire for less
scratch than an ATA "sold state drive", based on non-extensive search.

 

[Joerg]

For about $10 (perhaps less) there seem to be CF <-> ATA (PATA, IDE)
adapters available, which would solve your solid-state desire for less
scratch than an ATA "sold state drive", based on non-extensive search.

Thanks for the hint, I didn't know that.

 

[James Arthur]

Thanks for the hint, I didn't know that.

I use a that setup or PCMCIA flash card for the main drive
in a couple of of my favorite computers, and adapter+CF for
removable storage.

One problem was finding a card the computers would
boot from. Much trial and error ensued. Settled
on a SanDisk unit for one, but needed another for
the other.

Battery life is *greatly* increased, CF is rugged,
way faster, and silent.

Flash wears out. An over-sized flash/CF + the
wear-leveling algorithms these cards use reduces
that problem considerably.

Dunno if you could get a CF large enough for current
WinPigs though; I run DOS and Win3.1 on these '486
machines. For usual stuff they're MUCH faster than the
2.5GHz unit I'm typing on.

Cheers,
James Arthur

 

[Archimedes' Lever]

Hi Joerg,



If there wasn't a recovery CD, there's a good chance that either...

1) There's a recovery partition, and pressing some magical key combination
like Ctrl+F11 at boot (this is what older Dells used) activates it.
...or...
2) There might be an option somewhere buried in the Start Menu that allows you
to manually create a restore CD. I've used Sony laptops that were this way...
either create your own restore CDs, or if you had to do a complete re-install,
you called up Sony and forked over something like $30 for their copies. :-(


Ah, well, then the above it moot at this point. Hopefully you were able to
backup her data files prior to the final death spiral?

I doubt she'll be unhappy with a new laptop for Xmas here...

---Joel

If the drive "eventually comes up to full rpm" then has anyone
considered that it may be a laptop power supply issue?

Aside from that, one can get a laptop sized (2.5 inch) external USB
enclosure, put one's new laptop hard drive in it, boot a Linux live CD
like Knoppix DVD or such and copy the laptop drive to the USB drive,
then, make the switch of the two and VIOLA!
No need to spend all that money on a new laptop just because the one
you have is experiencing a small problem with its storage device.

 

[Archimedes' Lever]

There's an old wives tale that says refrigerate the drive for awhile.
Then it should spin up long enough to extract a back-up.

I haven't tried it... I've always been lucky and heard the bearing
noise early enough to get a back-up ;-)

...Jim Thompson

You say some of the dopeyest shit in the world sometimes, regardless of
whatever you do know on the 'smart side' of things. This ain't one of
'em.

 

[Archimedes' Lever]

Thermal expansion is one method that might work, sure.

You can also unstick the heads by banging the side of the drive against
a table (near the connector, edgeways rather than broadside). That
causes a sudden angular acceleration of the case (and so the heads) with
respect to the platters, and will frequently work. 'Taint a sure thing,
but it's a lot better than giving up.

Cheers,

Phil Hobbs

Geez. Stupid idea number two.

Whoever said anything about heads being stuck?

Not to mention the fact that this is not the 80's, these are not 5.25
inch behemoths driven by old through hole PCB assemblies with 18 read
heads in the read arm array, and a hard drive has not had a "stuck head"
in a couple of decades.

Unbelieveable what some claim-to-be technically trained folks will say,
actually believing that they have any clue as to the actual workings of
the device they profess to know something about.

 

[Archimedes' Lever]

The freezer does sometimes work.

The sharp rap on the side of the drive (as it's in the startup sequence
- won't work once it's given up trying to start) does sometimes work.

You guys are utter retards.

 

[Archimedes' Lever]

Seem laptops have gone to SATA drives as well these days and this is
(AFAIK) an ATA drive. Chances to pick that up at a local store are slim
I guess.

frys.com duh.

 

[Charlie E.]

A lot of disks came with it but not that one. There were these disks:

Client drivers
WordPerfect
DVD drivers
Some Cyberlink DVD stuff
Microsoft Money



There is a really long MS XP product key number but no XP CD.



I am afraid it did those registry entries without asking when I
installed it on the stick.



Afraid it's too late. The laptop did not get off the ground this
morning. The equivalent of finding a huge puddle of transmission fluid
under your car :-(



I just bought a $500 version, arrived two days ago. Samsung NC-10, typed
an OO document yesterday night. Remaining battery capacity 87%. Sweet!

Jeorge,
Just a question on your NC-10. How are the speakers, if any, on it?
My wife might be needing a new machine soon, but she has to have
decent sound. She's blind, you see, and does everything through a
screen reader...

Charlie

 

[JosephKK]

Hello All,

The hard drive in my wife's laptop seems to be on its last leg. Motor
spools up to less than half the rpm and stays there (pretty constantly).
After an hour of warm-up a power cycle usually brings it to life at full
rpm. Sound like it'll croak soon. No XP disks came with this machine,
meaning I must mirror :-(

I tried installing "Paragon Drive Backup 9.0 Express" on a USB stick but
it must have written DLLs to this PC's drive. Darn. Meaning it does not
start off a USB stick. But it has to because the laptop will have to get
off the ground with a completely empty new hard drive.

Has anyone ever sucessfully run Paragon off a USB stick? Or a CD?

Never tried it.
I would remove the drive and mirror it with another machine. "dd"
works nicely for this.

 

[JosephKK]

The freezer does sometimes work.

The sharp rap on the side of the drive (as it's in the startup sequence
- won't work once it's given up trying to start) does sometimes work.

If you can get it to go at all, my experience is that they are often
more likely to work when in a vertical orientation, so I often end up
with laptops on edge while trying to slurp data out as they expire.

Once it's good and dead, get out your tiny torx (or buy a set, but don't
spend too much) and open the drive for the head actuator magnet or
magnets - nice toys, just watch your fingers. If you are either a true
heathen or have a clean room you can try the final desperate measure of
spinning the drive up by hand with the case open - given that this
guarantees contaminating the drive, barring the cleanroom, it's a very
desperate measure, and unlikely to work if the other methods have not
worked.

Worst one I've had - drive that went to an equatorial country for a
while. Tiny ants chewed through the rubber seal (between the lid and the
case of the drive) and set up a nest inside the drive. I ziplocked,
mothballed, and froze that one, but the drive was not recoverable (by
normal folks with normal money to spend, anyway).

Chilis, coffee, and cacao for the vices to live by.