It all started out rather innocently. I got a new Western Digital 120GB drive over the weekend (it's the black one in the photo on the left), and as I mentioned in a previous blog entry, the drive turned out to be used (if even only a little - at least it was manufactured in July of 2005) and was not only formatted, but also had an operating system installed on it - either Windows 2000 or Windows XP. I'm not sure - I didn't try to boot it. But the thing that bothered me most is that it could have been used by someone who had viruses on the drive that could have been transferred to my system as I installed it. Fortunately, that didn't happen...but it seems like everything else did.

Yesterday, I got the idea that I would get the backup thing together once and for all. And it all started with the computer that I believe was the original inspiration to start this blog. Oh, boy, here we go! This computer had been complaining for some time about a bad sector on a drive (my main data drive), but I could never track down what was causing it, and never took the time to scan the drive for media errors. To make a very long story very short, I had a long-term brain fart. After all hell broke loose today, I recalled that when I put this system together, I was very concerned about it having inadequate cooling, and I remember using it only for short periods of time, always with the thought in the back of my mind that I was going to install another fan inside sometime soon. Well, at some point along the way, that thought in the back of my mind faded away completely, and I began leaving the computer turned on for long periods of time. In fact, it has been on constantly now for months. It was even a nice warm place for our new kitten to sleep on when it got cold.

Needless to say, the drive was complaining about failing media. It was being cooked. Also, when I originally put this system together, I had a guy over helping me with the system, and he partitioned the drives very oddly. There were two 120GB hard drives inside, and one was partitioned with one primary partition (which became the C: volume), and one extended partition that was broken into four logical drives (E:, F:, G: and H:). I think C:, E: and F: were only like 10GB partitions, and H: was somewhere around 50GB. But I noticed - at least I thought I did - that the H: drive disappeared some time ago. I wasn't sure, however, thinking that maybe I was seeing things. I really never used that partition, so I didn't think much of it - obviously, if I couldn't remember for sure if it even existed. Well, I discovered last night that the H: partition not only existed, but was cooking, too. In fact, it was pretty well hard boiled and only showed up in the data recovery tools.

Rather than go into all the intricate details, I'll try to half-summarize the events that unfolded. I pulled out all my data recovery tools and went to work on the drives. I installed a new 250GB hard drive that I also got over the weekend and partitioned it into two roughly equal volumes, N: and R:. These were to become the data repositories for our network backups. So, now I had C:, E:, F:, G:, a hidden H: (though it showed up in the data recovery tools) on one 120GB drive, a D: volume that was a single 120GB partition on another drive, and now N: and R:, about 116GB apiece.
My data drive, drive D:, was the original cooking drive, so I decided to back it up, first. I used my recovery tools to copy the contents of D: to R:. I then removed the D: drive, physically (seen in the photo) and renamed R: to D: to take its place. That was all well and good, and in the process, I discovered quite a few bad sectors on the original D:, and I also discovered that the system complained about it so much because the Google Desktop search was frequently stumbling over the bad sectors. Fortunately, it was only the Google Desktop files that were affected - all my other data survived. I then used another cool piece of software, HDD Regenerator, to actually recover (repair) the bad sectors on the original drive. Not sure how it does that, but it works!

So, I decided to use the old D: drive - which was now like new again - to replace the other ailing drive that contained C:, E:, F:, G: and H:. To do this, I needed to make image copies of all the existing volumes so I could restore them onto the replacement drive. I saved image copies to the new N: volume. I then re-installed the old drive and reformatted it and partitioned it into three partitions - roughly 54.5GB, 30GB and 30GB (there's really only about 114.5GB on the drive) - adding I:, J: and K: to the mix. I restored the image copy of the C: volume to I:, which was to become the new C: volume. This worked great, and was a test for some data recovery software I had not used in this manner, before.

But, when I got to the E: and F: drives, the image restore did not work properly. The partition information was somehow wrong. I determined it was because when my system was originally built, the guy who helped me set up the software did not really know much about what he was doing in regard to partitioning, and thus had created an extended partition that contained the E:, F:, G: and H: logical drives. Well, restoring an image copy of a logical drive to a primary partition just doesn't work, since there is no partition information to carry over from the logical drive. So, I had to resort to using my other data recovery tool (R-STUDIO) to simply "restore" the files directly from E: and F: to their respective new partitions, J: and K:. All the files that were on the G: and H: volumes, I simply "restored" (copied) to the new D: volume, since it was just data. C:, E: and F: all had applications intalled on them. Go figure!

So then it was time to remove the old, ailing, failing drive and see if the new drive would take the place of C: and actually boot.

Well, I ran into a cabling problem - in the process of switching the IDE cable around so much, the retainer clip broke off from one of the connectors and the cable no longer made connection. So, I had to dig up another cable and plug it in. I had success! Even the drive letters arranged themselves such that what was originally I:, J: and K: became C:, E: and F:. And, not only did it boot, but it was fast! Probably because it was no longer tripping over bad sectors, plus I now had the proper 80-wire cable installed to allow the drives to make full use of their data transfer capabilities. The computer was screamin'!

But things were still in disarray. Drives were hanging here and there in temporary arrangements. I had also installed two additional fans into the case, and the wires were hanging out here and there. I had not put everything in its final place or sealed up the case, yet. I should have done that next, but I took a rather long detour, first. I thought I would put the old C: drive back in and blow away the partitions (except for the cooked H: partition) and use HDD Regenerator to try to recover the drive media. It literally went to work on that drive for the rest of the day. Hour after hour, it fixed sector after sector. It was about 3/4 of the way through the partition when I finally decided the drive had had enough. It was too far gone for me to feel any warm fuzzies about re-using it for anything. I was hoping I could use it in my other computer so I could take back the other 120GB drive that Fry's sold me used and save some money instead of exchanging it for a new drive. But now it looked like I was going to have to exchange it afterall.

I pulled the sick drive (now door stop) out of the machine, thinking I was all set. This HDD Regenerator software runs from DOS, so I had not been in Windows the whole time I was running it. But the last time I booted Windows was on the replacement drive - and it was fast and smooth - so I thought I was all set. And maybe I was. However, something happened while I was securing everything into their final places. It was either Zoe, my cat, who decided it was time to pick on me just as I was installing the hard drive, or it was one of the many times that the power switch was turned off or on or the power cord pulled during this process, but the drive controller somehow got hit with a static discharge or power spike of some kind, because now it was dead! Suddenly, I had no system! My replacement system drive wouldn't so much as spin up, and the original drive was nothing but a door stop after having blown away all the partitions, etc. So, I just about shit a brick right then and there. Oh, I was MAD! Either the hard drive, or the computer, or possibly both, almost went over the balcony for real this time. Almost!

Fortunately, I decided to step out to the shop for a bit to cool off and chat with my wife in IM. She was getting close to leaving work about this time, and I told her that the resident evil had reared its ugly head again and that our marvelous beast had just given up the ghost. She said exactly what I predicted she would say, "why does this keep happening to you?" I don't know why - it just does. Perhaps I'm too careless or unfocused, or perhaps it was because I performed this operation on the floor of the "office" area rather than on my bench in the workshop. Whatever the reason, it was dead, and I had killed it, somehow.

I had few options. Only one, really, that I could think of, and it was a long shot. The drive that was working and the drive that was dead were both the same drives (Maxtor DiamondMax 9 120GB), except one had a 4MB buffer and one had an 8MB buffer. Of course it was the one with the 8MB buffer that had just died. But I had a wild idea - what if I swapped the controller boards on the drives, themselves? Would that work? Well, I had to give it a try. After all, I had nothing left to lose. I figured the drives were close enough to identical that it might actually work.

I carefully removed the boards from both drives and swapped them. I put my new system drive (now with the 4MB buffer controller board) back into the computer and turned it on. I soon realized the jumper was missing for setting it as a master on the IDE channel (the jumper plug was on the controller board that I swapped out). So, I put that in, and fired up the computer and...nothing. Well, it saw the drive, but it wouldn't boot from it, giving me some cryptic message to that effect.
I was disappointed and befuddled. Then I took a closer look and noticed I had not plugged the IDE cable into the drive completely! I pushed the connector the rest of the way into the socket, turned on the computer, and bingo! It booted! My system was back! Some of the drive letters had rearraged themselves (between the CD-RW, DVD-RW and hard drives), so I had to spend a few minutes and a couple reboots to straighten out the alphabet, and then everything was finally as it was supposed to be!

I then made sure all the cables were inside and out of harms way (what a nest in there!) and that the fans were all hooked up and running, and I sealed the beast back up and put it back in its slot.

My wife came home and I, of course, had to tell her the complete story of my new adventure into hardware land, and we ate, and now I am finishing up writing this account of the ordeal in my blog. The system is now up and running, with C: (54.5GB), D:(116.45GB), E:(30GB), F:(30GB) and N:(116.4GB) as the final configuration (with the CD and DVD ROM drives at V: and W:). I now have room to install software on the C: drive, and a couple sizable volumes for storing backup data. The next step is to get my wife's computer set up with the backup software on the network. Then I have to take this 120GB drive back to Fry's to exchange it for a new one so I can plug it into my main computer and get it backed up (I am setting up a mirror configuration there). And I also need to figure out what I want to backup over the network and get the backup software installed on my computer as well. Actually, I need another drive (something larger than 15GB) to replace my system (C:) drive on that computer so I can install more software. It is maxed out, and I need to install a few things. I also want to create boot disks for each computer, with a recovery plan, in the event of a crash, so we are always covered if we need to re-create a system drive. My wife also wants a new computer to replace the old, slow Windows 2000 beast she is using now.

Forgive me if I am just not looking forward to all the fun that lies ahead.

[1/10/2006] Update: The saga did not end here. Upon further examination before going to bed last night, I noticed the computer was getting quite warm, which was surprising, considering I added two fans to the case. But the power supply was excessively hot. I took a closer look and noticed the fan in the power supply was not turning. So, I extracted the power supply and opened it up (violating the warranty that has surely expired by now) and examined the fan. It was basically bone dry and seized. I oiled it up and worked the oil in until the fan turned freely, reassembled the power supply, and now it is working again.

On a more positive note, I discovered that the drive I am now using as the system drive (the one that I had to swap controller boards to get a working one) is actually the one with the 8MB buffer. Woo hoo! I thought it was the board with the 8MB buffer that died.