Tech Q&A

Well, the name of the topic is self descriptive, really. If your hard drive has wedged rebellion against you for watching too many restricted sites late at light which also happens to be heaven for viruses and worms, if your ancient motherboard can’t play that pirated copy of Prince of Persia that you acquired from your friend after much pleading and bribery, if your brand new cell has gone blank just when you were about to send an MMS to your soul mate stating that you can’t keep your appointment due to unavoidable circumstances or if your younger counterpart has messed with your PSP to get back at you for placing a cockroach in his lunch box last week…don’t despair! We are here to solve your worries. Just fire away your frustrations and grievances and we’ll try to solve them ASAP.

DISCLAIMER: Although the members will be very careful while providing you with solutions,you should always remember 'self help is the best help'.No member/members will/can be held responsible for problems arising out from following their suggestions.It is best advised to exercise caution and verify the solutions suggested here before applying them on your expensive hardware.Better yet,ask for a professionals opinion when in doubt.Thank you.

DIE HARD wrote:If your hard drive has wedged rebellion against you for watching too many restricted sites late at light which also happens to be heaven for viruses and worms, if your ancient motherboard can’t play that pirated copy of Prince of Persia that you acquired from your friend after much pleading and bribery, if your brand new cell has gone blank just when you were about to send an MMS to your soul mate stating that you can’t keep your appointment due to unavoidable circumstances

hard drives are NEVER affected (physically) due to viruses or malware.
Most hard disk drives now support S.M.A.R.T. (Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology), which measures drive characteristics such as temperature, spin-up time, data error rates, etc. Certain trends and sudden changes in these parameters are thought to be associated with increased likelihood of drive failure and data loss. but still it is NEVER possible to predict a hard drive failure.
A common misconception is that a colder hard drive will last longer than a hotter hard drive. A recent study by Gogle seems to imply the reverse -- "lower temperatures are associated with higher failure rates". Hard drives with S.M.A.R.T.-reported average temperatures below 27 °C had failure rates worse than hard drives with the highest reported average temperature of 50 °C, failure rates at least twice as high as the optimum S.M.A.R.T.-reported temperature range of 36 °C to 47 °C.

The new seagate barracuda HDD 7200.11/12 series drives are in the news recently because of their faulty firmware! This is an example of a serious error which is very difficult to recover from.

Other common HDD errors are Physical errors! these are the worst!
They mainly are:
Head Crash
When a drive fails, sometimes the heads the read the information come into physical contact with the platters which contain the information. This is called a "head crash", which is where the term "hard drive crash" comes from. It's one of the more common problems a hard drive experiences and typically is accompanied by a clicking sound or a scraping sound. It's really important that if this happens, you don't try to run the drive any further, as that may cause additional damage.

Head crashes require either the heads being manually reset or replaced (which requires a lot of training and a clean room, as the slightest contaminant will make the drive unrecoverable) or tinkering with the firmware on the board in very rare cases. Either way, a standard home computer isn't up to the job; just to attempt this on a single drive, you'll have to shell out tens of thousands of dollars, and even then the chances of a successful recovery are infinitesimal compared to the chances a professional data recovery company would have.

Electronics Damage

Exactly what it sounds like. Physical or electrical damage to the electronic PCB board of a hard drive.

A common misconception is that the PCB boards of two similar drives are the same, but the PCB often contains a drive's specific firmware. Therefore, a PCB swap requires some soldering, a very precise knowledge of PCB components, and occasionally even some work with microcode; and that's if the board failure didn't cause any other problems with the drive (board failures usually do). Data recovery companies can handle this.

A stuck Spindle
The spindle of a hard drive, which spins the platters under the heads, locks up and won't move. Usually you hear a whining sound of some sort. This can be a very dangerous problem, because the chances of the platters being damaged are very high.

One more thing i noticed ; someones MOTHER BOARD does not have much to do with playing the latest games! plus, what is the relation between a pirated copy of a game and an old mother board? ehh?
IF you want a new game to work, you will first of all need a good video card(NOT ONBOARD) for a good video card to work you will obviously need a COMPATIBLE mother board(such as a one with a single or more PCIe x16 slot/s) the next important thing is RAM! RAM is important! never forget it. RAM is basically the expressway which data uses to communicate with the CPU, GPU and Audio card. It is nowadays advisable to go in for a Mother board that supports dual channel ram! dual channel basically doubles the available memory ( 64 bit x 2 =128bit)

I did not know people send MMS for conveying a simple message that he/she will be late! why will you need a video to convey that? for the emotional touch ehh? nice! i would find it expensive!

Hmm...I was just stating some of the common mans plights when it comes to tech related issues.If you didn't notice,my post was rather sarcastic and didn't consider 'real world' scenarios.So you'll just have to take my comments with a pinch of salt.

P.S: It's difficult for people to run pirated games who posses no knowledge about 'cracks','emulators','patches','mods' etc.I have seen many showing frustration on torrent sites over how they can't get around the infamous 'insert disk' or 'insert CD key' errors,to how execute .ISO or .7zip files,how to use cracks etc.It's unreasonable to think everyone would have advanced technical skills.

P.P.S: Motherboards are directly related to playing games as you can't use AGP graphics cards on older models(having slots for only on-board PCI ones) and they don't support DDR3 or DDR2 rams.Plus they usually come with P4.No modern game would run on these specs.

DIE HARD wrote:Hmm...I was just stating some of the common mans plights when it comes to tech related issues.If you didn't notice,my post was rather sarcastic and didn't consider 'real world' scenarios.So you'll just have to take my comments with a pinch of salt.

P.S: It's difficult for people to run pirated games who posses no knowledge about 'cracks','emulators','patches','mods' etc.I have seen many showing frustration on torrent sites over how they can't get around the infamous 'insert disk' or 'insert CD key' errors,to how execute .ISO or .7zip files,how to use cracks etc.It's unreasonable to think everyone would have advanced technical skills.

P.P.S: Motherboards are directly related to playing games as you can't use AGP graphics cards on older models(having slots for only on-board PCI ones) and they don't support DDR3 or DDR2 rams.Plus they usually come with P4.No modern game would run on these specs.

HAHAHAHA
AGP or(Accelerated Graphics Port) is a VERY old point- point interface. It was first introduced on systems having the x86 architecture. They were used in the socket 1 Pentium Mother boards and the Socket 2 type Pentium 3 mother boards? The only games these cards were capable of playing were DAVE or PRINCE! HAHAHAHAhA.
i had written in my post that one would obviously need a compatible mother board!
PCIe is the interface that is being used now! no one needs DDR3 to play even the most modern games! DDR# as of now is only for enthusiasts (like me)! most games cant even use the quad core architecture efficiently! forget, DDr3!

Users are advised to speak in English, please.

Lol...i agree with dylan.

But HK, try not to create flaming either. Be a little considerate and think on the fact that not everyone is going for comp hardware classes like you have gone to. You can politely point out errors too, you know. I'm not siding with die hard, but forumers shouldn't go out of hand either.

Also ponder over the fact that saying stuff as if you are a noble prize winner on that subject sounds like you WANT to show the other person how much he/she doesn't know about electronics or how much YOU know about electronics. Trying to show-off that way doesn't really help build a personality. Be a little responsible. You're like that noble prize snoot even with me.

And take stuff with a pinch of salt (like die hard mentioned.)

And i agree with Die Hard on the P.S point.

Its not like the regular gamer really knows how to crack stuff properly.