[Nottingham] Computer woes

[Martin]

Alex Walker wrote:
[...]
 >
 >> Might something you have done (other than breathe) brought this
 >> about ? (Kernel upgrade , change of ide cable ...)
 >
 >
 > Nothing in software changed, the only thing that happened is I
 > unplugged a different hard disk on a different IDE cable to put a
 > housemate's in and copy on to the now-dead disk.  It worked to start
 > with - I got it to boot, but then the errors started piling in and
 > the system hung.


Don't overlook the simple hardware stuff like:

Damaged or duff ide cable;
Bent pins on the hd connector;
Overloaded psu (if you've added devices);
Bad power leads or duff pins;
Ide cable running against a fan (magnetic pickup corrupting the data);
Also, ensure that the extreme ends of the ide cables are plugged into
something (ie: mb or hd) to reduce electrical reflections;
Duff fan breaking down causing excessive vibration to rattle the disk...
HDs loosely mounted or rattling against each other...


Good luck!
Martin


PS:
There's a newsnet poster that categorises the population by those that
do backups and those that have never had a hd fail. Perhaps I'm just 
paranoid from all the loss I've seen around me at various times, 
including 'loss of three years research work'...


-- 
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Martin Lomas
martin@ml1.co.uk
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