My PC is going KAPUT! Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaa! Need help...

[Asylum Steve]

Well, we've been talking about a lot of data DOOMSDAY senarios here lately, and one of them has arrived for me. MY HD started acting up over the weekend, and before I knew it, registry data was being corrupted, bootup was screwing up, I started losing device drivers, and disk check was being prompted repeatedly (and taking forever to complete).

Yesterday I got the dreaded FLASHING WARNING during Win2K boot up:

IMPORTANT! BACKUP ALL YOUR DATA, AS C DRIVE FAILURE IS IMMINENT!

Or, words to that effect...

So, ok, the good news is it's not a total catastrophe, as I don't think I'm going to lose any data, and even the better news is I'm convinced now would be as good a time as any to upgrade my pc, and so will soon have a new killer system...

I plan on getting two 80G drives for redundency but not mirrored (non RAID), and pretty much have one shot for my computer guy to configure them the best way for my workflow. I'd really appreciate knowing how some of have your machines set up, especially what drives or space amounts you use for the photoshop scratch disk and virtual memory. BTW, my RAM will be 1G.

I seem to remember a recent thread here asking about photoshop and drive configuration, mainly dealing with the scratch disk and program performance. Can anyong help me find that thread?

Thanks!

[another view]

Or, words to that effect...

Uff Da! I'm guessing your own words were slightly different. I'm afraid I'm not much help here but I recently upgraded from PS7 to CS, and noticed that it runs a fair amount slower with the 512mb RAM I've got. I'll be interested to see what the other replies are.

[Sebastian]

Uff Da! I'm guessing your own words were slightly different. I'm afraid I'm not much help here but I recently upgraded from PS7 to CS, and noticed that it runs a fair amount slower with the 512mb RAM I've got. I'll be interested to see what the other replies are.

CS ran noticeably slower on my laptop than 6.0. But (Asylum) Steve has been using CS for a while now, so any upgrades will improve things for him.

Asylum (Steve),

I think keeping redundant data on two different drives is a good idea. I would suggest going one step further and keeping it on an external drive so you can shut it off for added virus/stupid mistake protection. Check out www.newegg.com for some good prices on internal and external drives.

That coupled with your CD backup regiment should keep you safe through just about anything. But you still face the danger of losing EVERYTHING due to theft of fire/water damage. Only way to get around that is an off-site store. I will be willing to keep all your nude images on file. NOT nudes of you, but nudes you took. Just in case.

As far as scratch disk stuff, if you have an extra drive, put it on there.

Good luck.

[Asylum Steve]

Thanks guys. I found the thread I was looking for, and also decided to hold off on the full upgrade for a bit. Looks like I'll just be getting the two 80g hds which will still be a nice addition...

[natatbeach]

It is nice

my side has the 80 G Larry's has the 40 G and we just got another 40.

but 1G of Ram would keep him very happy...I'll have to tell him...we just got more ram because (he claims ) my pictures were slowing everything down

the nerve can you imagine making such a claim....

for what it's worth...i downloaded a worm unto our computer last week and everything started going whacked! and we back up what we could get into and reinstalled everything and two days later it crashed...

Larry really loves me because the first thing he tried to salvage was my pics that I had just taken---tht's love...

anyway...just sympathizing and sharing in your trauma.

[Peter_AUS]

Steve,

I read your post when you first put it up but wanted to see what others felt first.

My first thought was you have a worm and I still think you have a worm on your system. What is happening smacks of a Worm infection on your computer.

With Drives, I would recommend getting 2 x 120 G drives the cost difference is negligable and would be more beneficial in the long term.

Problem with having large drives, they take a long time to format and you can get around this, by partitioning the drives to smaller drives, giving you more drives to work with, but can be beneficial for house keeping purposes. Also they take less time to defragment than large drives do.

I have three drives, a 20G, 40G and 80G drive and I am looking at getting an external 160G drive, dedicated just to photo storage and will replace one of the internal drives later as well, with probably a 160G drive or maybe a 36G SCSI drive for the main drive if I do the SCSI way for speed.

With all the talk of problems with long term storage on CD's that has been happening (which seems to have fizzled lately), the increase in hard drive sales has gone up about 50% over the norm. But there are programs around that will allow the recovery of data off of CD's, maybe not all of it, but at least what can be seen, which is great..

Will be interesting to see what you find with the computer.

[David_M]

So, ok, the good news is it's not a total catastrophe, as I don't think I'm going to lose any data

Wow, I wouldn't bet on that!!
That message is a "smart monitoring" message. What it tells you is that you drive is dying and smart monitoring is almost always right. Do you really want to take the risk?

I had that message too one day. I lost everything within 24 hours, but thankfully I had a backup.

[Asylum Steve]

Yes, I realize it was a "smart monitoring" message, another reason I love Win2K. But that's exactly the reason I'm REPLACING the thing...

What risk am I taking? I've stopped using the machine, and when my new one is ready, my computer guy is simply going to recover what's on the old HD disk and place what I want on the new system.

Perhaps you misunderstood me. I'm not foolish enough to keep running the pc after getting that warning... ;)

Wow, I wouldn't bet on that!!
That message is a "smart monitoring" message. What it tells you is that you drive is dying and smart monitoring is almost always right. Do you really want to take the risk?

I had that message too one day. I lost everything within 24 hours, but thankfully I had a backup.

[Asylum Steve]

I know nothing about worms, so I have no idea what the telltale signs are. I think I have fairly good hardware and software protection from that kind of thing, and certainly practice extreme care with incoming data, but I guess you never know.

Anyway, my pc guy is doing a post mortem and recovery on the old hd, so he should be able to tell me.

As for the new hds, even at US prices, the difference between the 80G and 120G drives, when multiplied by two, is large enough that I simply cannot afford the bigger ones at this point. Besides, the total space of the two 80s is roughly three times what I have now (which isn't filled as it is). At some point I'll simply add a real large external hd. Anyway, for now and the foreseable future, I think I'm fine.

And, yes, I always divide my drives into smaller ones for ease of filing and drive maintenance...

[Peter_AUS]

Hi Steve,

I know you have your head around these things pretty well.

I just looked at the newegg.com site and the difference between two 80G drives and 2 120G drives is $44.94US $$'s, hence why I suggested going that way. Maxtor drives by the way.

What sort of prices are you getting supplied drives for. That shouldn't break the bank surely. The price of each drive is $95.97 and I noticed they seemed to be offering FedEx delivery free as well.

[Asylum Steve]

Larry really loves me because the first thing he tried to salvage was my pics that I had just taken---tht's love...

Hmmm, could also be because he's AFRAID of you...

[Asylum Steve]

Peter,

My two 80g drives are Maxtor and will run me $95US each. Moving up to the two 120g would be about $50 more, which trust me, I simply do not have right now (my guy doesn't take credit cards).

I've noticed my pc guy's prices are higher than the discount sites, but his warranty is much better, and he installs, configures, and services everything locally. He also includes software such as the OS and Norton Utilities and Antivirus at no extra charge.

I should have the pc back by the weekend...

[natatbeach]

would he be afraid--- I'm gentle and sweet and kind and full of goodness

it's o.k. he laughs to...

I wish he was afraid but alas we have a pretty conventional "he wears the pants" sorta thing--- try as I may...

[Lionheart]

I'm still using photoshop 6, running Windows XP professional,as my OS which in my experience has been much more robust an OS than Win2K (considerably fewer blue screens of death). My mobo is an ASUS P4P800Deluxe, Intel 865 chipset with a P4 3.06 GHz chip (800 FSB) overclocked to 3.3 GHz. I'm running all four memory banks in dual channel mode with two sets of Corsair TWINXPRO1024 PC4000 matched DDR memory (2 GB total). I have two maxtor 160 GB 7200rpm drives, with both configured for scratch drives in photoshop. My video card is a GeForce 5600 Ultra, with 256 MB ram, which in my opinion is an overpriced mediocre video card (ATI rules!!!) and my monitor is a Princeton 19 inch flat panel LCD. I back up my data to DVD and/or CD-R using two burners, a 4x dvd burner, and 52x cd burner. I only back up data, not the entire drives, as I find it's faster and cleaner to simply re-install the OS and software and then restore the lost data files, than to restore from a backup format. Fortunately, this has happened only rarely. Yes, gaming is the main use for this system,(as you might have guessed) with photography and web administration 2nd and 3rd by a slight margin ;) I'm sure there are more ideal setups for digital photography, but this is a nice compromise for a die hard gamer like me

[Pose]

I have a generic HP that cost me around $400. I added a second 40G drive, upgraded to 768 RAM, with XP Home, and Linux..Slackware 9.1. I use GIMP with Linux, and Photoshop 7 with XP. Radeon 9200 video card, Delta 66 for sound.
I really only wasted the money with the HP because I moved from my home in KY (with my real computer system) back to Miami with a suitcase, and I couldn't go without the internet for too long . But hey, it works. And I only have XP on a 15GB partition, heh.

[MJS]

Pop me an email if you are looking for decent prices. I have a connection or two with Tiger Direct (I help coach the owners son on our golf team), and an OEM builder in Ft. Lauderdale. I've sold or reccommended about 45 of his machines so far and haven't had any problems. I'm running 5 of them in my classroom with one more on the way and 4 more at my home Public Relations and Consulting business.
MJS