Malfunctions of any device are always a surprise. I understand that if a particular device is old, with a warranty period expired, then you always expect some kind of trouble from it. But it happens all of a sudden.
That's what happened this time, too. This morning, after starting the computer to continue working on the project, I went to make my own coffee, feed the cats, and see if I needed help around the house. When I came back about 5 minutes later, I expected to see the familiar pattern of application tiles (I have Windows 8 installed on my second home computer), but I was greeted by a screen with a glowing logo and a spinning loading indicator. To say that I was puzzled is nothing to say.
The first thing I did, in a completely barbaric way (by turning off the power, as all other ways are either impossible or forcibly disabled), was to reboot the computer and look into the BIOS. Everything worked correctly, the connected devices were detected, there were no alerts. Trying to restart the computer did not lead to anything.
Since the cheapest components were used to assemble the system unit, I thought that the RAM had failed. At first I took out the cards, switched them on, and naturally I heard a squeak. I started going through the memory cards, but nothing good came of it either. The booting stopped at the Windows logo and froze solidly there.
I don't know what possessed me to disconnect the hard drive. It was a bit of a hunch. And the system booted! My doubts were gone, and I remembered that I had been in a similar situation before, when a hard drive failure prevented the system from booting correctly. After uttering the sacred phrase "Semyon Semyonych..." (a phrase from the movie "Diamond Arm", which means a slow mind) I was at first discouraged, because it was very likely that I would not be able to get the data out of it. Judging by the symptoms, it was not the data plates that failed, but the "brains" of the disk. But on reflection I decided that there was nothing valuable there and calmed down. However, I did not give up trying to revive the disk.
Shortly before that, I bought a docking station. I want to convert my computers to solid state hard drives, and I need the docking station to somehow continue to use the old drives. After all, the storage space as a whole is going to be pretty impressive. And against the fact that the price of harddrives is low, the volume of this storage can only be limited by the size of the shelf, these drives will lie.
In general, without thinking twice, I took the device out of the box, plugged it in and tried to read the failed hard drive through it. It was still detected, partitions, folders in the table of contents, but no more. I couldn't write anything to it either. In the end I decided to keep it as a museum piece. Maybe someday I'll decide to give it to a service company to get the information out of it.
Anyway, that's the unpleasant situation I was in. It would seem that removing a failed device is only a half measure. Yes, I did the same thing, went to town and bought a hard drive of the same capacity. Even if I switched all my computers to SSDs, the old hard drives would not lie idle.
Sincerely, Arik Taranis
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