Im a PC and im DEAD

[DeanMc]

My PC is dead, all my code, my music, my por.....traits gone! Man I have to rewrite x:Light from memory what joy. On the plus side NEW PC WOOO!

Did you all miss me, yes you did!

[gep13]

Oh man!! How dead is dead?

Can you salvage anything from the hard drive?

[DeanMc]

I mean dead dead. I had the PC out and open and the missus brought up a pot of coffee and left it on top. The bang scared the life out of me. The two HDD's wont even spin in a different pc.

[gep13]

Ouch!!!

That is dead!! Sorry to hear that

[DeanMc]

Im more annoyed at myself for not backing up my code than anything else. I have the original x:Light VB code stored on VBF but I had rewritten it in C# and added so sexy LINQ to it and now I have to redo it all. GRRRRR

[techgnome]

that seals it... I'm setting up my backup server this weekend! Yipes!

-tg

[DeanMc]

Im unsure of which way to back up as I find that if it is not automatic I wont do it.

[mendhak]

the missus brought up a pot of coffee and left it on top.

[Shaggy Hiker]

What was the bang? I think I'm missing something.

[Shaggy Hiker]

By the way, you CAN recover the data from those discs, it would just cost you a few hundred bucks. If the data is that big a deal, it might be worth looking into.

[DeanMc]

Ha ha, I love my coffee so I drink it by the pot full. Which ever way I went to grab it the coffee went everywhere. Everything seemed to sizzle but then there was a bang from the PSU and it just stopped working.

I don't think my data was THAT important. I tend to have online samples of my code. Its just annoying that I have to rewrite!

[gep13]

Im unsure of which way to back up as I find that if it is not automatic I wont do it.

You could always just get yourself a portable hard drive and do a synchronisation every so often. In the past I have used SmartSyncPro, it's not free, but it does quite a nice job.

You can also use something like SyncToy, I use that on my mum's PC and it does a sync everytime she switches on the PC.

Gary

[arunb]

try to access the hard drive using another PC, I think the bang you heard were capacitors blowing up inside the SMPS, also hard drives do not generally crash like that.

in any case check the drives on another PC, the chances are they will work....

thanks
aa

[DeanMc]

Tried, they are not spinning up. I have them in the hot press to dry out!

[Shaggy Hiker]

You might try washing them, too, so that the alkaloids from the coffee are removed. At this point you have nothing to lose. Use either distilled water, or some kind of solvent like alcohol. Pure ethanol would be good, because you'd end up with coffee with a strong kick.

[DeanMc]

Really? I figured that pouring more liqueds on them would be a no no but as you say I have nothing to loose!

[MartinLiss]

Have the divorce proceedings started yet?

[DeanMc]

Actually I have been told that it is a little convenient that this happened given that my birthday is the 30th of this month!

[MartinLiss]

Yup she must be planning on giving you the most expensive PC in Ireland as a present.

[DeanMc]

You mean a Dell !? Nah Im just kidding. I reckon a voucher for www.komplett.ie will do!

[DeanMc]

An EXTREMELY large voucher I might add.

[EntityX]

I had a hard drive die on me back in 2005. I lost a lot of digital pictures. Wasn't doing any programming at that time. I save my VB2008 application to a rewriteable CD if I do a lot of work on it now. It's less than 10 MB so it doesn't take too long to save.

[MartinLiss]

I have an external HD and Iomega Automatic backup automatically saves the last three iterations of all my important folders and files. I also regularly do full backups using Norton Ghost.

[Shaggy Hiker]

The issue with liquids is their conductivity. You totally shorted something, though there are worse things than coffee (soda, for instance, especially something like coke that has lots of acid in it), however, if the residue dried, you could have an electrolytic bridge somewhere on the drive such that when you apply power it goes where it shouldn't go. Distilled water can barely conduct enough electricity to shock you well, so it would be somewhat better than coffee residue.

I ran a SD card through a washing machine and a dishwasher to see what would happen to it (nothing happened, except the thread on that little experiment ended up pretty high in Google under my name). Whether water actually made it into the internal components during either test is hard to say. When I opened up the case, I found a white residue in there, but I had boiled the card in salt water for five minutes at that time, and that had killed the card. The residue may have been salt from the boiling.

In any case, water shouldn't really do any more damage than the coffee did (at least with the power off), and would remove any residue remaining from the coffee, so it's worth a try.

[Max Peck]

Im more annoyed at myself for not backing up my code than anything else. I have the original x:Light VB code stored on VBF but I had rewritten it in C# and added so sexy LINQ to it and now I have to redo it all. GRRRRR

You know what, though? You learned a big lesson from this. Guarantee you won't go without a backup again.

One other bright spot. Rewriting the code might be tedious but you'll actually write it better the 2nd time.

I had a supervisor actually lose my project once (about 12 years ago now) - didn't even check it into the source-control system. (At the time I didn't have access to that particular source control for some odd reason). Anyway ... it was a 35-hour project (in VB3) I had written at the time. The 2nd version (the rewrite) was a much better version. I still remembered most of what I did but a lot of the stuff I knew I could have done better AFTER I wrote it (and was too late to change it) I did the 2nd time around.

So ... at least there's a couple of bright spots there!

-Max

[MaximilianMayrhofer]

People hate happy people.

[Lord Orwell]

The issue with liquids is their conductivity. You totally shorted something, though there are worse things than coffee (soda, for instance, especially something like coke that has lots of acid in it), however, if the residue dried, you could have an electrolytic bridge somewhere on the drive such that when you apply power it goes where it shouldn't go. Distilled water can barely conduct enough electricity to shock you well, so it would be somewhat better than coffee residue.

I ran a SD card through a washing machine and a dishwasher to see what would happen to it (nothing happened, except the thread on that little experiment ended up pretty high in Google under my name). Whether water actually made it into the internal components during either test is hard to say. When I opened up the case, I found a white residue in there, but I had boiled the card in salt water for five minutes at that time, and that had killed the card. The residue may have been salt from the boiling.

In any case, water shouldn't really do any more damage than the coffee did (at least with the power off), and would remove any residue remaining from the coffee, so it's worth a try.

you really should be careful with those tests. I plugged a shorted device into a usb slot once... That motherboard no longer works usb.

[MaximilianMayrhofer]

I once tried to power my laptop using a battery we learned to make in chemistry class. The motherboard burned. Well, no it didn't and this never happened, but it would have been cool.

[mendhak]

Try Live Mesh. Just add your projects' folder to the Mesh so that it's available everywhere. I would synch it with my phone as well, but I don't have VS 2008 Mobile.

[Lord Orwell]

just wanted to add: Coffee's not conductive. I dropped a cellphone into a cup of coffee once. Didn't notice for an hour. It worked when it dried out, except for one button.

How hot is the hot-press? temperatures into the lower hundreds can degrade magnetic fields and make drives completely unsalvageable.

I would try taking the case off of one and see if anything is in it, such as a sticky residue gluing the head in place.

[EntityX]

If you want to know how conductive something is and you have an multimeter or an ohmmeter it's pretty simple. You can put the leads in the liquid if it's liquid or whatever. Back when I was in technical school we learned how different people can have very different resistance to the flow of current. My resistance is on the high side. If I hold the leads in my hand I'm usually over 1 Meg Ohm. Some people have much lower resistance and have to be more careful. Spit on your hands and do the test again and the resistance goes down. If you're sweating your resistance will be lower through your hands also. I've got zapped by 120 Volts AC a good number of times and it wasn't too bad. Some people will die from 220 VAC and others will come out ok.

[Campion]

I love SVN.

It's saved me a couple times when I've somehow damaged my thumb drives.

[DeanMc]

The hot press would be a little of 30c to be honest. I will leave them in a bit more and then open them. Im going to test all other parts and see if they survived as a lot of the other parts had fancy coverings.

I downloaded Live Mesh but never actually used it fully, go figure. I have an external hard drive but you know how laziness is.

I don't think I will be trying to electrocute myself to see how resistant I am though!

[Lord Orwell]

If you want to know how conductive something is and you have an multimeter or an ohmmeter it's pretty simple. You can put the leads in the liquid if it's liquid or whatever. Back when I was in technical school we learned how different people can have very different resistance to the flow of current. My resistance is on the high side. If I hold the leads in my hand I'm usually over 1 Meg Ohm. Some people have much lower resistance and have to be more careful. Spit on your hands and do the test again and the resistance goes down. If you're sweating your resistance will be lower through your hands also. I've got zapped by 120 Volts AC a good number of times and it wasn't too bad. Some people will die from 220 VAC and others will come out ok.

based on numbers, more people die from 110 volt current shocks. It is evidently the force of the hit usually jolts you off of it if you are shocked by 220-240(depending on location) whereas 110 can make you clamp onto it. I can personally attest to being blasted off of a 240 volt wire. I was walking barefoot through my grandfather's garage when i was a kid and stepped on to an old power lead running to an arc welder. I left the ground.

I would also say that i've been shocked 5 or 6 times by 110, but each time it was a shock that entered and grounded on the same hand so never entered my main body.

A low-voltage (110 to 220 V), 50 or 60-Hz AC current through the chest for a fraction of a second may induce ventricular fibrillation at currents as low as 60 mA. With DC, 300 to 500 mA is required. If the current has a direct pathway to the heart (e.g., via a cardiac catheter or other kind of electrode), a much lower current of less than 1 mA, (AC or DC) can cause fibrillation. If not immediately treated by defibrillation, fibrillations are usually lethal because all the heart muscle cells move independently. Above 200 mA, muscle contractions are so strong that the heart muscles cannot move at all.

[DeanMc]

Wow, you learn something new every day on this forum!

[Lord Orwell]

The hot press would be a little of 30c to be honest. I will leave them in a bit more and then open them. Im going to test all other parts and see if they survived as a lot of the other parts had fancy coverings.

I downloaded Live Mesh but never actually used it fully, go figure. I have an external hard drive but you know how laziness is.

I don't think I will be trying to electrocute myself to see how resistant I am though!

be careful. I bought an oem motherboard once. It fried four ram chips and two video cards. I didn't realize what the "no post" problem was, and put in another video card and burned it up too. Trying to save $30 cost me $400. One of the cards was a 9700 pro i paid almost $400 for. The replacement card i bought on ebay (a 9800 pro) for whatever reason didn't function at 8xagp. Anyway, the point of this tirade is that if you plug a burned up piece of equipment into a functional piece of equipment, you are risking cascade failure. I could see burned traces in my case.

[BillGeek]

Tried, they are not spinning up. I have them in the hot press to dry out!

I wonder... the fact that the HDD won't spin up might indicate that something blew on the PCB underneath the drive.

Same thing happened to me once. (Okay, not the same, though only slightly different...) My PC was standing next to the window in my room. One saturday morning my dad decided to water the lawn and the sprinklers sprayed water straight into my case. Everything blew and exactly the same thing happened to the HDD. I was fortunate enough to have EXACTLY THE SAME harddrive lying around, so I unscrewed the PCB of both drives, swapped them, and carried on using the "patched-up" harddrive for the next 3 years.

So all I'm suggesting is:
If you have another Harddrive just lying around that is exactly the same as the current drive, try swapping the PCB's to see if the discs spin up. That way, all you have to worry about is whether the platters inside the disc are still okay.

[mendhak]

I wonder... the fact that the HDD won't spin up might indicate that something blew on the PCB underneath the drive.

Same thing happened to me once. (Okay, not the same, though only slightly different...) My PC was standing next to the window in my room. One saturday morning my dad decided to water the lawn and the sprinklers sprayed water straight into my case. Everything blew and exactly the same thing happened to the HDD. I was fortunate enough to have EXACTLY THE SAME harddrive lying around, so I unscrewed the PCB of both drives, swapped them, and carried on using the "patched-up" harddrive for the next 3 years.

So all I'm suggesting is:
If you have another Harddrive just lying around that is exactly the same as the current drive, try swapping the PCB's to see if the discs spin up. That way, all you have to worry about is whether the platters inside the disc are still okay.

With the exact same data on it?

[MaximilianMayrhofer]

No, he just replaced the PCB on his original hard drive with the one from the duplicate drive.

[mendhak]

Why should I read the complete post?