(Note: Above does not apply to reader Ed Bott, I’m sure this stuff never happens to him.)

This is, to my eye, a ridiculously complicated story, and even as it is, I’m sure I’ll be leaving out parts as the mind dulls pain, and what the mind fails to dull, lack of sleep probably takes care of. The only things I can promise the reader who perseveres through this long sad geeky tale, is that things only get worse until the end, at which point they are very very bad and remain unresolved.

Let us begin.

I’m runing Windows XP, service pack 2 on an aging Intel Pentium 4 system. I tried SP3 at work, it hosed my machine, and I’ve been afraid to try it at home, at least until I got my backups sorted out better.

Recently, the system has been a bit weird, with very slow file access times (windows explorer would take forever to open, ditto with file dialogs in programs), and I also was worried that my copy of Firefox was compromised, at it (1) always opens connections to places it shouldin’t when I start the program (even in same mode) and (2) every so often something would apparently get firefox to try every port number in sequence trying to make a connection out of the machine. Fortunately, Spybot had modified my localhots file (making it rather suspiciously enormous, in fact), so all these connection attempts ended up at local host. But it was worrying. I decided I had to do something, or several somethings.

First, I decided to take the plunge and migrate to a larger disk, and ordered up a “green” WD7500AACS. (Three quarters of a terrabyte! Whoohoo!) About three or four weeks ago, I copied my files on to it using using XXClone, a nice piece of freeware that basically makes an entire copy of Drive A (including operating system) onto drive B. But the cloning program is very slow — 12-16 hours slow for me. It didn’t help that I have to jumper my drives to run at SATA 1 speeds instead of SATA 2: my ASUS P4C800-E deluxe motherboard is old enough that it will not recognize a SATA 2 drive, and without a PCI-E slot there’s as far as I can tell no point in getting a new sata drive controller card.

But once that was past, my new environment was much better. I had lots of spare disk space. But things were still slow sometimes. I decided it was time to kill the trojan, or whatever, that seemed to be infesting my system. I also decided that I should go back to hardware RAID, since I don’t back up my files enough.

But first things first. I called the help desk about my virus. We get our virus software from the University, which sensibly decided that it would better protect its network, if it also protected the computers that most often interact with it — the students’ and the staffs’. They first upgraded me from our old Symantec software to the new “Symantec Endpoint Protection”. But that didn’t seem to do anything. Using a netstat agent I could still see from time to time firefox working its way down the series of ports. So I called back, and the UM help people sent me on the Symantec help people.

Contacting them took a little time, but once done a very competent sounding tech walked me through a few things, then announced I had an old version of the software, and should upgrade — by uninstalling my version and then installing a new one. He guided me to downloading the uninstall tool, and the install tool. These were big files, downloading veeery slowly, and I had to go to a meeting, so we ended the call. He warned me that the uninstall might take a couple of reboots.

When I got back, the files were there, and I ran the first one. It duly called for a reboot and I did it — only to get error messages and a lockup. I called back, and they said to reboot again. I did, it unfroze the machine, and they said to run it again. Which I did, at which point the disk wouldn’t boot any more.

But no problem, I had my backup, the 160GB version. Nervously, I copied that version onto another 160BG disk I had spare (the old hardware raid I used to run), then back on to the 750GB disk. But now that the two disks are in the system, with the 750Gb disk on the second pair of SATA ports, which are RAID capable (but were properly set for ordinary non-RAID use in the bios), the Windows system on the first 160GB disk decided they needed to be reactivated. And windows didn’t give me a code to input or use when I called. And I couldn’t fnd the Widows media. So that was a disaster, it seemed.

But the 750GB version worked. So that’s good. But now I’m nervous, things seemed jinxed. So I order up a second WD7500AACS, and plan to RAID mirror them.

Diskeeper version 9 doesn’t work on big disks. I get the 2008 edition of Diskeeper and install it. It says my MFT tables are almost full, I should grow and defrag them, so I tell it to go ahead. Nothing bad seems to happen as a result.

Now, time extra backups. I’m a little nervous about hardware raid, in part because I’m a little dyslexic. I have this nightmare that I’ll take the real disk and copy the blank on to it and lose my data. I’ve never actually done this, but the raid setup isn’t a very friendly dialog, and somehow it feels like something I could do.

So I decided to make a software clone onto the new disk with XXClone, so that whichever way I copied the data would be OK. Both disks would have the right data, so whichever gets deleted, it wouldn’t matter.

The new WD7500AACS arrived the other day, and this weekend I got around to formatting it preliminary to running xxclone to stuff it full of my data. I installed the disk, started up the format, and went of to do some stuff. When I got back, I found a blue screen of death, a 0024 failure (that I gather means a loose wire, something version one the sata hardware standard made all too easy). When I tried to reboot, I got a smart drive error - the disk is bad. I flip some disks around. One of the 160GB disks won’t boot either — “Disk error”. When the dust settles I have some very high-tech paperweights.

• WD7500AACS #1 - Smart drive monitor says the disk is BAD
• WD7500AACS #2 - disk error if I try to boot from it (which is hardly surprising, since it’s probably not even formatted), but unrecognized by the machine if I put it as a second disk (which I don’t understand, and yes I tried a wire I know works).
• Samsung HD160JJ #1 - disk error.
• Samsung HD160JJ #2 - boots up just fine (no Microsoft Activation issue perhaps because the other disks are all, from the OS’s point of view, not there?).

I’ve lost 3 weeks or more of personal data, only most of which can be reconstructed. My work files, on the other hand, either on a unix server or on a USB stick, which I religiously back up at home and work, so that’s OK. My personal financial info, which isn’t backed up for the last 3+ weeks, I can recreate: the sad prospect of reclassifying a month of credit card transactions in Quicken will be followed by the fun of reliving the crash of my 403(b). There are a few other miscellaneous notes I’ve lost, I hope there’s nothing really major.

I’m still on the old version of Symantec Endpoint protection, and SP2. Having gone back in time, hard-disk-wise, I also again have the flash 9 that hangs all the time instead of flash 10 which doesn’t. And a Quicken update. And varous firefox plugins. And don’t let’s even talk about when I’m going to install Windows XP Service Pack 3.

The WD’s are brand new, so I guess there’s warranty replacement, unless I want to schlep a long way to the good computer repair store, and see if they can pull my financial records and some other notes off disk #1. I gather if smart says “BAD” there generally isn’t much one can do.

I’m not sure about the warranty status of the Samsungs.

The more important question is what I do next. I’m worried. As it happens, I do have one more large unformatted hard drive in the house, a WD50000AAKS, that I was going to use for a different machine. When I get my courage back, I think I’ll try formatting that and cloning this last working drive onto it.

Meanwhile, diskeeper version 9 (we’re back to that) says I’m using 92% of my MFT and this is bad. But I’m afraid to touch it.

You know when you lose your connection and both sides frantically try to call each other back and cross paths? Richard Wolpert has a new rule:

1. if you initiated the call and it drops you call the other person back.
2. if you received the call and it drops you just wait for the call back.

Pass it on.

For a minute there, I thought I had a new social trend spotted in the wild: voice mail spam.

So I called the number from the caller ID.

It’s not a social trend. It seems a former student took his young daughter to the tennis match this weekend, and during the match he gave her the cell phone to play with. She happily pushed buttons, it called my office, and I got a recording of a bit of the match.

But I had a nice chat with the dad, who’s now a partner in a big local firm and seems to be doing very well.

(via Ed Bott)

Looks like I’ll be waiting for that Atom-powered Asus eee after all.

Answer

Western Digital manufactures desktop edition hard drives and RAID Edition hard drives. Each type of hard drive is designed to work specifically in either a desktop computer environment or on RAID controller.

If you install and use a desktop edition hard drive connected to a RAID controller, the drive may not work correctly unless jointly qualified by an enterprise OEM. This is caused by the normal error recovery procedure that a desktop edition hard drive uses.

When an error is found on a desktop edition hard drive, the drive will enter into a deep recovery cycle to attempt to repair the error, recover the data from the problematic area, and then reallocate a dedicated area to replace the problematic area. This process can take up to 2 minutes depending on the severity of the issue. Most RAID controllers allow a very short amount of time for a hard drive to recover from an error. If a hard drive takes too long to complete this process, the drive will be dropped from the RAID array. Most RAID controllers allow from 7 to 15 seconds for error recovery before dropping a hard drive from an array. Western Digital does not recommend installing desktop edition hard drives in an enterprise environment (on a RAID controller).

I think the box should have a warning sticker about this…

Meanwhile, back to the hunt for reliable, very quiet, low-heat-producing, mass storage.

Looks like a must read - after I get caught up…

Taipei Times: Portable hard discs sold locally and produced by US disk-drive manufacturer Seagate Technology have been found to carry Trojan horse viruses that automatically upload to Beijing Web sites anything the computer user saves on the hard disc, the Investigation Bureau said.

Around 1,800 of the portable Maxtor hard discs, produced in Thailand, carried two Trojan horse viruses: autorun.inf and ghost.pif, the bureau under the Ministry of Justice said.

The tainted portable hard disc uploads any information saved on the computer automatically and without the owner’s knowledge …

The bureau said that the method of attack was unusual, adding that it suspected Chinese authorities were involved.

Of course, in the USA, we use more subtle means to get your data.

I spent quite a lot of it looking at a computer that kept saying this:

We’re sorry; the installer crashed. Please file a new bug report at https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ubiquity/+filebug (do not attach your details to any existing bug) and a developer will attend to the problem as soon as possible. To help the developers understand what went wrong, include the following detail in your bug report, and attach the files /var/log/syslog and /var/log/partman: Traceback (most recent call last):
File “/usr/lib/ubiquity/bin/ubiquity”, line 210, in
main()
File “/usr/lib/ubiquity/bin/ubiquity”, line 205, in main install(args[0])
File “/usr/lib/ubiquity/bin/ubiquity”, line 58, in install
ret = wizard.run()
File “/usr/lib/ubiquity/ubiquity/frontend/gtkui.py”, line 358, in run
File “/usr/lib/ubiquity/ubiquity/frontend/gtkui.py”, line 989, in process_step
File “/usr/lib/ubiquity/ubiquity/frontend/gtkui.py”, line 743, in progress_loop
RuntimeError: Install failed with exit code 139; see /var/log/syslog

Mind you, I was doing something that may be fairly silly:

• take a moderately ancient machine with a tiny ISA drive with Windows on it,
• shove a low-budget SATA card into it, a Rosewill RC-209
• ignore the fact that the BIOS will see the drive but won’t offer to boot from it
• leave Windows XP on the ISA drive
• install a massive (half-terrabyte!) drive on the SATA card
• partition the drive to give Windows a little more room to play
• install Ubuntu to the bulk of the SATA drive.

It was the last step that kept croaking. Even thought the CD I burned passed all integrity checks.

So I filed a bug report. Currently, I’m downloading the alternate Ubuntu installer, and doing a full scan of the (brand new) disk’s integrity in case it has some physical fault. Takes a long time to scan half a terrabyte.

Earlier, a similar install using the same model card and a similar SATA disk alone on a similar computer (without the attempt to dual boot on two drives) went swimmingly.

But this one would croak even if I unplugged the ISA drive with windows on it. So There’s Something Funny Going On….

Update: disk checks out fine.

Meanwhile, thanks to the Super Grub Disk I managed to rescue Windows from a non-functioning entry I’d put into the MBR. Three cheers for the Super Grub Disk! I’m now back to where I was 40 hours ago!

(Lest anyone feel too sorry for me, this isn’t my main machine, and I actually like solving problems like this, even (especially?) if I caused them.)

If I had a satellite dish, I’d definitely want to use the Satellite Alignment Calculator 2.0 to aim it.