Sorrentino's Notes (10/02)
“Disk Failure” Scare
by Phil Sorrentino
Member of the Sarasota Personal Computer Users Group, Inc.
This morning, it happened again. I started the computer
in the morning, as I do every morning, and staring me in the face was the
dreaded "system disk failure" message. A chill went down my spine. It seemed
like this happened only about a year or two years ago. When I thought
further, it was 2005 when it happened, almost 5 years ago, so maybe that’s
not too bad. As I ate breakfast, I rapidly thought about the hardware in
that computer. (I currently have 3 desktops that I am using for various
activities in the home, but this was my main computer, the one other family
members use.) Panic started to set-in. Were the disk drives 160GB, or 250GB?
When were they installed? Were they Seagate or Western Digital? What
interface is used in that computer? Are they formatted in NTFS or FAT32?
Well, if it was the C: drive then it must be NTFS. I’ll have to open the
chassis and look at the drives.
Fortunately, this story has a very happy ending. After
breakfast, as I knelt down to look at the desktop chassis, to see what was
the best approach to removing the cables and other things around the
chassis, I spied a floppy disk in the floppy disk drive. Eureka! XP was
trying to boot from the floppy: an impossible task, so it reported a disk
failure, obviously. Most desktop computers today don’t have a floppy disk
drive, so this will probably not happen to most people. However, it got me
thinking that the answers to all of the questions I had during breakfast,
should be in one place, probably along with a lot of other information that
defines the current computer hardware setup. So it’s probably not a bad idea
to gather all of this information, while the computer is operating, and put
a hard copy printout in a safe place.
The disk drive information is probably the most important
for this kind of failure, but it is a good idea to have all the basic
hardware information in one easily accessed place. Here is a list of the
things that you might want to have. You may not need all of these so use
only those that are pertinent to your hardware setup. (If there’s anything
that I’ve forgotten, just add it to the list, and let me know by e-mail.)
I’ll start with the disk drive information because that is what you’ll need
if the drive goes down, or you may need if you have to re-install the entire
system. (By the way, you can accomplish all of this by using the free
program, Belarc Advisor (http://www.belarc.com/free_download.html). Belarc
produces a listing of almost all of the following pieces of information and
additional information in the computer security area.)
Disk Drive 1
Manufacturer Typically Seagate, Western Digital, …
Part Number e.g. ST3160023A (Seagate part no.)
Date Installed May be the date of computer purchase
Size (GB) e.g 330GB
Rotating Speed e.g. 7200 RPM (or possibly 5400 RPM)
Interface Type IDE (Parallel ATA) or SATA
Formatted NTFS or FAT32
C: drive size Typically 25GB(or XP) or 50GB (Vista)
D: drive size (if used) Various
Disk Drive 2 Same as Drive 1
CPU Type e.g Intel Pentium 4, or AMD Athelon
Speed e.g. 3.2 GHz
Processors e.g. 2 Only used for multi-core processors
(e.g. Intel Core Duo)
Memory Amount e.g. 1GB
Type/Speed e.g. PC133 or DDR2, etc.
Display Adapter (If not on Motherboard)
Manufacturer e.g. nVidia
Part Number e.g. GeForce GTX295
Other Information if needed.
Networking
Computer Name e.g. "Mary’s Computer"
Wired MAC address (if connected to wired Ethernet port)
e.g. 00-34-5A-BC-DF-3F
Wireless MAC address (if used on wireless network)
e.g. 00-34-5A-BC-DF-3F
Router IP address e.g. 192.168.1.0
USB Devices:
External Drive (for Backup)—Mfg. e.g. Seagate,
Western Digital, LaCie
—Part Number- Free Agent (Seagate part no.)
—Date Installed-May be the date of computer purchase
—Size (GB)- e.g. 1 TB (1,000 GB)
—Rotating Speed Typically 7200 RPM
—Formatted NTFS or FAT32
MP3Player e.g. Apple iPod
—Part Number e.g.
—Size e.g. 4GB
—Other Pertinent Information
Mouse and/or Keyboard (if connected to USB)
Digital Camera
—Manufacturer e.g. Cannon
—Part Number e.g. Powershot SX110IS
—MegaPixel size e.g. 10MPixels
—Other Pertinent Information
Other USB Devices
If you would like a copy of a spreadsheet that
incorporates all of these items, send me an e-mail with your name and
membership number and I’ll send the spreadsheet file to you. (If you don’t
have Microsoft Excel on your computer, you’ll need a program that can read .xls
files or an Excel Viewer, that you can get for free from the Microsoft
Downloads site.) Better still, download Belarc Advisor, run it and print out
the results. With either of these printouts you’ll have the answers to all
of the questions that rush into your mind if you should ever see that
dreaded "system disk failure" message.
Partial Belarc Advisor Printout
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Copyright 2010. This article is from the February 2010 issue of the
Sarasota PC Monitor, the official monthly publication of the Sarasota
Personal Computer Users Group, Inc., P.O. Box 15889, Sarasota, FL
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