A few weeks ago I mentioned some hard drive problems I was having. Some time has passed, and I am now confident that the installation of Windows Service Pack 2 were the sole cause of those problems. I am also grateful that the Geek Squad is helping me get around them.
Both drives were affected. Both were still readable, but both of my computers thought they were blank. This and the "Stop 0x50" error is said to be caused by installing bad hardware, installing bad software, or an NTFS error. Jonathan suggested there might be a virus, since it was odd that both drives were affected.
In time I saw that others had similar problems--all caused by the installation (and possibly the attempted removal) of Windows Service Pack 2.
Windows Service Pack 2 also seems to adversely affect video cards and therefore online game playing. With all the above in mind, I will not be re-installing Windows Service Pack 2.
In my near-ignorance to my issue, I reasoned my original hard drives could be read but that files were actually "invisible." This seemed to be the case. The Geek Squad guys at the local Best Buy were able to make up my slave drive onto DVDs, and I was easily able to copy those DVDed files onto my new drive. Bursting with hope, I have since given them my main drive for the same treatment.
The Geek Squad charges a flat fee for backups: 90 bucks. Much better than the $1000+ I was dreading of spending to some data recovery service to help me out.
Again, with all the above in mind, I will not be re-installing Windows Service Pack 2.
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Jonathan commented at 1:11 AM on October 15, 2004:
Hey! Good news! I'm glad things are not as bleak at they first seemed to be.
Kate commented at 9:15 AM on October 23, 2004:
Glad to hear you got your computer problems sorted... Just when I was beginning to miss harassing you too ;)
Keith commented at 1:57 PM on October 23, 2004:
Actually, my computer problems haven't sorted themselves out just yet. Although I got back a significant amount of data from the slave drive backup, the master drive had some mechanical issues (as well as the same "invisible directory" problem that the slave drive had).
I brought the master to a data recovery service at the beginning of last week. It seemed as tho a bunch of people were out sick, so they probably needed the full suggested week to be able to examine my drive. Once they do, they'll e-mail me a list of all files that have a chance of being recovered and I tell them which ones I want and which I don't. Then, they tell me how much it will cost to recover the data, and I accept or reject it. It'll probably be somewhere between $500 and $1000, although the price theoretically could be as high as $2400 for my 120GB drive.
The lesson here is: DVD burners and back-up software are much cheaper than the data recovery process.
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