We had a 'puter crash and lost a day's sales records and, more
imprtantly, payroll data.

I'm mounting the HD in a USB portable unit and putting in the freezer,
hoping to get one last spin. If that don't work, are there any other
good ideas? Otherwise, anybody know what a data recovery vendor costs
and any suggested vendor?

Karl

On Thu, 14 Jun 2012 05:25:04 -0500, Karl Townsend
wrote:

We had a 'puter crash and lost a day's sales records and, more
imprtantly, payroll data.

I'm mounting the HD in a USB portable unit and putting in the freezer,
hoping to get one last spin.

Has that worked for you before?!


If that don't work, are there any other
good ideas? Otherwise, anybody know what a data recovery vendor costs
and any suggested vendor?

A local guy gets from $129-600 for recovery, depending on size and
importance of recovery. I guess he tries harder and longer on the
important stuff.


--
Doctors prescribe medicine of which they know little,
to cure diseases of which they know less,
in human beings of which they know nothing.
--Francois-Marie Arouet Voltaire, about 250 years ago

On 6/14/2012 6:25 AM, Karl Townsend wrote:
We had a 'puter crash and lost a day's sales records and, more
importantly, payroll data.

I'm mounting the HD in a USB portable unit and putting in the freezer,
hoping to get one last spin. If that don't work, are there any other
good ideas? Otherwise, anybody know what a data recovery vendor costs
and any suggested vendor?

Karl


Is that a Seagate Barracuda drive? If so, it may have failed due to
a firmware failure on the drive. You have to remove the board, and use
a TTL serial connection to make the drive run again, then flash the new
firmware if the drive isn't completely corrupted. I finally found some
connectors that fit the data port. They are single row, 2 mm spaced
contacts. I am going to have some boards etched, since they are very
fragile. I used a USB to TTL converter to reset my drive when it failed.
All the data is on the hard drive of my main computer, which just
died. The motherboard has a bunch of leaking electrolytics and I am
waiting on the replacements. 37 low ESR capacitors, which give you 74
chances to destroy the board. It's a Dell Optiplex GX620, which also
has a high failure rate for the power supply fan failures.


Data recovery services can cost $500 or more.

On 6/14/2012 6:25 AM, Karl Townsend wrote:
We had a 'puter crash and lost a day's sales records and, more
imprtantly, payroll data.

I'm mounting the HD in a USB portable unit and putting in the freezer,
hoping to get one last spin. If that don't work, are there any other
good ideas? Otherwise, anybody know what a data recovery vendor costs
and any suggested vendor?

Karl

Sometimes I use a Linux box to access a stubborn drive.

On 2012-06-14, Tom Gardner Mars@Tacks wrote:
On 6/14/2012 6:25 AM, Karl Townsend wrote:
We had a 'puter crash and lost a day's sales records and, more
imprtantly, payroll data.

I'm mounting the HD in a USB portable unit and putting in the freezer,
hoping to get one last spin. If that don't work, are there any other
good ideas? Otherwise, anybody know what a data recovery vendor costs
and any suggested vendor?

Karl

Sometimes I use a Linux box to access a stubborn drive.

Karl, what error message did you get when your computer crashed? Was
it, in fact, hard drive related?

i

On Thu, 14 Jun 2012 05:31:22 -0700, Larry Jaques
wrote:

On Thu, 14 Jun 2012 05:25:04 -0500, Karl Townsend
wrote:

We had a 'puter crash and lost a day's sales records and, more
imprtantly, payroll data.

I'm mounting the HD in a USB portable unit and putting in the freezer,
hoping to get one last spin.

Has that worked for you before?!


If that don't work, are there any other
good ideas? Otherwise, anybody know what a data recovery vendor costs
and any suggested vendor?

A local guy gets from $129-600 for recovery, depending on size and
importance of recovery. I guess he tries harder and longer on the
important stuff.

JOY, stuck dying drive in a USB portable case, then in freezer. it
fired up and i copied just a few K of data. A minute later i heard the
whirring squeak and it breathed its last gasp.

A fella on RCM said a cold drive will run a bit, sometimes.

Karl

"Karl Townsend" wrote in message

JOY, stuck dying drive in a USB portable case, then in freezer. it
fired up and i copied just a few K of data. A minute later i heard
the
whirring squeak and it breathed its last gasp.

A fella on RCM said a cold drive will run a bit, sometimes.

Karl

Thanks for the feedback.

I bought a CD bay hard drive caddy for this laptop to put the backup
drive on the IDE bus where it will show S.M.A.R.T. data, particularly
to see how fast the reallocated sector count is growing and how bad
the seek and write error rates have become. The free disk utilities I
have don't read S.M.A.R.T. from USB drives, including new SATA ones.

If like me you are still patching up your favorite 7-year-old laptop
and see the hard or CD/DVD drive suddenly become extremely slow, this
is how to reset the IDE bus from 2MB/S PIO mode to high speed UDMA
mode after multiple (6?) drive errors cue XP to slow it down.
http://www.sevenforums.com/general-d...-can-i-do.html

jsw

On Thu, 14 Jun 2012 14:27:51 -0400, "Jim Wilkins"
wrote:

"Karl Townsend" wrote in message

JOY, stuck dying drive in a USB portable case, then in freezer. it
fired up and i copied just a few K of data. A minute later i heard
the
whirring squeak and it breathed its last gasp.

A fella on RCM said a cold drive will run a bit, sometimes.

Karl

Thanks for the feedback.

I bought a CD bay hard drive caddy for this laptop to put the backup
drive on the IDE bus where it will show S.M.A.R.T. data, particularly
to see how fast the reallocated sector count is growing and how bad
the seek and write error rates have become. The free disk utilities I
have don't read S.M.A.R.T. from USB drives, including new SATA ones.

If like me you are still patching up your favorite 7-year-old laptop
and see the hard or CD/DVD drive suddenly become extremely slow, this
is how to reset the IDE bus from 2MB/S PIO mode to high speed UDMA
mode after multiple (6?) drive errors cue XP to slow it down.
http://www.sevenforums.com/general-d...-can-i-do.html

jsw


My shop and office 'puters are old beater IDE drivess. never had a
failure without warning. The sales and payroll 'puter had a nearly new
SATA hard drive. it died withoug warning while four customers were
standing in line.

Karl

Jim Wilkins wrote:
"Karl Townsend" wrote in message

JOY, stuck dying drive in a USB portable case, then in freezer. it
fired up and i copied just a few K of data. A minute later i heard
the
whirring squeak and it breathed its last gasp.

A fella on RCM said a cold drive will run a bit, sometimes.

Karl


Thanks for the feedback.

I bought a CD bay hard drive caddy for this laptop to put the backup
drive on the IDE bus where it will show S.M.A.R.T. data, particularly
to see how fast the reallocated sector count is growing and how bad
the seek and write error rates have become. The free disk utilities I
have don't read S.M.A.R.T. from USB drives, including new SATA ones.

If like me you are still patching up your favorite 7-year-old laptop
and see the hard or CD/DVD drive suddenly become extremely slow, this
is how to reset the IDE bus from 2MB/S PIO mode to high speed UDMA
mode after multiple (6?) drive errors cue XP to slow it down.
http://www.sevenforums.com/general-d...-can-i-do.html

jsw



I wondered what the benefit of SMART is as every time I've had a HD fail
I've never had any notice. The HD failures were sudden and mainly
substantial read errors that made the drive unusable yet never any
warning from the system. Is SMART something that needs to be enabled in
BIOS but still needs additoanal software to monitor and warn the user
about problems.

"David Billington" wrote in message
news:4fda487e$0$10736
I wondered what the benefit of SMART is as every time I've had a HD
fail I've never had any notice. The HD failures were sudden and
mainly substantial read errors that made the drive unusable yet
never any warning from the system. Is SMART something that needs to
be enabled in BIOS but still needs additoanal software to monitor
and warn the user about problems.

I scoured the local stores for a few new IDE drives and set up my
laptops so I maintain and update a master copy of the system on the
"good" module bay drive and copy it to an older, junkier primary drive
for daily Net use. The primary hard drive on this Dell Latitude plugs
into the side in a little carrier that I bought a bunch of, so I can
just plug in another if one fails or becomes infested. BTW XP copies
only work in the PC they came from as it tracks the CPU and MAC
address.

Which means I stopped looking so hard for good free S.M.A.R.T.
monitoring s/w. I can run the old drives until they fail.

These seemed promising:
http://www.techsupportalert.com/best...ng-utility.htm

After I finish tediously matching up this deteriorating year-old
Samsung 160 to its three non-identical backups of everything I've ever
downloaded and RMA it I might try them on a "sandbox" drive.
http://serverfault.com/questions/669...neypot-samples

HDTune gives the S.M.A.R.T.data when you stop to run it, bit not
continuously. I like its Benchmark which graphs read speed (subject to
random Windows interruptions) and the full-disk error scan. I've used
it to find and partition around a defective area and to test new
drives during the store return period. A full error scan of a USB2
external drive takes around 12 hours per terabyte.
http://www.hdtune.com/

Some of my drives give really wonky values for some S.M.A.R.T.
parameters, like stellar core temperatures and run times in the
decades.

jsw

On Thu, 14 Jun 2012 09:41:18 -0500, Karl Townsend
wrote:

On Thu, 14 Jun 2012 05:31:22 -0700, Larry Jaques
wrote:

On Thu, 14 Jun 2012 05:25:04 -0500, Karl Townsend
wrote:

We had a 'puter crash and lost a day's sales records and, more
imprtantly, payroll data.

I'm mounting the HD in a USB portable unit and putting in the freezer,
hoping to get one last spin.

Has that worked for you before?!


If that don't work, are there any other
good ideas? Otherwise, anybody know what a data recovery vendor costs
and any suggested vendor?

A local guy gets from $129-600 for recovery, depending on size and
importance of recovery. I guess he tries harder and longer on the
important stuff.

JOY, stuck dying drive in a USB portable case, then in freezer. it
fired up and i copied just a few K of data. A minute later i heard the
whirring squeak and it breathed its last gasp.

Timely!


A fella on RCM said a cold drive will run a bit, sometimes.

I guess it works, sometimes.

--
Doctors prescribe medicine of which they know little,
to cure diseases of which they know less,
in human beings of which they know nothing.
--Francois-Marie Arouet Voltaire, about 250 years ago

On Thu, 14 Jun 2012 05:25:04 -0500, Karl Townsend
wrote:

We had a 'puter crash and lost a day's sales records and, more
imprtantly, payroll data.

I'm mounting the HD in a USB portable unit and putting in the freezer,
hoping to get one last spin. If that don't work, are there any other
good ideas? Otherwise, anybody know what a data recovery vendor costs
and any suggested vendor?

Karl
Well, I've tried the freezing with limitted success, and in Guelph
Ontario there is a data recovery service I have used. Recovery Force,
519-750-3169, 350 Speedvale Ave. Price varies with the job - usually
a couple hundred bucks.

HOWEVER - there IS a program you can use to recover data from a drive
from a company called EaseUS. The data recovery wizard is about 70
clams - and it WORKS (or at least it has for me several times). The
drives were not even identified by the computer bios, but when
attached to a R-Drive III USB adapter, the program found all the files
I needed to get off both drives.

GREAT TOOL!!!!

On Thu, 14 Jun 2012 08:55:34 -0400, "Michael A. Terrell"
wrote:

On 6/14/2012 6:25 AM, Karl Townsend wrote:
We had a 'puter crash and lost a day's sales records and, more
importantly, payroll data.

I'm mounting the HD in a USB portable unit and putting in the freezer,
hoping to get one last spin. If that don't work, are there any other
good ideas? Otherwise, anybody know what a data recovery vendor costs
and any suggested vendor?

Karl


Is that a Seagate Barracuda drive? If so, it may have failed due to
a firmware failure on the drive. You have to remove the board, and use
a TTL serial connection to make the drive run again, then flash the new
firmware if the drive isn't completely corrupted. I finally found some
connectors that fit the data port. They are single row, 2 mm spaced
contacts. I am going to have some boards etched, since they are very
fragile. I used a USB to TTL converter to reset my drive when it failed.
All the data is on the hard drive of my main computer, which just
died. The motherboard has a bunch of leaking electrolytics and I am
waiting on the replacements. 37 low ESR capacitors, which give you 74
chances to destroy the board. It's a Dell Optiplex GX620, which also
has a high failure rate for the power supply fan failures.


Data recovery services can cost $500 or more.


Michael, wouldn't it be easier and cheaper, and less hassle in the
long run to just replace theOptiplex with a better computer????

Every time I get involved with one of them it turns into "the Dell
from Hell"

I had a good experience with Geek Squad, although others told me to steer
clear of them. It was around $500. Any Best Buy has one inside. They gave me
back more data that I asked for. SWMBO had data that had to come back. I
would have paid more but didn't have to. Time is the problem. I think it was
a month or more getting it back. No affiliation whatsoever, just a satisfied
customer. They try a trick or two in the store. If the drive does not read,
they box it up and send it out for level 1 service. That is about what they
do in the store. It usually don't work and they call you you and ask if it
is ok to proceed with level 2 ($500). You say yes and 75% or so of the time,
they fix it at that. Otherwise it goes to level 3 and that is where they
tell you if you have to ask what it cost you can't afford it (I am
exagerrating a little here but you get the point) . They keep you informed
during the whole process so you don't get stuck with a bill you can't pay.
This was a year ago around the Louisville KY metro area. YMMV.
Good Luck Lyndell


"Karl Townsend" wrote in message
...
We had a 'puter crash and lost a day's sales records and, more
imprtantly, payroll data.

I'm mounting the HD in a USB portable unit and putting in the freezer,
hoping to get one last spin. If that don't work, are there any other
good ideas? Otherwise, anybody know what a data recovery vendor costs
and any suggested vendor?

Karl

Important other info I forgot about:
They provide your data on a new flash drive unless it is huge and they
will put that on a brand new external hardrive. Either way copy it on you
new computer and preferably copy on anotehr drive of some type (i.e external
hardrive). They say the flash drive can sit around and gather static
electric or something and lose the data you just payed $500 to get back.
This would not be good. I was told it is like at light bulb........you get a
good one and sometimes you get a bad one. Just food for thought. I have the
flash drive , new computer and an external hardrive. The hardrive is in a
fireproof area.
Lyndell



"Lyndell Thompson" wrote in message
...
I had a good experience with Geek Squad, although others told me to steer
clear of them. It was around $500. Any Best Buy has one inside. They gave
me back more data that I asked for. SWMBO had data that had to come back. I
would have paid more but didn't have to. Time is the problem. I think it
was a month or more getting it back. No affiliation whatsoever, just a
satisfied customer. They try a trick or two in the store. If the drive does
not read, they box it up and send it out for level 1 service. That is about
what they do in the store. It usually don't work and they call you you and
ask if it is ok to proceed with level 2 ($500). You say yes and 75% or so
of the time, they fix it at that. Otherwise it goes to level 3 and that is
where they tell you if you have to ask what it cost you can't afford it (I
am exagerrating a little here but you get the point) . They keep you
informed during the whole process so you don't get stuck with a bill you
can't pay. This was a year ago around the Louisville KY metro area. YMMV.
Good Luck Lyndell


"Karl Townsend" wrote in message
...
We had a 'puter crash and lost a day's sales records and, more
imprtantly, payroll data.

I'm mounting the HD in a USB portable unit and putting in the freezer,
hoping to get one last spin. If that don't work, are there any other
good ideas? Otherwise, anybody know what a data recovery vendor costs
and any suggested vendor?

Karl

On Thu, 14 Jun 2012 22:36:02 -0400, "Lyndell Thompson"
wrote:

I had a good experience with Geek Squad, although others told me to steer
clear of them. It was around $500. Any Best Buy has one inside. They gave me
back more data that I asked for. SWMBO had data that had to come back. I
would have paid more but didn't have to. Time is the problem. I think it was
a month or more getting it back. No affiliation whatsoever, just a satisfied
customer. They try a trick or two in the store. If the drive does not read,
they box it up and send it out for level 1 service. That is about what they
do in the store. It usually don't work and they call you you and ask if it
is ok to proceed with level 2 ($500). You say yes and 75% or so of the time,
they fix it at that. Otherwise it goes to level 3 and that is where they
tell you if you have to ask what it cost you can't afford it (I am
exagerrating a little here but you get the point) . They keep you informed
during the whole process so you don't get stuck with a bill you can't pay.
This was a year ago around the Louisville KY metro area. YMMV.
Good Luck Lyndell


"Karl Townsend" wrote in message
.. .
We had a 'puter crash and lost a day's sales records and, more
imprtantly, payroll data.

I'm mounting the HD in a USB portable unit and putting in the freezer,
hoping to get one last spin. If that don't work, are there any other
good ideas? Otherwise, anybody know what a data recovery vendor costs
and any suggested vendor?

Karl

The EaseUS is busy restoring an old Seagate that belongs to a customer
- in an hour and a half it has located 34000 picture files - has
another 2 1/2 hours or so to go.
Another drive that was totally unaccessible through windows on a
computer. Running EaseUS on a windows machine it pops up after about
half an hour.

On Thu, 14 Jun 2012 20:42:12 -0400, wrote:

On Thu, 14 Jun 2012 05:25:04 -0500, Karl Townsend
wrote:

We had a 'puter crash and lost a day's sales records and, more
imprtantly, payroll data.

I'm mounting the HD in a USB portable unit and putting in the freezer,
hoping to get one last spin. If that don't work, are there any other
good ideas? Otherwise, anybody know what a data recovery vendor costs
and any suggested vendor?

Karl
Well, I've tried the freezing with limitted success, and in Guelph
Ontario there is a data recovery service I have used. Recovery Force,
519-750-3169, 350 Speedvale Ave. Price varies with the job - usually
a couple hundred bucks.

HOWEVER - there IS a program you can use to recover data from a drive
from a company called EaseUS. The data recovery wizard is about 70
clams - and it WORKS (or at least it has for me several times). The
drives were not even identified by the computer bios, but when
attached to a R-Drive III USB adapter, the program found all the files
I needed to get off both drives.

GREAT TOOL!!!!

Good tip. I've used their free partition software with excellent
results.

--
Doctors prescribe medicine of which they know little,
to cure diseases of which they know less,
in human beings of which they know nothing.
--Francois-Marie Arouet Voltaire, about 250 years ago

On 6/14/2012 8:44 PM, wrote:

Michael, wouldn't it be easier and cheaper, and less hassle in the
long run to just replace the Optiplex with a better computer????

Every time I get involved with one of them it turns into "the Dell
from Hell"

It has 4 GB of RAM & a 1 TB HD. I've been replacing bad caps on
multilayer PC boards for decades, and a kit of capacitors is only $12.

The capacitors in the CPU power supply are Oscon 4V 560 uF, and have
a very low failure rate. It's also recommended to replace the PS fan
because of a high failure rate.

I noticed some noise in the video, just before the two blackouts and
the Southbridge power is filtered by the bulging capacitors. I used to
do work like this on 17 layer boards for Telemetry systems at the
factory. My favorite metal to work with is 63/37, .015" in diameter and
has multiple cores of flux.

On 6/14/2012 11:01 PM, wrote:

The EaseUS is busy restoring an old Seagate that belongs to a customer
- in an hour and a half it has located 34000 picture files - has
another 2 1/2 hours or so to go.
Another drive that was totally unaccessible through windows on a
computer. Running EaseUS on a windows machine it pops up after about
half an hour.


Have you ever used Clonezilla? I recently replace two small hard
drives for a local business and used it to copy an 80 & a 160 GB drive
to new 500 GB drives. For those that aren't familiar with it, it is a
group of HD utilites thar run under Linux. You download the .ISO and
burn it to a CDROM with a program like 'Deep Burn' Not all CD burning
software will produce bootable CDROMs. Both programs are free and
availible online. If you need and can't find them, let me know and I'll
locate the sites again.

On Fri, 15 Jun 2012 22:27:08 -0400, "Michael A. Terrell"
wrote:

On 6/14/2012 8:44 PM, wrote:

Michael, wouldn't it be easier and cheaper, and less hassle in the
long run to just replace the Optiplex with a better computer????

Every time I get involved with one of them it turns into "the Dell
from Hell"

It has 4 GB of RAM & a 1 TB HD. I've been replacing bad caps on
multilayer PC boards for decades, and a kit of capacitors is only $12.

The capacitors in the CPU power supply are Oscon 4V 560 uF, and have
a very low failure rate. It's also recommended to replace the PS fan
because of a high failure rate.

I noticed some noise in the video, just before the two blackouts and
the Southbridge power is filtered by the bulging capacitors. I used to
do work like this on 17 layer boards for Telemetry systems at the
factory. My favorite metal to work with is 63/37, .015" in diameter and
has multiple cores of flux.
Sounds like the Ersin Multicore SN63 that I prefer as well. Mine is
a bit thicker - 22 ga, 0.71mm, or about 0.028 inch.

I've replaced a lot of those caps as well, on motherboards and
monitors. And I've lubricated and repaired many Power supply fans -
even though you can buy replacement power supplies for not much more
than a good fan. I just find the Dell's generally more trouble than
they are worth - compared to the higher end Acers and Lenovos I
generally work with.

Michael A. Terrell wrote:
On 6/14/2012 8:44 PM, wrote:
Michael, wouldn't it be easier and cheaper, and less hassle in the
long run to just replace the Optiplex with a better computer????

Every time I get involved with one of them it turns into "the Dell
from Hell"

It has 4 GB of RAM & a 1 TB HD. I've been replacing bad caps on
multilayer PC boards for decades, and a kit of capacitors is only $12.

The capacitors in the CPU power supply are Oscon 4V 560 uF, and have
a very low failure rate. It's also recommended to replace the PS fan
because of a high failure rate.

I noticed some noise in the video, just before the two blackouts and
the Southbridge power is filtered by the bulging capacitors. I used to
do work like this on 17 layer boards for Telemetry systems at the
factory. My favorite metal to work with is 63/37, .015" in diameter and
has multiple cores of flux.


Ahh multilayer board repairs... Brings back nightmares of training
classes....

Here take this 10 level board that I just drilled 10 holes through and
fix it....

Where are you getting the cap kits? I have a 620 myself and haven't
really bothered to look around yet.

--
Steve W.

On 6/15/2012 11:25 PM, wrote:

Sounds like the Ersin Multicore SN63 that I prefer as well. Mine is
a bit thicker - 22 ga, 0.71mm, or about 0.028 inch.

I've replaced a lot of those caps as well, on motherboards and
monitors. And I've lubricated and repaired many Power supply fans -
even though you can buy replacement power supplies for not much more
than a good fan. I just find the Dell's generally more trouble than
they are worth - compared to the higher end Acers and Lenovos I
generally work with.


I can afford to repair this computer, I can't afford a new one. My
last new computer was bought in 2000, before I was laid off, and put on
disability. Too many repairs are needed around the house to waste money
on another computer. Most of the software I use won't run under Vista,
7 or 8. Some is picky about running under XP.

The 275 watt power supply for the GX620 is a custom form factor for
the SFF case. http://www.ebay.com/itm/270998869964 That is a used
supply, new supplies start at $60.

On 6/16/2012 1:50 AM, Steve W. wrote:

Ahh multilayer board repairs... Brings back nightmares of training
classes....


I did them on a daily basis for over four years, at Microdyne.
Rework took too long to turn around boards, so I did my own.


Here take this 10 level board that I just drilled 10 holes through and
fix it....


Why do you want to scrap an entire run of boards, just because the
board vendor left out the layer with the +/- 12 volt rails? Opamps
don't work well without power.


Where are you getting the cap kits? I have a 620 myself and haven't
really bothered to look around yet.


http://thecapking.com/gx620sff.html has the small form factor kit for
$12. They alos sell the individual caps, if yours is different. You
can buy small quantities of Panasonic FM or Rubycon MBZ series on Ebay.

On Sat, 16 Jun 2012 11:59:45 -0400, "Michael A. Terrell"
wrote:

On 6/15/2012 11:25 PM, wrote:

Sounds like the Ersin Multicore SN63 that I prefer as well. Mine is
a bit thicker - 22 ga, 0.71mm, or about 0.028 inch.

I've replaced a lot of those caps as well, on motherboards and
monitors. And I've lubricated and repaired many Power supply fans -
even though you can buy replacement power supplies for not much more
than a good fan. I just find the Dell's generally more trouble than
they are worth - compared to the higher end Acers and Lenovos I
generally work with.


I can afford to repair this computer, I can't afford a new one. My
last new computer was bought in 2000, before I was laid off, and put on
disability. Too many repairs are needed around the house to waste money
on another computer. Most of the software I use won't run under Vista,
7 or 8. Some is picky about running under XP.

The 275 watt power supply for the GX620 is a custom form factor for
the SFF case. http://www.ebay.com/itm/270998869964 That is a used
supply, new supplies start at $60.
That's what "off lease" computers are good for. 3 year old Lenovo
Think Centers with Core Duo processors and XP Pro anywhere from $69 to
$100 in the SFF case, About $10 more for ATX form. P4 version SFF for
about $50.
Off lease Acers are a bit harder to come by, and off lease HP and Dell
are everywhere, but I don't bother with them.

Michael A. Terrell wrote:
On 6/16/2012 1:50 AM, Steve W. wrote:
Ahh multilayer board repairs... Brings back nightmares of training
classes....


I did them on a daily basis for over four years, at Microdyne.
Rework took too long to turn around boards, so I did my own.


Here take this 10 level board that I just drilled 10 holes through and
fix it....


Why do you want to scrap an entire run of boards, just because the
board vendor left out the layer with the +/- 12 volt rails? Opamps
don't work well without power.

That wasn't the problem usually. Most of the repair I did was on board
damage, either mechanical issues (like OOPs that screw was just a bit
long, or electrical damage do to component failures burning traces
inside the board.



Where are you getting the cap kits? I have a 620 myself and haven't
really bothered to look around yet.


http://thecapking.com/gx620sff.html has the small form factor kit for
$12. They alos sell the individual caps, if yours is different. You
can buy small quantities of Panasonic FM or Rubycon MBZ series on Ebay.

OK, didn't pay attention to folks making kits. I buy caps in bulk then
just grab the ones I need.
Mine is in the tower case but still runs pretty warm.

--
Steve W.

On 6/17/2012 1:05 AM, Steve W. wrote:

That wasn't the problem usually. Most of the repair I did was on board
damage, either mechanical issues (like OOPs that screw was just a bit
long, or electrical damage do to component failures burning traces
inside the board.


A board like that would be scrapped at the factory. They didn't
like ECOs that required jumpers, and only did it rarely.


Where are you getting the cap kits? I have a 620 myself and haven't
really bothered to look around yet.


http://thecapking.com/gx620sff.html has the small form factor kit for
$12. They alos sell the individual caps, if yours is different. You
can buy small quantities of Panasonic FM or Rubycon MBZ series on Ebay.

OK, didn't pay attention to folks making kits. I buy caps in bulk then
just grab the ones I need.
Mine is in the tower case but still runs pretty warm.


I buy bulk from Digikey, and am putting a small order together,
right now. I was ready to order when the Optiplex died, and all the
details are on it's SATA hard drive so I'm going to pull it and put it
into an external housing to see if it survived. Luckily, I still have
one on hand.

The drives run very hot in the smaller cases, due to limited airflow.
The other problem is the low profile slots. I needed a couple extra
USB ports for things that didn't like hubs so I had to buy them on Ebay,
then wait for a slow boat from China to get them. The first order was
canceled & refunded, because the entire production run was defective.
Luckily, the next run was OK.

On Thu, 14 Jun 2012 09:41:18 -0500, Karl Townsend
wrote:

On Thu, 14 Jun 2012 05:31:22 -0700, Larry Jaques
wrote:

On Thu, 14 Jun 2012 05:25:04 -0500, Karl Townsend
wrote:

We had a 'puter crash and lost a day's sales records and, more
imprtantly, payroll data.

I'm mounting the HD in a USB portable unit and putting in the freezer,
hoping to get one last spin.

Has that worked for you before?!


If that don't work, are there any other
good ideas? Otherwise, anybody know what a data recovery vendor costs
and any suggested vendor?

A local guy gets from $129-600 for recovery, depending on size and
importance of recovery. I guess he tries harder and longer on the
important stuff.

JOY, stuck dying drive in a USB portable case, then in freezer. it
fired up and i copied just a few K of data. A minute later i heard the
whirring squeak and it breathed its last gasp.

A fella on RCM said a cold drive will run a bit, sometimes.

Karl

If the information is THAT mission critical, a desktop class machine
isn't going to do it alone, even with mirrored drives - you need to go
to something far more robust like an AIX Unix based machine running a
Journaled File System.

The Data Recovery Services that tear the dead hard drive down in a
Clean Room and put the platters in a good donor drive to get the
information off are going to charge you over a grand for that service
- sometimes several grand, and no guarantees of success.

For one day's sales data you might be better off just doing the
reconstruction the hard way, from the paper timecards, the Truck
shipping Bills Of Lading and UPS shipment records, and the paper
copies of the day's invoices. You *do* make paper copies for just
this reason, right?

If you don't, see what you can recover from the Cloud and the
customers who placed orders that day. Your e-mails and other things
will still be on the servers and can be rebuilt.

Dig the carbons out of the trash can and hold them up to the light.
Get out the cash register journal tape and glean what you can from
that - at least you can get the totals, and back-figure sales from
that.

Call the credit card clearinghouse and get copies of everything they
did before they do the 72-hour purge to prevent ID Theft. It's like a
Jigsaw Puzzle, once the pattern emerges it'll all fall into place.

Get started now, then you can check all the source info you collected
against the other pieces of the puzzle and/or against the hard drive
contents if they do get it back.

There are a few customers who will (given that option) say "No, we
only ordered one dozen bushels yesterday, not one gross!" - but those
are the kinds of customers you really didn't want to do business with
anyway. Lose their phone number, and develop amnesia if they come
back looking for another fantastic deal like that.

The honest ones will help you get the records rebuilt and make things
right with you even if you can't prove it from your end.

-- Bruce --