Fujitsu Hard Drive Phase

Fujitsu Hard Drive Click

Mostly a clicking noise indicates the Read/Write arm moving towards the outside of the platter and then beeing repelled by some kind of hardware failure, causing the arm to be shot back to the center of the platter. Because this movement is perpetual, the Drive does not get any chance to read and/or write.

The Phasing noise is caused by the motor, which, when the hard drive is healthy, commonly spins the platters at 5400- 7200 revolutions per minute (rpm). When the read/write arm is stuck to the platter, the motor doesn’t have the opportunity to spin. The motor tries to shake the blockage off by rapidly changing the spinning direction. The hard drive tries to do this 3 times until it starts to do the phasing noise to indicate the operator that there is something wrong with the motor.

In both cases, recovery IS POSSIBLE. Important is, not to open or further damage the device by smashing, shoving, kicking, hitting, lighting it on fire, hammer or sitting on the drive. A company called drive savers is specialized in recovering a plethora of Hard Drives, but because a professional recovery is very expensive, i would like to refer to a earlier article about recoveries. Always back up!

Of course, failure sounds vary from manufacturer to manufacturer, so you click (if you unfortunately have one) may sound different. This should you give you a idea of the sound though…

Have a nice day,

Nik (computec)

Got Questions? I’ve got answers! Write a comment with your question or send an email to the address below. Due to spam protection, you will have to click on the three dots in the address. You will then be asked to solve a captcha. Afterward you will retrieve my address.

comp…@askcomputec.com

Usually I would animate those People to think about it again, and mostly they remember what their password was. In all other cases, I went over to their house and booted in Safe mode, to get into the Admin account, that was not password protected.

Today I stumbled upon this Linux LiveCD Distro called “Ophcrack”, which Is available for free in the Internet. The usage is simple: You pop in the CD and let it boot from the Disk, then it will automatically load all necessary files, and will start the cracking process automatically.

It will scan your Hard drive for LM Hashes (format in which Windows stores passwords) and will put them through a rainbow table (just wiki that… its too complicated to explain). This procedure returns a decrypted password, that can be used for logging onto the system.

As you know, I am a person of curious nature, so I just HAD to try this in real life. I downloaded the ISO, burned it, and stuck it in my laptop. I booted up a virtual Windows XP using Virtual Box and set up some user accounts and passwords. One was only characters, the other one was alphanumeric, and another one was alphanumeric with upper and lowercase characters. All of them were cracked within 9 Minutes. Now that was indeed scary.

Then i tried this: &^!(%HPSam18. This password failed, because the version you can download is a “SE” version, which only allows to crack alphanumeric passwords. The full version can be bought at Objectif Sécurité; the company of the creator of this great piece of software.

Well, the next time you loose your password, make sure to have a disk of Ophcrack in your CD pouch, so that you can log in as quick as possible again.

Take care,

Nik (computec)

You got Questions? I got answers!

Feel free to leave a comment or write me an email. Please click the three dots in my email address below to solve a captcha and retrieve my address.

comp…@askcomputec.com

All this unnecessary stuff clogs up the computers of the world, so the next time you Update, please check what exactly you are downloading before you feed your computer with the zeros and ones it doesn’t  need.

One important fact: The Updates are mostly important bug fixes which you should get. Just don’t get the extra pizazz you do NOT need.

You got Questions? I got answers! Email me to computec@<mydomainname>.com

(The <mydomainname> is  a security feature, which prevents spam bots from reading my email address. If you still don’t know where to send the mail to, leave a comment)

I changed my Plan: Blog updates will be posted on the weekend, because I’m mostly busy on workdays.

Yours Sincerely,

Nik  (computec)

For some people, backing up is a daily routine that is executed by an application without noticing, but for the other people it is hard work, because they don’t know how to get the proper software, or they don’t know that there are tools which help with this simple process.

Backing up is very important, because we have a lot of irreplaceable Media on our computers like family pictures, videos etc. Back then, media was published through print (photos) or through magnetic storage devices (VHS). That of course reduced the risk of losing them, because I think a House Fire or intruder is more seldom then a computer virus, which can wipe out the hard drive easily.

Backup Solution 1:

Print all your Pictures, burn your music to disks and publish all your videos on DVD.

(9,000 Pictures, 100 Hours of Music, and 10 Hours of Film)

Cost: 1170$ for Photos (@ 13 cents per picture) 5$ for DVD (1$ per empty DVD) and 1350$ for the music (15 $ per 50 Cake box)

That’s a total of 2525$ and not a good Idea

Backup Solution 2:

Get a 1 TB (1 Terabyte = 1024 GB), and back up all your data on it with software like Norton Ghost, or get a all in one solution called Norton 360. It starts backing up at a given time (@ night) or you can set it up, so it starts backing up, when your computer is not in use. If you’re using a Mac, you can easily set up Time Machine, an easy to use feature of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard.

Cost: 99$ for an external 1TB drive and another optional 40$ for software.

I bet 139$ is better than paying 2525$. What do you think?

But also remember: The 1TB hard drive CAN fail. Then your data is also gone. Put the files you really NEED on disks and put them in special containers. Also make copies of them and bring them to a different place, so in case of a fire your data is still there.

If your Data is lost, and you didn’t back up properly: Don’t complain!

My Dell from Hell

As a home user you can take the same advantage than businesses take from their servers.

Before Integrating a Central Network point, make sure that you aren’t a 100% computer dummy. If you are, I’m sure there is a “Windows Server 2003 for Dummies” book out there so don’t worry. If you can’t read (which I can assume you can, because you’re reading this), just contact a local geek.

The Second step is to make sure, if your operating systems are compatible with Domains. Incompatible Versions of Windows usually contain a “Home” or “Basic” at the end. You want to actually find a Business OS, which is easily integrated into a Server Environment.

The Third step is to make sure if you have everything you need, like LAN cables and Network Switches. Mostly that is the case because you already have a existing Internet Connection, which is normally distributed though these given components.

The Fourth step is to buy a server. It doesn’t have to be a Dell Octa-Core-whore; A simple Pentium 4 will do the job BIG TIME. If you are running a lot of applications on the server with remote desktop you will of course need a more powerful machine with a lot of RAM. For a normal household with about 5 people a Dell Optiplex GX270 is perfect. I got mine for about 100 Euros, which is a reasonable price for a Sturdy, easy to maintain nicely expandable office machine with RISER CARDS (!). If you are a octa-mom, you and your family need a faster server. I would recommend a Dell poweredge or IBM xSeries 1 Unit thick Rack Server.

The Fifth step is to decide your Storage option. Internal Hard drives are not to recommend, because the RAID options on a desktop machines are fairly poor. However, a company called Data Robotics produces a great product called Drobo, which can hold up to 16 TB as the size of Single Storage Volumes increases. 4 Hard drive Bays are available and Hot-Pluggable, that allows the user to exchange the storage device at ANY given time. The company developed a System called “BeyondRAID” which means complete data redundancy when a harddrive fails. Just buy a new HDD and put it in the slot of the failed HDD. The Drobo will automatically restore the data on the broken Disk. Your family vacation pictures are saved!

The bad part is the price of the Drobo which is currently at 500$ WITHOUT Harddrives.

Link: Drobo

Drobo

The Sixth step towards a centralized Network is to choose the right Operating System. I usually recommend Windows Server 2003 Enterprise, but this OS is very expensive. You can also choose a Linux OS, but I cannot help you with that, because the world of Linux is very different than a Windows environment. The integration with Windows is very seamless and is mostly OOTB  (out of the box) without any 3rd party apps, on which you have to rely on a Linux Server.

The Seventh Step is setting everything up the way you want to have it. This is the part, which is individual from every network to another, so im not going to dive into this at the moment.

The Eighth step is enjoying and being proud of what you have made. See guests being stunned by your system, when they can log in on every computer in your house with their own user name and password. See their jaws drop when they see your Server room (especially when you are a octa-mom and you got that power edge). Just relax now and let the system maintain itself.

The User administration of the Windows Sever family is really likable: Your Kids didn’t behave, and they looked at porn in the internet? Right click their User name and lock their account. Voila! Your kids will be quite pissed, but you will love your server…

In addition you can lock certain features of Windows from the server, like the command line prompt and the task manager.

Everything is just so easy with a server in your home, you’ll first notice the benefits when you have one.

Any questions left? Ask them in a comment or send an email to computec@askcomputec.com

1: First Official Announcement

The name “Microsoft” was mentioned the first time in a Letter from Bill Gates to his Co-Founder Paul Allen on 11/29 1975. The Name was written”Micro-Soft”, wich was later than registred a Trademark in the year 1976.

2: iPod and Google are forbidden!

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer forces his children to use Microsoft Products. Once in a Interview with him from CNN he said to the question, if he would use a iPod:

“No, I do not. Nor do my children. My children–in many dimensions they’re as poorly behaved as many other children, but at least on this dimension I’ve got my kids brainwashed: You don’t use Google, and you don’t use an iPod.”

3: Microsoft in Numbers

Microsoft employs 95.828 Individuals Worldwide. The average Age of these People is 37 Years. 74,7 % of the Employees in the US are men. Microsoft owns 88 properties worldwide with a size of 1.121.739,83 square meters.

4: Exclusively for the Mac

Office was first made for the Macintosh platform in the year 1989. It was available on Floppy and CD-ROM.

The Windows editions Word, Exel and Powerpoint hit the market one year later than the MAC OS Version in the year 1990.

5: Premium Start up Sounds

The Start up sound for Windows 95 was composed by the ambient music Componist Brian Eno, who utilized a Macintosh Computer to create this little piece of Music. The Sounds for Windows Vista were made by Robert Fripp, Ex Guitar Player of the Band “King Crimson”.

6: Microsoft in Numbers II

The Microsoft Catering Service is responsible for the Food, which daily serves about 2.220 Slices of Pizza  to the MS employees. Yearly they deliver 4 Million cartons of milk, 7 Million Bottles of Water an 2 Million Teabags.

7: Over 12.000 Days at Microsoft

Bill Gates worked form the 4th of April 1975 until the 27th of June 2008 at Microsoft, his Self-Founded Corp.. That is (including weekends and vacation) 12.139 Days.

8: Windows’s Grandpa

The first Operation System Microsoft coded was Xenix, wich appears to be a Unix Distro, that rolled out on the 24th of August in the year of 1980. Bill Gates wanted that this OS is the Standard on every PC, but that didn’t happen, becuase Xenix required a Hard Disk and 256 kb of RAM. IBM Pc’s had 64 Kb Maximum, and Hard Dirves were very expensive (several thousand Dollars).

9: Save Button with a error

The “Save” Pictogram in the MS Office versions up to 2003 had a little Problem:

The cut out on the bottom of the Diskette was on the wrong side.

10: 16 Billion Entries per Excel 2007 Table

In a Excel 2007 Table, there are 16.000 Possible Columns and 1 Million possible Rows, that makes a total of 16.000.000.000 Entries

You can do alot with these old 400 MHz machines, so don’t throw them away! For example: You can use a old machine as a NAS with the free OS called “FreeNAS”, which is easily administered through a WebUI. It supports CIFS (samba), FTP, NFS, AFP, RSYNC, iSCSI protocols, S.M.A.R.T., local user authentication, Software RAID (0,1,5), and Active Directory. The best thing is, that the OS only takes up 32 MB’s on your HDD or CF card, so you have plenty of space left for the Data the machine was set up for. Link: http://www.freenas.org

Hardware firewalls are more powerful than software firewalls, not only the Professionals say that. More and more home users have got interest in running a safe network to protect their very important data. A team has developed another OS, that runs very smooth on older machines. The only Extra you need, to run a Hardware Firewall, is a secondary NIC.

You install the Linux Distro called “IPCop”, and start configuring your new Firewall through your favorite Web browser on ANY remote machine in your network.

Link: http://www.ipcop.org

Give your old friend a new life as Server or Protector instead of throwing him into a landfill or sending him to India, where the old computer chips pollute the Atmosphere. It doesn’t cost you anything to Install the NAS software on the HDD, but it does cost you something to get that Buffalo TeraStation you always wanted. To be honest, the TeraStation looks prettier, but the inner values count, not the outer shell.

Of course there is more you can do with the old pile of scrap sitting in your storage room: Just Google “what to do with old computer” , and you will see, how you can enrich your network with the machines, you were going to bring to the Dump next week (I know that you were saying that last year already)….

What Ideas did you come up with? Please send me an E-Mail to computec@askcomputec.com , because the Comment feature is currently defective.  Im working on it. (Comments are fixed)

I tried the experiment: I took a 2006 AMD Athlon XP 2400+ Machine with 1024 MB DDR2 Ram and a Nvidia GForce FX 5600  and installed windows 7 on it. After getting all the drivers on the machine, i was surprised: It was almost as fast as it was on Win. XP! Very strange is, that the flip 3D runs smoother than on my 2 Ghz Dual Core-Whore….. In general I like to see improvements in speed on the windows platform. When you look across the windows time line, you’ll notice, that the OS’ses got more and more “resource hoggish”. Good that MS finally acknowledged to remove the extra ballast from their OS. In addition the explorer (thats the main process, that runs in the background, which controls  major features such as the GUI and File browsing) was re-written, because a lot of Vista costumers (including me) have had tons of problems with sudden crashing of this certain process.

Another Milestone of MS’ses history was, that they released their product to the public for BETA testing. In my opinion this step was really necessary to get the bad image of Vista out of the peoples minds.

Fact: I will definitely get a copy of Windows 7 for my notebook computer (the dual-core-whore), but within this year i will  change my Main OS to Mac OS X, so this Windows 7 Hype will not affect me too much.

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