[Helixhorned]

Helixhorned, on 10 January 2015 - 08:57 AM, said:

Gotta follow the keyboard layout trail, I guess.

Started EDuke32 r4887 synthesis build and quit immediately again. Since it's from a (git for Windows) bash shell, it looks as if the process did not exit and hangs. Pressed Ctrl-Alt-Del to enter the task manager. Won't do. Afterwards, all of Windows begins behaving strangely. Basically, as if all processes were suspended; none would react. A few moments later a blue screen appears. Booting with the data hard drive plugged in wouldn't work any more.

May or may not be related to the recent reports of at-exit crashes. To my knowledge, my Windows 7 installation was relatively clean and up-to-date. Looks like I'll need a professional disk recovery service; no way of saying how big the damage is.

Anyhow... maybe a decent piece of advice is that when your OS starts to behave strangely, the best thing to do is to push RESET as fast as possible? (I'm not a professional disk recovery service, so take this with a grain of salt.)

[Fox]

I am no expert, but I will say that it's very unlikely that the OS wrecked your hard drive. Chances are that your OS started to behave strangely because the hard drive was melting. From my personal experience, whenever one of my hard drive was broken all of a sudden, it was due to physical damage.

[Daedolon]

Man that's some shit luck. I hope you can recover everything of importance.

Sounds just like a bad read/write incident with a worn HDD. If it's something actual to do with EDuke32, I doubt it, but that would pretty bad too.

[Zaxtor]

How old is your HD?
What is the HD brand?

[blizzart]

I had something similar with a Seagate HDD years ago. The harddrive wasn´t recognized from one day to another. Some problems with some of the HDD´s components were the reason for this. Actually a whole series of this Seagate HDD had that problem.

[supergoofy]

Use CrystalDiskInfo to monitor your ssd/hdd health.
http://crystalmark.i...ad/index-e.html

The hdd failure was a coincidence. It could happen with a file transfer of a big file or when playing a game or just browsing the internet or even when the pc idle.

Monitoring the sdd/hdd health and making backups is the only way to protect yourself.

Even if CrystalDiskInfo reports 100% health on the sdd/hdd, you can never be sure. Failures happen suddenly without a reason.

[Zaxtor]

Never heard of a software failing a HD like that.
Only viruses or anything causing a head crash would cause it to fail.

Strong magnetic field could kill HD.
neodymium magnets etc. I don't think is ur issues.

Power surge and no power bar could be a cause.
Mostly your motherboard and or fuse inside the power supply box would go before it reaches the HD.


Aging HD can be the cause.
typical HD lasts 5-8 years avg.
Sometime can reach >10 years.


Ways to recover the stuff on a dead HD is those expensive thing where people extract the shit from a dead HD.
Doesn't always guarantee would be a success.

I have 2 HD.
I put duke on more than 1 HD.
if 1 fails, I still have on other HD.

[TerminX]

Renamed the thread because I don't want newbies to think open source game ports actually destroy hardware in any way.

Sorry about your hard drive, Helix. I can't remember the last time I had a disk fail like that--I don't think it has happened to me since I began actively cooling my drives (with fans) about a decade ago--but it sucks big time.

[Kathy]

Helixhorned, on 10 January 2015 - 10:48 AM, said:

Anyhow... maybe a decent piece of advice is that when your OS starts to behave strangely, the best thing to do is to push RESET as fast as possible? (I'm not a professional disk recovery service, so take this with a grain of salt.)

If you think this is disk related then the proper way is to power off the computer. Then, if know what you're doing, make a raw(bit-by-bit) image of said hdd and work with it to recover your files. If you don't - give it to someone who knows.

Of course, it might not be disk-related. But if you don't know and have lots of info on disk you can't afford to loose, it's better not to diagnose the disk if it's broken or not. But if you don't care then you can diagnose the disk with various utilities(I use mhdd) from UBCD or similar diag-disks.

P.S. It's too late for you, but to everyone else I say - "Backup, backup and backup".

[oasiz]

I would use another installation and USB to SATA adapters to recover data.

Do not use the drive even if it boots up in this case, just focus on getting stuff out from there once you are at this point.
There are dozens of adapters on the market that do this and it's really simple to plug in a drive.

If the drive is not recognized at all and insists on making scary noises, bad thing.
If so, your best option is to use professional data recovery and those can cost.
What they usually do is that they replace "just the needed" faulty components to get data out of there.

I would try to get data out of there first as recovery services can cost a lot.

[TerminX]

Also consider the possibility that one of your SATA ports took a dump.

[Lunick]

Strangest EDuke32 mod I have ever seen.

(I had a similar experience many years ago with a Windows XP computer just suddenly dying)

[oasiz]

Quote

Also consider the possibility that one of your SATA ports took a dump.

^ This, Check the cabling. Now that TX mentions it, I've had similar issues in the past with my video machine. I had four drives on it and it constantly kept dropping one out at random.
Turned out that the SATA cable was just barely seated.

So proper re-plugging or using another port is definately worth checking.