[rgreen4]

It was a Seagate 500GB. It was the first Seagate I have lost in a decade. Now anyone can have a QC problem, especially with the number they put out, it's how they handle it. Not wanting to operate my NAS with only a single drive, I went down to my local BB and bought and installed a matching drive. I then filed for a RMA on the failed drive, sent it off to Seagate. I got confirmation that they had received it about 4 days later, and they were beginning the evaluation of the drive. Twenty four hours later I got notice that a replacement drive was on its way to me, and about 3 days later it arrived, but it was a 750GB, brand new in the box.

I use it as a backup to my NAS. I back it up about once a month, alternating externally attached drives. With my drives scattered among 5 PC's and the NAS, I have a lot of drives, and the vast majority are Seagates. On top of the fact that I like their drives, their model nomenclature makes sense to me and I like their Seatools and DiscWizard programs. My second choice is WD, I have several Passport external drives, and two internal drives I got when they were on sale (not yet initialized) and I have bought a couple of Samsung's, but I am not as happy with them. They function OK, but they don't have the testing and initialization programs that Seagate and WD do.

[BAMT]

Yes, HD and HDD mean the same thing. Also, that link wasn't supposed to be there; I typed F1 in brackets and that appeared.
In the BIOS, navigate screens with the left and right arrow keys, and items with up/down arrow keys. The selected item will be in a different color then the rest, typically white. Just look around for the setting, select, and hit enter to change it. If enter does not work, try plus or minus.

[rgreen4]

You are correct, you acces the BIOS Setup by pressing F1 on almost all HP/Compaqs. If you have the Phoenix - Award BIOS as my HP m7690y does, the first screen is the main screen and had date and time settings, drive specifications and lists the memory specs in a grayed out area at the bottom. Across the top are screen headings, and move the hightlight with the right/left cursor keys. Moving once screen to the right to advanced, bring up a good number of setting options. The first three lines on mine are grayed out CPU specs, but then it gets into the options.

Toward the bottom you will see a line that says Onboard LAN and on the right side you will see Enabled]. Moving the cursor down to that, with bring up explanations on the right hand side that are very criptic and useless. Mine says Enter to Enable or Disable. Now this is the actual RJ-45 wired network connection. LAN is Local Area Network. Right below that is Onboard LAN Boot ROM and I have mine disabled. This is the ROM that allows a signal coming in from the ethernet or LAN port (activated above) to initialize the boot of the machine. I have it off on all of mine. After changing, Now after changing, you can exit and save by hitting F10 and then Yes, or you can slide the top menu selection over to Exit, but I prefer the F10 as its faster.

Now, to the restore discs. Fifteen CD's is a lot, but when I generated the restore discs from my MCE machine it was 4 DVD's plus a CD. I have no idea why it took so much, except for the fact that it is not the original compressed installation files you are dealing with, but a software image. Considering the fact that 1 DVD = 6.7 CD's if I had used CD's instead of DVD's, it would have probably taken 25 or so CD's for my XP Media Center Edition restore image. Now HP still lists the [recovery discs in their driver and program download page. It will cost about $25 with shipping. Of course this just get's you back where you started from as if the PC had just been taken out of the box. The same thing with the set you burned. Then you get to remove all the bloatware and re-install all the programs and the restore all your data.

Now, you see why I like cloning. Cloning makes an exact copy of your drive, just as it is, recovery partition and all. Now your current drive is listed as a 120GB SATAII drive (3.0 GB/S transfer), but you can put any size of SATA drive in there you want, from a 160GB to a 1TB monster. The 120GB size is an obsolete size for a desktop, the common sized now are 80GB, 160GB, 250GB, 320GB, 500GB, 750TB, 1Terrabyte. Here is a sample of the 160 GB drives listed on Newegg. When reviewing the ratings of the WD and Seagate drives, the Seagate is a newer drive replacing the older ST3160812AS with the newer thinner format. This drive is slightly thinner than the old drives, but I have several of these in service and they do well.

I have mentioned cloning. Here is a document|d-1276] explaining in a little more detail. If your drive is OK as far as data integrity is concerned and that seems to be the case, then the additonal cost of [Acronis to me would be well worth it. When reading the reviews, keep in mind the negative ones are talking about making partitions and storing images of the hard drive. That I do not do and do not recommend. A clone is an exact image of one drive onto another as explained in the doc. I have even used the Acronis boot disc to clone a Ubuntu HD to another. You can't install Acronis on Linux, but it will clone it.

You asked about HD and HDD. The terms HD (Hard Drive) and HDD (Hard Disc Drive) are interchangeable. HDD is the older term, and HD just drops the word disc.

[rgreen4]

Unfortunately you cannot use paranthesis, curly brackets, square brackets or back slashes in the editor of the community. They apparently have specific functions and things get wierd when you do.

[coastie65]

Hi, There are two "Safe things you can try. First as other s have suggested go into BIOS and make sure that the HD is enabled. The second thing youmay try, is two shut down the computer and unplug the power cord. Open it up and remove the battery on the Motherboard. Wait a couple of minutes and then replace the battery. This will reset the BIOS to the original settings. Do not panic at any messages you may see a restart, just continue to press enter at each statement until it starts to boot. It will tell you that your clock & calendar are no longer set and that sort of thing and no big deal. coastie65

[WAPPRECYCLER]

Per the information provided by BAMT and you, I entered the BIOS and found Onboard LAN which was/is Enabled. Onboard LAN Boot was/is Disabled. So I made no changes and exited.

I also take it that you disagree with [~74310] (in Post 13) about the 15 CD's probably not working but, should they not work, HP can provide a Recovery Disc (Set) for a price. You appear to suggest that I purchase an installable HD rather than an external HD and clone my existing drive into the purchased drive. Do I make the clone and store it to replace my working drive or do I install it? I need to study up on the cloning to get a better idea of what you have suggested.

@ coastie65 - I will keep your suggestion of removing the Motherboard battery in mind, should simply pulling the plug and waiting a few minutes before replacing it fail.

[alchav21]

Wapprecycler, even if your 15 Discs do work, you are back to the same thing you have now. I have never used Images, but I guess they are good if you make a good one. Making an Image of a sick computer you still have a sick computer. I fix and make computers all the time, and I always like clean loads. I made my own Recovery Discs for both Windows XP Home and Pro just like an article here on PC Magazine, and then I just use the Product Key, and load the Data and Programs. This method has worked well for me and you have a solid running Machine with no extra junk Programs. You do have to understand Computers and Hardware because you have to work with Device Manager to finish installing some Drivers.



Anyway, if your Computer is running fairly well except for that Boot Failure, just make sure your Data is Backed Up and wait till your Computer fails. Then you can decide on a Clean Load or Clone.

[rgreen4]

Yes, I disagree with the word "probably". While the 15 CD set of "recovery" disks may not work, until you try them, there is no reason to believe that they will not. And, while there may not be anything wrong with you current HD, it could simply be a matter of the wake up from hibernation getting out of sequence once in a while. The wake-up is based on a sequence of events, and if your system starts the call to restore you session from the one stored on the HD, and the HD is not quite ready, then you have a system error.

Here is the scenario -
* At the current time, you can order a recovery disc set from HP, but once they are gone, they are gone, they will not make more.

* At the current time, you can order from online sources, new OEM copies of XP Home for $85 to $90, either with SP2 or SP3 (slightly higher) and do a very good clean install, but once they are gone, they are gone, there will be no more.

* At the current time you can order a new HD, cloning software and do a clone of your current drive in it's current state. It may in fact be slightly flawed, or not. But if it is hardware not software, once the drive fails you cannot clone it.

Here are your choices:

* The cheapest route is to do nothing, and put your trust in the set of recovery discs that you burned. Sometime in the future, if the current HD fails, they you would use them to install the original factory image on the HD, reinstall all your programs, and then restore your data from the backup that you of course kept current.

* Next in line would be to order the set of recovery discs from HP as an insurance policy, JIC the set you burned has a glitch that prevents you from restoring the original factory image. But, the factory set would still restore the original factory image after which you would have to reinstall your programs and then restore your data from the backup that you kept current.

The next two choices are a push, as far as cost is concerned, for they are about the same.


* You could order an OEM copy of either SP2 or SP3 (SP3 would require less of an update), install it, hope it has the drivers for the onboard LAN, connect to the HP website, download all the drivers, reinstall all the programs and restore your data from the backup you kept current.


* You could order a new HD, cloning software, install the drive, install the software, create the clone, and then run off of the cloned drive. If the episode of failure to wake from hibernation never occurs again, you know that the original drive, may be having problems. If it does, you know it may be a software issue.


This is what makes an intermittent problem so exasperating. You take an action, and you don't know if you've fixed it or not. If it does not re-occur, have you fixed it? May not, after a while, you are forced to the unproven conclusion that you have. You are at the unfortunate postion that if you wait, you will have fewer options. Certainly, it may be prudent to order the set of recovey discs from HP. I do not know what they charge after the fact, but I do know that they charge $19 when ordered with a new machine. They may be the same after the fact with delivery added on.

[BAMT]

If you do choose to clone your hard disk, however, I strongly suggest using Clonezilla. It is very easy to use and it's free.