Posts by wiredcanyon94

Sam Peterson6 said:Thanks for being patient and understanding. Honestly, I’m not just going to toss it out, though—that part is actually a bit harder for me to figure out.

Don't throw it away. Everything can be useful for something. It could even work as a digital picture frame.
Just put it on a shelf and set it up to cycle through photos from your family albums every few minutes (or hours?).

Karen Brown57 said:Thanks for checking in. I tried pretty much everything under the sun, but nothing brought the sound back... I eventually had to call a repairman. 🙂

Lucky you, having someone to call. Did the tech actually come out to your place? Or did you have to drop the unit off at his shop? Maybe he even fixed it remotely.

Jack Cook7 said:It’s not quite that simple, man.

Look, I won't get too bogged down in the weeds here, but one or more heads can go south and start reading things "wonky." Maybe the media itself is getting worn out—honestly, Windows 10 can be pretty demanding on hardware, so maybe the drive just got beat up in certain spots. Or the servo mechanism is failing... there's a whole laundry list of stuff that causes this kind of mess.

That sound you're hearing?

a) Is it the infamous "click of death"? (If the drive sounds like "click, click, click...", well, I don't even need to tell you what that means). If that's the case, you've got about five minutes on the clock before your data is gone forever. Your best bet is taking it to a pro, but expect a bill anywhere from $1,000 to $1667 plus the cost of a new drive. In the absolute worst-case scenario, they have to pull the platters and swap them into an identical drive, which is a massive headache.

b) If it's more of a rattling noise, you probably had a head or a stepper motor snap. That means the data on that specific side of the disk is basically unreachable. Again, we're talking platter swaps.

c) If it’s "just" a loud buzzing, it means the servo mechanism and the heads are still working, but they're struggling to grab certain bits of data (for a million different reasons) and are repeatedly trying over and over. There might actually be some hope for saving things here.

d) It’s also possible the main motor is dying; usually, you'll hear that heavy buzzing speed up and slow down.

Here’s the golden rule when you're dealing with drive drama like this:

1. Have you run chkdsk C: yet? (You know what that is, right?)

2. Some PCs have a built-in option in the BIOS Setup to check the drive without messing with the actual content. You can run that just to see how many hardware errors you're looking at. You should probably test the SAS/SATA controller and the RAM too, because bad RAM can cause these exact same headaches. The perk here is that it doesn't need the file system; it bypasses it and talks directly to the drive.

3. DO NOT TOUCH THAT DRIVE ANYMORE. Seriously, stop booting from it. Unplug it as your primary drive and set it as a secondary one. If you aren't sure how to do that, grab a USB/SATA adapter—ideally one with its own power supply or a dual USB setup—pop the drive in there, and plug it in as a USB drive (secondary). If you can't figure that out, don't waste any more time; just take it straight to the data recovery pros.

4. Grab a different drive, hook it up as your primary, install Windows 10, and boot from that as your C: drive.

5. In the Disk Manager on your new Windows 10 setup, you should see the secondary drive (your old, busted one) and both of its partitions, though they'll likely have different letters now. If the new drive is C:, then the old C: will become D:, and the old D: will become E:

6. Copy your files over to the new drive. Honestly, Internet Explorer is terrible at these kinds of transfers because it just crashes when it hits a corrupted file. It doesn't have a "retry" option and it won't leave you a log telling you which files failed or how many errors they had so you could try again later. Find yourself a free utility. Windows has robocopy, but that's all command-line/text mode. One of the first free tools that popped up in my search was: https://www.roadkil.net/program.php?ProgramID=29

The other folks mentioned some useful utilities above, too.

Just a heads up: copying this stuff can take hours, or even days, depending on how trashed the drive is.

6. Once you've grabbed everything you can, you'll need to do a full format on the original drive; I mean a long, deep format (which means all your data is gone forever). It's best to do this and resize the partitions right away. This will show you how many errors you're dealing with, though that's not the final count.

It happens all the time where, after multiple formats, the error count keeps changing—it keeps climbing, or sometimes it even drops. That tells you the drive is unstable and it's definitely on its way out.

My advice? Run 4 or 5 long formats to make sure the error count isn't creeping up. That gives you a little peace of mind that the drive, even if it's damaged, is stable. But yeah, it's all super sketchy.

Anything beyond this requires a level of expertise way above yours and most average repair shops or IT guys. Don't try to play hero if you've got a mountain of important data to save.

PS: if you only had about 2GB of free space left on C during the initial install😛articiji, look, it could just be that your C: drive is totally choked out, which is why you can't even get the thing to boot. By default, all your downloads and those pesky browser cache files dump right onto the C: drive. Eventually, that space gets clogged up and ends up taking up way more than just 2GB.

Since the OP hasn't shown up here in about a week, there's a decent chance they're gone for good.
Still, it would be a shame not to say thanks for such an incredibly thorough post. I didn't quote the whole thing since repeating everything feels redundant, but seriously, thanks on behalf of the original poster.

Jack Cook7 said:Man, you can even tackle this if the drive isn't even showing up in the BIOS. I’ve been down that rabbit hole before! One way to fix it is to track down an identical disk and just swap out its board. But honestly? It’s a total headache because even when the part numbers look exactly the same, the actual board versions can be totally different. It's such a gamble.

Yeah, you can pull that same trick with other media too. Same goes for SD cards. Some pros actually recommend buying two identical drives at once specifically for this reason: if one dies, you just grab the board from the spare, slap it on the dead one, and rescue your data.
Not that many people actually bother. I mean, most folks aren't exactly running out to buy two identical copies of everything they own.

Donna Doyle2 said:You always have such a knack for cutting straight to the heart of the matter and laying out exactly what's going on, don't you? It really makes me wonder if the people attacking you just feel like they were somehow "abused" by religion—whether it was forced upon them from the outside or they were lured in by empty promises—and maybe they're still stuck in that painful stage of trying to heal from those old traumas!

I mean, seriously, why on earth would any sane atheist—someone who clearly views God as the absolute bottom of the barrel—ever bother showing up just to insult believers? Is there really any point in all that?

Has there ever been a time when Buddhists, Catholics, Orthodox Christians, Jews, or Muslims weren't constantly clashing or getting under each other's skin? Can you even imagine a world where all these different faiths actually got along without any drama or conflict at all?

I was thinking we could start a thread about some social science PDFs, but let's be honest—would those hotheads who claim to be so rational, skeptical, or objective actually be able to hold a decent conversation without diving straight into insults and hate? I mean, if you want to take a truly scientific approach, don't you think you absolutely have to be able to stay objective and unbiased toward the very phenomenon you're discussing?

Honestly, I don't think all these complaints even make sense, especially since the whole vibe and policy of this Forum are pretty much set against religion—though maybe other faiths could find a way in besides Catholicism! It really makes me wonder, why on earth would believers even bother showing up here in the first place?

Only someone who just got banned from this little corner of the Earth five minutes ago would ask a question like that.

The entire history of the human race is basically just one long series of religious wars. Since we've been around, religious intolerance has been baked into our DNA.
What kind of question is that? Were they conflict-prone? Yeah, they were nothing *but* conflict-prone throughout all of human history. Anyone telling you otherwise is lying.
Or they're just recycling empty clichés. Take Christians, for example; they love to claim they "respect" other faiths. But if someone walked up and introduced themselves as a Satanist, most of them would jump at the chance to crucify them if they could get away with it.

darkcyclist92 said:The three of you... if this is how you handle technical troubleshooting, you're absolutely incompetent.

One of you is just narcissistically parroting my own response while blindly accepting bad sectors like a drunkard; the second is hiding behind useless jargon to lecture a kid who clearly doesn't realize his Seagate is failing; and the third would actually suggest cloning a drive that is practically dead—I'm talking physically scratched by the actuator arm.

Bravo. Truly top-tier work...

Alright, let’s try this again. Hard drives don't have needles. Record players have needles. Drives have heads.

https://hhr.wiki/detial/Disk_read-and-write_head

darkcyclist92 said:Just grab a USB enclosure for that old Hard Drive, slide it inside, and you'll be good to go once you've finished setting up the laptop with the new Hard Drive.

It is highly probable that the read/write head on that old Hard Drive is damaged, so you might actually have to give it a little physical tap to get it spinning when you boot it up, but you should be able to make it work.

Disks don't have needles. There's a different term for that, but whatever.

So, we're at the end of July. You’re telling me these issues started around New Year's Day when you installed your new Windows. And yet, in the seven months since then, you haven't thought to move your data to an external Hard Drive, a thumb drive, or even just some cloud storage?

Then, about ten days ago—if I'm following your timeline correctly—the drive starts making it crystal clear that it's dying. And even then, you still didn't think to back anything up.

Look, my suggestion? Just keep messing around with it until it finally kicks the bucket. Then, once it's officially dead, take that paperweight to a data recovery specialist and let them try to pull your files out. Of course, they’ll charge you an arm and a leg for the privilege.

Alright, jokes aside. You've already been given plenty of advice here on what to do. If I were to add one thing, it'd be this: you could just grab a cheap USB enclosure for the drive. Once you pull the drive out, pop it into the enclosure and see if you can still read it. If you're lucky, it might still work.

That way, you might actually save something before it's too late. Professionals can usually extract data from a dead drive, but they'll charge you enough to buy gold based on how much that drive weighs. Sometimes even more than that.

Robin Hernandez8 said:Alright, thanks for the input, everyone. This isn't some cheap little card either—it's a SanDisk. I just remembered there's supposedly a specific site run by SanDisk for file recovery. That's honestly why I dropped the extra cash on it, just in case I needed a safety net. Anyway, I'm working on it... If I can't get it done myself, I'll probably take it to a pro before I end up making things even worse.

Yeah, taking it to a specialist is probably your best bet. Just be ready to pay the bill.
When I mentioned extremely cheap cards earlier, I was talking about those "fake" ones you see online. Like if you find a 128GB card for five bucks on some random site. Those aren't real cards; they don't actually have 128GB of storage, and once they fail, there's zero chance of getting anything back.

That said, even legitimate, high-end cards die sometimes. It all depends on what actually broke inside. Sometimes a pro can pull data off a "real" card, and sometimes they just can't.

Bottom line: if you haven't tried everything yet and that data is critical, just hand it over to someone who knows what they're doing and hope for the best.

Robin Hernandez8 said:But I can't move them. It won't let me open anything unless I format it first.

So, what you're saying is the card bit the dust and now you're stuck trying to scavenge whatever's left on it.
Depending on what actually died, you might be able to pull some files off using specific recovery software.
There are plenty of options out there. I think I messed around with Recuva once for something similar. Or maybe it was TestDisk. There are others, too.
Your best bet is just to Google "how to recover data from corrupted microSD." You'll get a whole list of tools. Each one works a little differently.

It’s not a guaranteed fix, though. Not always.
One more thing—if that card was one of those dirt-cheap ones you find at a gas station or a dollar store, you might be out of luck. If it was incredibly cheap, the hardware is probably too garbage to even attempt a recovery.

Robin Hernandez8 said:Hey there. I need to format an SD card, but I really don't want to lose any of my files. Can anyone help me out?

Totally. I've got you covered.
First, just move everything off the card onto your computer or some other drive. Once that's done, go ahead and format it. After the formatting is finished, you can just drag all those files right back onto the card.

That’s how you wipe the card clean without actually losing your stuff.

No problem at all!

wiredotter14 said:...

So, the real question is whether the devices on this network will actually be able to talk to one another, or if they’re just going to be stuck sitting on their own isolated access points.

What's your take?

Here’s my two cents. If you set them up to see each other, they’ll see each other. If you configure them to stay isolated, they’ll stay isolated.
It really just comes down to how you configure the hardware.

wiredotter14 said:Thanks for the input, everyone.

I’ve been looking at some PoE switches, and honestly, they aren't breaking the bank.

https://www.amazon.com/switches...m_medium=click

Take this one, for example. $214

I should be able to plug something like this PoE access point into it:
https://www.amazon.com/access-point/...m_medium=click

Now, if I hook up regular access points or routers set to access point mode to that same switch:

https://www.bestbuy.com/access-point/...00mbps-3846211

or

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/p/netgear-nbg660...m_medium=click

will they all end up on the same LAN—basically the same subnet?

Right now, I’ve just got a basic Netgear AP in my room plugged via Ethernet into the main router from my ISP, and the LAN I connect to is named the exact same thing as the WiFi I configured on that AP.

How do I make sure all the Ethernet ports stay on the same LAN across multiple devices?
And if I use the same SSID for all these WiFi networks, will my devices (like a phone or laptop) know how to jump between them seamlessly, or am I better off giving each floor its own network name?

You just configure all the devices to be on the same network. Basically, they need to share the same subnet mask and the same address "network portion."
Honestly, it might be easier to have someone set this up for you. Or, have someone do the initial heavy lifting so you can see how it works, then you can take over once you get the hang of it.

It’s going to be a headache if you don't know the basics, especially since it looks like you're planning to build a total jungle of different hardware. For a solid network, you really want things to be "unified"—meaning you use as many identical devices as possible. You don't want a mess where one device is Brand A, the next is Brand B, and the third is some random router acting as an access point. That's just a recipe for chaos.

Also, avoid daisy-chaining an access point to another access point. Don't bother with those "WiFi extenders." The right way is to wire every access point directly back to a single Ethernet switch. Then, you connect one port on that switch to your ISP's router. You can let that router—or any other device on the network—act as the DHCP server to hand out IP addresses to everything else. Since one device is handling the IPs, masks, and gateways for the whole group, everything stays on the same subnet.

You'll either need to do a bit of reading on this or just pay someone to get it running for you the first time.

wiredotter14 said:Hey everyone,

I'm looking for some gear recommendations to get decent WiFi coverage throughout my whole house.

Here's the breakdown:

1x Ethernet Switch sitting next to the AT&T router so all the rooms and access points can get an Ethernet connection (let's say about 10 ports total).

1-2x WiFi access points that take one Ethernet input and provide both WiFi for that floor and a few extra Ethernet ports.

1x WiFi access point that only has an Ethernet port—no power outlet on that wall. It'll need to run via PoE. Do I need a specific device or power adapter for that, and what should I watch out for?
Both power and Ethernet would come from that first switch/router downstairs, so it's not a huge distance—maybe 10m. I assume a standard new Ethernet cable will handle that just fine.

Also, does anyone know how the DirecTV setup works with this? They mentioned we could pay extra to watch on multiple TVs. Would that require an additional DirecTV box, and where does it plug in?

One more thing: once all the access points and Ethernet jacks are hooked up to the main Ethernet switch, can I make sure they're all on the same LAN? For example, I want a PC plugged into an access point on one floor to be on the exact same LAN as a PC plugged directly into the main switch.

And follow-up: does that same logic apply to devices connected via WiFi?

Thanks a lot!

I don't have specific gear recommendations because I haven't bought anything in ages. I have no clue what the "standard" is these days. Someone else will probably chime in. Hopefully.

Regarding PoE: the switch that everything is plugged into provides the juice. That means the switch needs to support PoE. Naturally, the access points need to be PoE-compatible too. Standard Ethernet cable length goes up to 100 meters, so your 10m run isn't going to be an issue at all.

Everything connected to a single switch can live on the same network. Same subnet. That includes devices connected to an access point that feeds back into that switch. They can all be—and usually are in home setups—on the same subnet (the same LAN, as you put it).
You can set it up differently if you wanted to, but I doubt you need that. There are switches that let you configure "virtual LANs," but those are pricier, obviously.

As for DirecTV, I'm not sure. Your best bet is to ask the provider exactly what hardware you need to get it running on multiple screens.

shadoweagle13 said:Anything is possible. Just format the USB drive and then run some data recovery software like EaseUS.

I definitely wouldn't format the drive I'm actually trying to recover data from.

fadedorca66 said:It’s not the end of the world if you get a refund. But I guess if you lose important photos, then it's pretty bad.😁

Those microSD cards were reporting 32 GB on my PC, but they were actually only 8 GB. The real kicker was how they handled data; it didn't just stop writing once it hit the 8 GB mark. Instead, it kept going all the way up to 32 GB, essentially just overwriting the original 8 GB over and over again.

Think about how dangerous that is. If you popped one of those into a phone and started filling it up with 32 GB of photos and videos—which takes a while with normal use—you'd eventually realize you only ever actually had the last 8 GB. Everything else had been overwritten by the newer files.
By the time a user realizes the card is garbage, a year or two might have passed if they aren't constantly shooting. They'd just assume the card finally gave up the ghost from heavy use, when in reality, it was broken from day one.

The absolute worst part is that even as an 8 GB card, they aren't reliable. You’d think, "Whatever, it wasn't expensive, at least I get 8 GB of space." But you never know when it's going to die on you, or when it'll start overwriting itself and leave you with zero data.

So now, I've got a handful of these microSD cards sitting on my desk acting as little cautionary tales.

A few years back—let’s be more specific, maybe 7 or 8 years ago—I picked up a handful of 32GB micro SD cards on AliExpress. They were literally a dollar each. One single buck. And shipping was free.

To this day, I still have those exact same cards. They just sit there on my desk serving as a permanent warning to myself: never, ever buy cheap storage from AliExpress again.😉

rowdyjackal35 said:I really don't think I'm doing anything wrong here. I've tried everything, including checking the PROFILE LIST, but that account just isn't showing up anywhere.

It’s driving me crazy because I’m a total perfectionist, but honestly, the main reason is that I’m trying to sell this laptop. I figured having Windows 10 installed cleanly would help the resale value, and I definitely don't want some random junk account popping up on the login screen when a buyer turns it on. I don't have any important files on there, so it’s not like I’m losing my life's work or anything. If I could just get rid of Lana, I’d probably just create a new User Accounts profile and call it a day without needing a full reinstall, but I'm totally stuck.

If you're selling it, then yeah, fair enough. If I were in your shoes, I'd just wipe the drive and reinstall Windows from scratch. I'd also probably use a shredder tool to wipe the free space just to be safe.

rowdyjackal35 said:This is great, thanks, but I still can't find Laura anywhere. Looks like my only option left is to just reinstall Windows.

You’re definitely doing something wrong somewhere, even if it isn't obvious what.

Anyway, reinstalling Windows just because you can't figure out how to delete a User Account is kind of like having a mouse run into your kitchen and deciding the best way to get rid of it is to level the entire house. Sure, the mouse is gone, but there are probably much easier ways to handle it.

If you're stuck, maybe ask the neighbor's kid for help—they usually know their way around this stuff.

Emily Jones59 said:Hey everyone, I could really use some help here.

So, I’ve been working out of this ground-floor office space lately. For a while now, I've just been using this Verizon router to get my computers online—I used to have a two-computer setup where one was hardwired and the other was running on Wi-Fi. Now, I’ve scaled down to just a single laptop via Wi-Fi. To be honest, I never really bothered to check if my connection was actually any good until yesterday. Turns out, it's pretty terrible. I was actually planning on signing up for some IPTV service, but after seeing these speeds, I might need to rethink that plan.

I’ve also got this TV sitting here that I can only use via an antenna, and honestly, the reception is pretty garbage. Does anyone have any experience with which antenna is actually worth buying to get a decent signal? Also, I'm looking for ways to boost my internet connection. There isn't any fiber optic cable installed in the unit—apparently, they only ran that through to the apartments.

John Doe, thanks a ton.
Any bit of info helps me out a ton.
Low ping. 🙂)

When it comes to TV antennas, placement matters way more than the actual hardware you buy. You could have a top-of-the-line antenna, but if you stick it inside an apartment on the ground floor, you’re basically just wasting your money. Honestly, I'd take a mediocre, budget-friendly antenna mounted high up on a rooftop any day—it'll pull in a much better signal than that fancy piece of gear sitting behind a brick wall.

We don't have nearly enough data here to make any real calls on internet speeds. Based on what’s actually in front of us, the only real advice I can give is to just call up your provider and pay for a faster plan.
It’s completely unclear what kind of internet we're even talking about here. Is it DSL? Cable? What's the actual speed? There isn't even a mention of how it's connected—all it says is that there's no fiber available.
I’m honestly still stuck on whether the speed I'm paying for from my ISP is actually hitting the mark, or if the bottleneck is just sitting right here in my own house.
If the speeds you're getting from your ISP are actually hitting the numbers they promised, then there’s a whole laundry list of stuff on your end that could be causing issues. But honestly, my crystal ball has been acting up lately, so I can't exactly give you a definitive answer.