Go fsck yourself, part duh

You remember last time, when I said, "I'm writing this blog entry on the same disk image that was giving me nightmares just 7 hours ago"? Hahaha, well, that was then, and this is now.

It's four hours later, and this time, I'm writing from the laptop.

Go fsck yourself

Interesting experience today.

My daily use machine has a SATA disk drive, and it would not boot this morning. GRUB would begin, and then fail saying it could not find any initrd or kernel.

I was able to boot using a Live CD, but several of the ones I have didn't work. Time to purge my "rescue disk" collection, download the latest Trinity Rescue and Knoppix, etc.

The one that did work would not recognize that the HD even existed. So no fdisk, no mounting the partitions for backup, nothing. Doomed, I thought. Fried disk. Right.

Recovering from motherboard failures, and clean computing

When last we left the scene, one server was dead, the desktop dieing. However, ordering two new motherboards was successful. They arrived from Magic Micro quickly and in good order, and it was time to clean things up and make two working machines.

First, a note on cleaning. I am sick (and tired) of computer hardware that cannot be cleaned. Laptops that require being sent back to the manufacturers in order to be cleaned, things like that. I remember one call to Circuit City for a Sony Vaio laptop I owned, where the person who answered the phone simply did not understand what I meant when I said the fan needed to be cleaned.

I had to let her go to her script and answer the question "Is the machine overheating and shutting down?" with "Yes", because if I didn't say "yes" she didn't have any option for having me send it in for cleaning at all. So they did the cleaning, and wiped Linux, but I've learned always to do a full backup before letting anyone else even touch my machines.

Frustration!

Word to the wise:

When you order a new SATA DVD drive to replace the broken IDE drive, even if you have a SATA data cable, check to be sure you also have the SATA power cord.

And even if you know your power supply has one, like I did, make sure it will reach where you need it to go.

A photo will be posted when I get that machine put back together after a trip to the store. Hope they have a standard-to-SATA power plug adapter, like the one that was offered when I ordered the drive but didn't get. Yes, I know, "Next time you'll know better."

And now, you will too.

===

Ok, here's the picture, "Where it reached" and "Where it needs to go":

A few hours have past, and what do I have? Nothing. Serial ATA power cable? What's that???? Oy.

When the computer department manager at Xxxxx Xxx tells me, "I have no idea what you're talking about", I know it's time to go back to New Egg, Tiger Direct or Ebay for sanity and technical savvy.

I shook my head as I was leaving at the line of people at their "professional" technical support desk. I didn't expect it would be well received if I started handing out my computer repair business cards.

The last time I bought a system there, a laptop, I asked if I could get a Windows refund. The guy got a glazed look in his eyes and asked, "Why?"