Why I HATE Windows..

AuthorityActionAuthorityAction Missouri Member
edited March 2007 in Science & Tech
A friend of mine asked me to take a look at his computer because his computer wouldn't boot. Being the nice guy that I am, I drove out to his place and picked the computer up. After running SpinRite I knew the hard drive was going bad and needed to be backed up soon. I couldn't get the drive to be detected in my external hard drive enclosure so I was forced to use his computer to do any backing up of the data (my main computer stuff is 3 hours away and I only brought my laptop with me from school.) I popped the old hard drive and a new hard drive into the computer. On a side note, this is the only way the computer would post, don't ask me why but it would not post with just the new drive in there. So in my infinite wisdom I decide to install Windows XP onto the new drive, that way I can transfer what's left off the old drive. I select the new drive to be formatted and I'm positive that I did. Hit enter and go grab a drink. When I come back, to my horror it was formatting the WRONG drive. Why oh why would you format the drive that I did NOT tell you to?

</rant>

I'm not happy. Anyone got any ideas? I've tried testdisk and it doesn't even want to read the drive.

Comments

  • airbornflghtairbornflght Houston, TX Icrontian
    edited March 2007
    umm, quick, or complete format?

    Cause if you did a complete format you are going to need to call the fbi or something.
  • AuthorityActionAuthorityAction Missouri Member
    edited March 2007
    It was a quick format, which gives me some hope. The problem is that the hard drive is going bad which has been giving me all kinds of trouble because any recovery software has a hard time reading the drive.
  • ThraxThrax 🐌 Austin, TX Icrontian
    edited March 2007
    Not to be a dick, but PEBKAC.
  • AuthorityActionAuthorityAction Missouri Member
    edited March 2007
    I know this is my fault, but my point is why would the windows installer format the drive that I did not select. Thank you for the words of encouragement though, it's just ones of those days.
  • Park_7677Park_7677 Missouri Member
    edited March 2007
    If you didn't do anything else to the drive use testdisk to restore the partitions. Windows always does this to me (I choose to format my SATA RAID and it formats the IDE drive unless I remove the IDE drive beforehand).

    I'll bring a copy tonight if you don't see this before 5.
  • profdlpprofdlp The Holy City Of Westlake, Ohio
    edited March 2007
    AuthorityAction wrote:
    I know this is my fault, but my point is why would the windows installer format the drive that I did not select...

    I doubt that it did.

    For future reference, never format a drive when there is another drive in the computer you don't want formatted. It's far too easy to make a mistake.

    My guess as to why the computer wouldn't POST with just the new drive in there was that you hadn't cleared the old drive info from the BIOS, or that you weren't patient enough to wait for the BIOS to figure it out on its own. I've seen systems appear to hang for several minutes before finally deciding to proceed with the hardware that was actually installed.

    But, yeah - this is all M$'s fault, and Windows sucks. What flavor of Linux do you use?
  • nonstop301nonstop301 51° 27' 24.87&quot; N // 0° 11' 38.91&quot; W Member
    edited March 2007
    You admitted your error so it's not the installer's fault :)

    Installing Windows isn't as simple as it seems even for those that have done it a gazillion times. You always need to be careful what you're selecting and ensure the installer has registered the correct selection too.

    When there are more than one disks on a system the installer always finds a way to list the one you don't want to use first :)
Sign In or Register to comment.