[snarks_when_bored]

If you hard drive isn't trashed, you can always stick it in another machine to retrieve your photos. But you probably know that...

[Michael Goldsberry]

retrieve our family photos on the hard drive.

Put the drive into another computer.

[1-Eagle]

Replace the power cord.

As silly as that sounds, that was the problem with mine once. I also had replaced the power unit, but turned out to be as simple as buying a new power cord.

[ButThreeLeftsDo]

Sounds like something that happened to me a couple of years ago with an old system.......

Does your system have a floppy drive??

My floppy drive died and took the power supply with it.

When the floppy died, all the smoke was released from the power supply...;-)

Worth a look. BOL.

[Cold Heat]

You replaced everything but the hard drive.....

If you install it on another machine, and the machine goes fritzy as soon as you turn it on, yank the plug immediately before you fry the other machine and kiss it bye bye. It is fried.

If the machine boots, then you can try to get into it, but if you can't the drive is fried.

If the info is valuable, there are places that can recover it. If not, chuck it.

[Cold Heat]

Something else, I assume you know that if you get the polarity wrong on any of the pin connectors, the machine will not boot. Could fry the drive as well.

[A CA Guy]

I take it that you verified the $1 power cord works?

You can always remove the hard drive, add it to someone else's or get some usb external attachment to retrieve the stuff you had there. Don't worry unless that somehow got fried as well.

[toldyou]

I went away for four days in July, turned my computer off, but left it plugged into the surger. Upon returning, my neighbor told me of the bad storm that went through our area. I wasn't aware that a computer should be unplugged during a storm. Anyhow, I took it to a local repair shop and to Best Buy. Both told me my computer was "fried." It was four years old, and I had nothing on it worth saving.

Also, after having taken at least a hundred pictures on my digital camera during that four day get-away, my memory card showed an "error" while attempting to develop the pictures. Ritz camera shop told me there was nothing they could do about it. I mentioned it to the guys at Best Buy. They gave me a phone # in Denver, who in turn, directed me to these people (below). I sent them my memory card, and they called last week saying they retreived all my pictures. Needless to say, I am most grateful!

They specialize in recovering data from hard drives and camera cards. The service was wonderful!

http://www.sectorlogics.com
1-866-804-1914

Sector Logics, Inc.
8555 West Belleview Avenue
Suite G21-137
Littleton, CO 80123
Attention: Service Department

[ThePythonicCow]

Ah - some more thoughts - on how to avoid this next time. Here's what I recommend doing to avoid this problem:

• Backups ... disk to disk backups to an external drive that you plug in via USB 2.0 or Firewire is the most convenient and practical method at present. Get two external drives and swap them every so often, keeping the other one a distance removed.
• Keep the drives cool. I have had far fewer drive problems once I became aggressive about buying fans and computer chasis and driver coolers that keep the drive temps low.
• I only buy Seagate drives. Perhaps it's superstition, but that brand fails less often for me.
• For serious use at work, we use RAID (disk mirroring) but I haven't gotten around to trying that at home.
• Don't use old drives. I keep upgrading my drives every couple years. I upgrade because I need the space, but it means I'm not depending on old drives either.

[JRios1968]

Ahem...are you logged in? (ducking and running...)

[Fawn]

Can somoene tell me the best software program to buy that copies DVD movies? I want backups of my expensive DVD TV shows.
Right now I am on my lst days of DVD Xcopy trial version....but it doesn't play on both of my DVD players....only one.

ALSO.....I need to buy a player for my computer. WINDVD costs alot....isn't there something less out there than $80.00 for a player?

[Bloody Sam Roberts]

Help? Any ideas?

If someone hasn't suggested this yet, dump the eMachine and get a refurbed Dell GX270 or so and put your HDD in the Dell as a slave unit to get your data.

I just replaced an eMachine for a friend by doing this. Voltage spike fried the PS and MB.
I got her a 2 year old Dell GX270 on eBay for $345. P4/2.5Ghz with 512Mb RAM and XP Pro. Popped in the old drive, moved the data and started re-installing everything else.