Operating system not found, or was it?

Running win7, fully updated afaik, on a Dell laptop, model available on
request. :-)

Thing has been working fine. Hibernate before I left this morning.

Turn it on tonight, "No operating system" or "Operating system not
found" or words to that effect.

3 times in a row.

Next time, F12, choose method of booting (or words to that effect).

I choose the hard drive.

Immediately it says Resuming Windows, and shows the moving image that
win7 shows when it's coming out of hibernation.

Computer starts in a typical length of time.

What is the problem and what should I do about it?

I'm out of town and only have my laptop, a mouse, and a keyboard.

micky wrote:

Running win7, fully updated afaik, on a Dell laptop, model available on
request. :-)

Thing has been working fine. Hibernate before I left this morning.

Turn it on tonight, "No operating system" or "Operating system not
found" or words to that effect.

3 times in a row.

Next time, F12, choose method of booting (or words to that effect).

I choose the hard drive.

Immediately it says Resuming Windows, and shows the moving image that
win7 shows when it's coming out of hibernation.

Computer starts in a typical length of time.

What is the problem and what should I do about it?

I'm out of town and only have my laptop, a mouse, and a keyboard.

Did you leave plugged in some other bootable media (floppy, CD, DVD, USB
thumb drive, etc)? Likely your BIOS/UEFI (don't know which because you
decided to omit the model) is configured to boot from a list of device
types, and HDD/SDD is not the first choice and you have an alternate
bootable device inserted.

micky wrote:
Running win7, fully updated afaik, on a Dell laptop, model available on
request. :-)

Thing has been working fine. Hibernate before I left this morning.

Turn it on tonight, "No operating system" or "Operating system not
found" or words to that effect.

3 times in a row.

Next time, F12, choose method of booting (or words to that effect).

I choose the hard drive.

Immediately it says Resuming Windows, and shows the moving image that
win7 shows when it's coming out of hibernation.

Computer starts in a typical length of time.

What is the problem and what should I do about it?

I'm out of town and only have my laptop, a mouse, and a keyboard.

With it hibernated, the hibernate bit should be set
(this could be in the CMOS island in the Southbridge/PCH
which is powered by the CMOS battery and uses transmission
gates for leakage isolation).

The BIOS should then know it has something to un-hibernate.
I'm not familiar with the process used for that (how it
knows which drive number or whatever). While it could
store the info in the CMOS RAM, somehow that seems "too easy".

At a guess, it could not find the storage device used
for the hibernation effort. So it returned the message
you were given, because it really couldn't find what it
was supposed to restore.

Even if your battery went so low (and CMOS cell too) such
that the hibernate bit was lost, even the OS itself
booting will notice the hiberfil.sys and the state it
is in, and it will resume it.

For the failure you've had, for some reason the
storage device was not found when it was supposed
to be there. Because neither conventional booting,
nor resuming from hiberfil seemed possible at the time.

When the hibernate bit is set, the BIOS will *not*
go searching for alternate boot devices. If the hibernate
bit is "lost" or for some reason is not set properly
at shutdown, the BIOS is then free to go on a fishing
trip. And with luck, if the HDD is first in the boot
order, the system will still resume, and likely with
no error message indicating it did that without
help from the hibernate bit.

When the hibernate bit is set, I can bang on F8 all I
want, to try to get my popup boot running, and the system
will refuse. However. if I power off the system (pull the plug),
there's a better chance I could bypass the BIOS hibernate
bit response.

Paul

In message , micky
writes:
Running win7, fully updated afaik, on a Dell laptop, model available on
request. :-)

Thing has been working fine. Hibernate before I left this morning.

Turn it on tonight, "No operating system" or "Operating system not
found" or words to that effect.

My reaction on seeing those is that the HD has died, or if you're lucky,
come unplugged. However, VanguardLH's suggestion that you left something
else the system could boot from (but which doesn't actually have an OS
on it) also sounds plausible.

3 times in a row.

Next time, F12, choose method of booting (or words to that effect).

I choose the hard drive.

Immediately it says Resuming Windows, and shows the moving image that
win7 shows when it's coming out of hibernation.

Computer starts in a typical length of time.

What is the problem and what should I do about it?

Probably wouldn't _hurt_ to check the SMART readouts and do a couple (so
you can compare them) of HDTune runs.

I'm out of town and only have my laptop, a mouse, and a keyboard.

Above would be doable with those.
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

"When _I_ saw him, he was dead." "uh, he looked exactly the same when he was
alive, except he was vertical." (The Trouble with Harry)

In alt.windows7.general, on Sun, 24 Feb 2019 21:48:18 +0000, "J. P.
Gilliver (John)" wrote:

In message , micky
writes:
Running win7, fully updated afaik, on a Dell laptop, model available on
request. :-)

Thing has been working fine. Hibernate before I left this morning.

Turn it on tonight, "No operating system" or "Operating system not
found" or words to that effect.

My reaction on seeing those is that the HD has died,

That was my reaction too. And being out of town with no other
computer, etc. very bad.

or if you're lucky,
come unplugged. However, VanguardLH's suggestion that you left something
else the system could boot from (but which doesn't actually have an OS
on it) also sounds plausible.

3 times in a row.

Next time, F12, choose method of booting (or words to that effect).

I choose the hard drive.

Immediately it says Resuming Windows, and shows the moving image that
win7 shows when it's coming out of hibernation.

Computer starts in a typical length of time.

What is the problem and what should I do about it?

Probably wouldn't _hurt_ to check the SMART readouts

I did do t hat, after I posted, with Speccy**

and do a couple (so
you can compare them) of HDTune runs.

Okay, I'll do that. I dl'd and started a test.

I'm out of town and only have my laptop, a mouse, and a keyboard.

Maybe I should put a bootable version of Windows on a flashdrive and
then i'll be able to boot. OTOH, if all the data is still on a broken
HDD, maybe there is no point.

I did restart Windows and everything went fine. Very strange.

Above would be doable with those.

Not too legible but this is what Speccy has to say. I'm going to look
up t he meaning of the variables listed, on Speccy's help page maybe.

Temperature Range Warning (50 °C to 55 °C)
S.M.A.R.T attributes
Attribute*name Real value Current Worst Threshold
Raw Value Status
01 Read Error Rate 0 100 100 62
0000000000 Good
02 Throughput Performance 0 100 100
0 0000000000 Good
03 Spin-Up Time 0 ms 253 253 33
0000000000 Good
04 Start/Stop Count 2,131 99 99
0 0000000853 Good
05 Reallocated Sectors Count 0 100
100 5 0000000000 Good
07 Seek Error Rate 0 100 100 0
0000000000 Good
08 Seek Time Performance 0 100 100
0 0000000000 Good
09 Power-On Hours (POH) 725d 13h 61
61 0 0000004405 Good
0A Spin Retry Count 0 100 100
0 0000000000 Good
0C Device Power Cycle Count 2,098 99
99 0 0000000832 Good
A0 Uncorrectable Sector Count when Read/Write
0 100 100 0 0000000000 Good
BF G-sense error rate 0 100 100
0 0000000000 Good
C0 Power-off Retract Count 107,148,348,817,753
1 1 0 006B450159 Good
C1 Load/Unload Cycle Count 109,178 90 90
0 000001AA7A Good
C2 Temperature 50 °C 110 110 0
0000000032 Good
C4 Reallocation Event Count 0 100
100 0 0000000000 Good
C5 Current Pending Sector Count 0 100
100 0 0000000000 Good
C6 Uncorrectable Sector Count 0 100
100 0 0000000000 Good
C7 UltraDMA CRC Error Count 0 200
200 0 0000000000 Good
DF Load/Unload Retry Count 0 100 100
0 0000000000 Good
F0 Head Flying Hours 717d 1h 61 61
0 0000004339 Good
F1 Total LBAs Written 12,706,908,998 100
100 0 00F5640B46 Good
F2 Total LBAs Read 10,652,739,992 100 100
0 007AF3E998 Good
FE Free Fall Protection 24,947 3 3
0 0000006173 Good

In message , micky
writes:
In alt.windows7.general, on Sun, 24 Feb 2019 21:48:18 +0000, "J. P.
Gilliver (John)" wrote:
[]
Probably wouldn't _hurt_ to check the SMART readouts

I did do t hat, after I posted, with Speccy**

and do a couple (so
you can compare them) of HDTune runs.

Okay, I'll do that. I dl'd and started a test.

Use the "save" function, which saves a screenshot. It should show a
fairly smooth curve (it shows access speed), trending downwards towards
the end of the drive. It will have downward spikes where the OS
interrupted it and thus slows it down; that's why you do two runs - if
the spikes are in the same place, or have any significant _width_, then
you have a dodgy patch on the disc. This - or anything else that checks
_speed_ of the disc across the surface - is about the only way to check
for a modern (last few decades!) disc, because the correcting routines
built into the drive will swap out any dud sectors, so anything that
just looks for bad sectors won't see any (but the _speed_ will be
reduced at that part of the disc).
[]
I did restart Windows and everything went fine. Very strange.

Yes. That does tend to suggest VLH's suggestion that you'd left
something bootable plugged in wasn't the solution. If it's easy to open,
I would check that the drive is firmly plugged in though - I had a
machine where the drive could slide unplugged if the machine was moved
sideways moderately vigorously. (There has to _be_ a space to slide into
or you'd never be able to get the drive out - or in - if you need to,
but some way of retaining it should be present - screws, or a spring, or
springy bit of foam, or ...).

Above would be doable with those.

Not too legible but this is what Speccy has to say. I'm going to look
up t he meaning of the variables listed, on Speccy's help page maybe.

Yes, sorry I can't help. Plus, different reading utilities read the
parameters in different ways: some have the figures _rising_ towards
fail (low is good), some _falling_ (high is good). I'm not sure if any
one utility has them all going in the same direction. The parameter that
Paul usually says to worry about is Reallocated Sector Count.

The utility I use is DiskCheckup
(https://www.passmark.com/products/diskcheckup.htm); this has a little
(i) symbol next to each parameter which if hovered over tells you
something of what it means (see example in the screenshot on the above
page), and also, if you run it more than once and any parameter is
changing, gives you a (very simplistic, I think it's straight-line
extrapolation) failure date. [It's showing N/A for all parameters on my
disc at the moment; I've had it show dates decades in the future.] There
are probably many other utils that do these things too. Note that this
one counts at least the Reallocated Sector Count in the opposite
direction to the one Paul usually recommends (whose name I forget).

Temperature Range Warning (50 °C to 55 °C)

That does seem a _little_ high; probably nothing to worry about (I don't
know), but I'd usually expect below 40°C. (But then I'm a little
paranoid, having - I think - had one fail [stick] due to [I think!]
overheating.)

S.M.A.R.T attributes
Attribute*name Real value Current Worst Threshold
Raw Value Status
[]
05 Reallocated Sectors Count 0 100
100 5 0000000000 Good

I don't know which way Speccy goes, but it says "Good". (Mine - under
DiskCheckup - says Value 200, Worst 200, Threshold 140, Raw 0 - oh, and
I've just noticed that DiskCheckup has a symbol which tells you which
direction is good - if hovered over it says "Lower raw value is
better".)
[]
Speccy seems to be saying "Good" for all the parameters where it
expresses an opinion, which is reassuring.

Of course SMART doesn't check everything (such as failing bearings,
AFAIK); however, between it and HDTune, many _gradual_ failures due to
surface deterioration can be picked up. (My last failure - where the
head stuck to the disc, so it stopped going round! - wasn't, but I think
that's rare! [After trying all the old wives' cures without success, I
finally bit the bullet, and opened it up - fortunately I had access to a
clean-air cabinet at work; it freed, and I was able to retrieve over 97%
of what was on the drive before consigning it.])

You should always image your OS-plus-hidden partition(s) (I use Macrium
5), and backup (by whatever means - I use SyncToy) your data partition,
regularly, of course. Like most people, I'm sure I don't do it often
enough.
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

Science isn't about being right every time, or even most of the time. It is
about being more right over time and fixing what it got wrong.
- Scott Adams, 2015-2-2

J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote:


Of course SMART doesn't check everything (such as failing bearings,
AFAIK); however, between it and HDTune, many _gradual_ failures due to
surface deterioration can be picked up. (My last failure - where the
head stuck to the disc, so it stopped going round! - wasn't, but I think
that's rare! [After trying all the old wives' cures without success, I
finally bit the bullet, and opened it up - fortunately I had access to a
clean-air cabinet at work; it freed, and I was able to retrieve over 97%
of what was on the drive before consigning it.])

You should always image your OS-plus-hidden partition(s) (I use Macrium
5), and backup (by whatever means - I use SyncToy) your data partition,
regularly, of course. Like most people, I'm sure I don't do it often
enough.

Stiction hasn't been an issue since some Quantum 250MB drive or
so. I think I have one of those drives, but haven't tested it in
20 years or more.

Back in those days, there was no "landing ramp" when parking the
heads. The heads only traveled from inner diameter to outer diameter
and stayed on the platter. There was a "landing zone" defined, where
the heads came to a screeching stop. When the first stiction problems
were noted, platter went from a "smooth" finish in the landing
zone, to a "patterned" finish, to try to disrupt the source of
the stiction.

On modern drives, a spindle not spinning is caused by a lubrication
failure. The motors use Fluid Dynamic Bearings, where the bearing
is sealed, and two drops of oil are inside (no reservoir). Apparently,
if the oil escapes, the spindle can actually go from the spinning state
to the stopped state, practically instantly. It could similarly
cause a problem when the drive is spinning up.

FDB motors come in two types. Spindle restrained at bottom. Or
Spindle restrained at both top and bottom. The former type
is how the first FDB motors were made. There could be a slight
noise, until the spindle comes up to speed and is frictionless.
Restraining both ends, might have been an attempt to reduce
"noise" in fine geometry situations. The motors use three phase
power for reduced torque ripple (a DC motor or a brushless DC
motor, would not suffice).

*******

I recommend reviewing two things on hard drives. The
Reallocated Sector raw data field should be 0, for a
first level check of health.

However, it's possible for a large number of reallocations
to occur in a "patch" of disk surface. There may not be
sufficient reallocations, to "move the peg off zero".
Yet, performance suffers. I had a drive giving maybe
10MB/sec on reads, over a 50GB patch of surface. And the
Reallocated value was zero on the drive, even though
the drive "felt slow". You could tell it wasn't well.

Running the HDTune read benchmark, gives you a chance to
spot "large flattened spots" in the response curve. If you
see that, and Reallocated still has a Raw value of zero,
you're not out of the woods. Since performance is affected,
I would purchase a replacement drive and begin the transfer
process. The drive can still be used for "scratch" purposes,
as it's likely to live a bit longer. But I would not
trust it with todays new files on it.

The disk failures I've had here, correlated with high
humidity conditions in the house (central air out
of service). It's possible that eventually, the humidity
gets through the breather hole. For a period of a
year or two, drives were being packed with small
"desiccant bags", to keep the air in the bag dry,
but they appear to have stopped doing that again.

The future is Helium drives, or at least that is the
trend (Helium sealed in, no possibility of humidity
entering the drive). And the future is also
"higher capacity drives", so what we used to call
"boot drives" are likely to disappear as a stock item.
I don't know what the plans are for 2.5" laptop drives,
as the tech there likely doesn't track the 3.5" market
that closely. I don't know if there is sufficient vertical
clearance, for the two level top cover on a Helium drive.
Maybe if laptops continue to have rotating drives,
they'll continue to be air breathers.

Paul

In alt.windows7.general, on Sun, 24 Feb 2019 13:33:26 -0600, VanguardLH
wrote:

micky wrote:

Running win7, fully updated afaik, on a Dell laptop, model available on
request. :-)

Thing has been working fine. Hibernate before I left this morning.

Turn it on tonight, "No operating system" or "Operating system not
found" or words to that effect.

3 times in a row.

Next time, F12, choose method of booting (or words to that effect).

I choose the hard drive.

Immediately it says Resuming Windows, and shows the moving image that
win7 shows when it's coming out of hibernation.

Computer starts in a typical length of time.

What is the problem and what should I do about it?

I'm out of town and only have my laptop, a mouse, and a keyboard.

Did you leave plugged in some other bootable media (floppy, CD, DVD, USB

A flash drive, but not with any OS on it. Just an email program and
a lot of data files. A new flashdrive, supposedly waterproof, and no OS
has ever been on it .

thumb drive, etc)? Likely your BIOS/UEFI (don't know which because you
decided to omit the model) is configured to boot from a list of device

I don't know th e model by heart but it's a Dell Latitude, E4300

types, and HDD/SDD is not the first choice and you have an alternate
bootable device inserted.

But if it were a bootable device, why would it say "No operating
system"?

In message , micky
writes:
In alt.windows7.general, on Sun, 24 Feb 2019 13:33:26 -0600, VanguardLH
wrote:
[]
Did you leave plugged in some other bootable media (floppy, CD, DVD, USB

A flash drive, but not with any OS on it. Just an email program and
a lot of data files. A new flashdrive, supposedly waterproof, and no OS
has ever been on it .
[]
types, and HDD/SDD is not the first choice and you have an alternate
bootable device inserted.

But if it were a bootable device, why would it say "No operating
system"?

I think VLH was saying that your system is capable of booting from
various things, including the HD; if it tries one of them and it isn't
there (such as the USB port and there's no stick or external drive
plugged in), it moves on to the next one. But if there _is_ something
there (e. g. a stick or drive) but it _doesn't_ have an OS on it (e. g.
blank or just data), that might generate the "no OS" message.

However, from what you've said subsequently, I don't think that _is_ the
problem. (Or hopefully, _was_.)
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

"Subtlety is the art of saying what you think and getting out of the way
before it is understood." - Fortunes

In message , Paul
writes:
J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote:

Of course SMART doesn't check everything (such as failing bearings,
AFAIK); however, between it and HDTune, many _gradual_ failures due to
surface deterioration can be picked up. (My last failure - where the
head stuck to the disc, so it stopped going round! - wasn't, but I
think that's rare! [After trying all the old wives' cures without
success, I finally bit the bullet, and opened it up - fortunately I
had access to a clean-air cabinet at work; it freed, and I was able
to retrieve over 97% of what was on the drive before consigning it.])
You should always image your OS-plus-hidden partition(s) (I use
Macrium 5), and backup (by whatever means - I use SyncToy) your data
partition, regularly, of course. Like most people, I'm sure I don't
do it often enough.

Stiction hasn't been an issue since some Quantum 250MB drive or
so. I think I have one of those drives, but haven't tested it in
20 years or more.
[]
Mine wasn't stiction, by which I take you to mean excessive friction or
similar in the bearings, meaning they need more than the usual force to
start spinning: a head had actually stuck to a surface! When I opened up
the drive (power off), the head assembly was not in its park position.
On attempting to rotate the spindle (the hub could be rotated by the
same size torx screwdriver as had removed the cover screws), I felt a
tiny freeing, and the head assembly sprang back to its rest position,
and the stack rotated freely. I think it must have been a very tiny
spotweld. I couldn't actually see any damage, but it would only need be
microscopic. On reassembling, all worked well enough for me to get most
of the data off.
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

"Subtlety is the art of saying what you think and getting out of the way
before it is understood." - Fortunes

J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote:
In message , Paul
writes:
J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote:

Of course SMART doesn't check everything (such as failing bearings,
AFAIK); however, between it and HDTune, many _gradual_ failures due
to surface deterioration can be picked up. (My last failure - where
the head stuck to the disc, so it stopped going round! - wasn't, but
I think that's rare! [After trying all the old wives' cures without
success, I finally bit the bullet, and opened it up - fortunately I
had access to a clean-air cabinet at work; it freed, and I was able
to retrieve over 97% of what was on the drive before consigning it.])
You should always image your OS-plus-hidden partition(s) (I use
Macrium 5), and backup (by whatever means - I use SyncToy) your data
partition, regularly, of course. Like most people, I'm sure I don't
do it often enough.

Stiction hasn't been an issue since some Quantum 250MB drive or
so. I think I have one of those drives, but haven't tested it in
20 years or more.
[]
Mine wasn't stiction, by which I take you to mean excessive friction or
similar in the bearings, meaning they need more than the usual force to
start spinning: a head had actually stuck to a surface! When I opened up
the drive (power off), the head assembly was not in its park position.
On attempting to rotate the spindle (the hub could be rotated by the
same size torx screwdriver as had removed the cover screws), I felt a
tiny freeing, and the head assembly sprang back to its rest position,
and the stack rotated freely. I think it must have been a very tiny
spotweld. I couldn't actually see any damage, but it would only need be
microscopic. On reassembling, all worked well enough for me to get most
of the data off.

If the drive has a landing ramp (the plastic assembly to the
side of the platter stack), the arm and heads are supposed to
ride up that plastic ramp for each head. A four platter drive
would have eight plastic surfaces and the arms would ride up
the stack.

__/ Plastic stack outside the diameter
H / of the platter. Head "parks" here and
AAAAAA is both outside the platter radius and
H \__ also slightly elevated above the platter surface.
\
etc.
__/ This is a side view where Z (spindle axis) is
H / up and down in this sheet of paper.
AAAAAA
H \__
\

If the drive was newer, and it actually stopped on the platter
surface (a "failed landing"), then stiction is definitely going
to happen. Modern platters are relatively smooth (2nm amplitude).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stiction#Hard_disk_drives

In the article on Wikipedia, they reminisce about the old drives
having "liquid" surfaces. Which is true. The lubricant was so
poorly thought out, that it had a tendency to "pool" or have
ripples of collected material in it. Modern drives are not
designed that way at all. The material is several molecules
thick. The material that touches the platter is considered
"bonded" to the platter, like it was a wax. The last molecule
rests on the surface and is the "lubricant". The heads can
strike that surface and bounce off like it was bulletproof
glass. In theory, there is less possibility of "pooling" in
modern platter finishes. And this is necessary because the
flying height (as stated in some patents) approaches 3nm.
Whereas the unclean disk packs with the plastic cake lid we
used to use, the flying height on those was 10000nm. A
crappy liquid finish could "fit" in such sloppy tolerances.
The waxy chemical used, also includes a free radical inhibitor,
to collect strands of material that chemically degrade (polymer
breakdown).

When a HDD suffers a loss of power, it uses the motor as
a generator, and the generator action maintains power for
things like the voice coil [I still don't know if I believe
this, as I've seen no tech explanation for how that works
at the chip level]. But rather than "hammer" the
head assembly, like a spring loaded arm which would hit the
"stop" on the side of the HDA with readily-audible noise
effect, the voice coil moves the arm to the landing ramp
with a critically damped motion, before slowly working
the heads up the ramp. It would move "fast" from hub to
outside platter edge, then a bit slower as the heads
go up each plastic ramp (8 ramps on a 4 platter drive
with 8 heads). The arm assembly doesn't hit the ramp
at speed, like Evel Knievel, as that would "peel" plastic
off the ramp and pollute the HDA.

You can see in the picture here, the "sled" is back a bit from
the pointy "tip" of the arm. The "tip" of the arm is what
rides up the ramp. You might also notice there is a
gentle "detent", where two plastic pieces "trap" the end of
the arm, without really detaining it. It's possible for a
radial shock (drop drive on its side), to move within
the detent region, but head-shake up-and-down is blocked.
This helps give the drive a 300G shock rating when unpowered,
but without using the ridiculous solenoid-actuated "lock"
the old drives used. I had a "lock" fail on a Barracuda 32550N,
and "squeeze" the heads into the platter enough to gouge the
platter - that's why the old solenoid idea kinda died. Maybe
there is a lock mechanism, but in all the pictures I've
looked at, I can't spot one.

https://www.vst.co.nz/wordpress/wp-c...08/wd-disk.jpg

If the landing operation fails because power was lost before
the arm goes up the ramp, then all bets are off. The heads
could "stick" to the surface.

Paul

In alt.windows7.general, on Tue, 26 Feb 2019 00:58:54 +0000, "J. P.
Gilliver (John)" wrote:

In message , Paul
writes:
J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote:

Of course SMART doesn't check everything (such as failing bearings,
AFAIK); however, between it and HDTune, many _gradual_ failures due to
surface deterioration can be picked up. (My last failure - where the
head stuck to the disc, so it stopped going round! - wasn't, but I
think that's rare! [After trying all the old wives' cures without
success, I finally bit the bullet, and opened it up - fortunately I
had access to a clean-air cabinet at work; it freed, and I was able
to retrieve over 97% of what was on the drive before consigning it.])
You should always image your OS-plus-hidden partition(s) (I use
Macrium 5), and backup (by whatever means - I use SyncToy) your data
partition, regularly, of course. Like most people, I'm sure I don't
do it often enough.

Stiction hasn't been an issue since some Quantum 250MB drive or
so. I think I have one of those drives, but haven't tested it in
20 years or more.
[]
Mine wasn't stiction, by which I take you to mean excessive friction or
similar in the bearings, meaning they need more than the usual force to
start spinning: a head had actually stuck to a surface! When I opened up
the drive (power off), the head assembly was not in its park position.
On attempting to rotate the spindle (the hub could be rotated by the
same size torx screwdriver as had removed the cover screws), I felt a
tiny freeing, and the head assembly sprang back to its rest position,

That sounds great. If the occasion arises, do I really need a clean
air cabinet or can I just hold my breath? Wear a mask and hold my
breath. After all, Baltimore has hardly any heavy industry these days.

If I need a cabinet, I wonder if I could just go to a nearby university
chem lab ask to use their place when no one else was there.

and the stack rotated freely. I think it must have been a very tiny
spotweld. I couldn't actually see any damage, but it would only need be
microscopic. On reassembling, all worked well enough for me to get most
of the data off.

In alt.windows7.general, on Tue, 26 Feb 2019 00:51:16 +0000, "J. P.
Gilliver (John)" wrote:

In message , micky
writes:
In alt.windows7.general, on Sun, 24 Feb 2019 13:33:26 -0600, VanguardLH
wrote:
[]
Did you leave plugged in some other bootable media (floppy, CD, DVD, USB

A flash drive, but not with any OS on it. Just an email program and
a lot of data files. A new flashdrive, supposedly waterproof, and no OS
has ever been on it .
[]
types, and HDD/SDD is not the first choice and you have an alternate
bootable device inserted.

But if it were a bootable device, why would it say "No operating
system"?

I think VLH was saying that your system is capable of booting from
various things, including the HD; if it tries one of them and it isn't
there (such as the USB port and there's no stick or external drive
plugged in), it moves on to the next one. But if there _is_ something
there (e. g. a stick or drive) but it _doesn't_ have an OS on it (e. g.
blank or just data), that might generate the "no OS" message.

Aha.

However, from what you've said subsequently, I don't think that _is_ the
problem. (Or hopefully, _was_.)

Right!

I suppose if the worst happens, I can buy another laptop here. (I like
to either shop for weeks and months, or buy second hand, but if I have
to buy new with an hour of shopping, I can do it.) The data I need, as
of the day before I left home, I had copied to that flashdrive, and a
second copy to another flash drive (one in the suitcase and the other in
my carry-on). Including phone numbers, notes, charge account numbers
(hopefully munged enough to not be found), email addresses, filters,
data files that might matter, just about anything I expected to look at
while I was away. . It would take hours to load this stuff,I think,
when I'd rather be "on vacation", visiting friends or sight-seeing, but
it's better than having no access to this stuff at all.

I dont' delete email from any of the servers, so I can dl it all when I
get home, and I send myself a copy of any email I send, so that will be
there too (although I plan to merge the laptop outbox with the desktop
outbox. The copies sent to myself are a backup if the laptop is lost,
stolen, or irrparably broken.)

In message , Paul
writes:
J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote:
In message , Paul
writes:
[]
Stiction hasn't been an issue since some Quantum 250MB drive or
so. I think I have one of those drives, but haven't tested it in
20 years or more.
[]
Mine wasn't stiction, by which I take you to mean excessive friction
or similar in the bearings, meaning they need more than the usual
force to start spinning: a head had actually stuck to a surface! When
I opened up the drive (power off), the head assembly was not in its
park position. On attempting to rotate the spindle (the hub could be
rotated by the same size torx screwdriver as had removed the cover
screws), I felt a tiny freeing,
[]
and the stack rotated freely. I think it must have been a very tiny
spotweld. I couldn't actually see any damage, but it would only need
be microscopic. On reassembling, all worked well enough for me to get
most of the data off.
[]
If the drive was newer, and it actually stopped on the platter

It was a 1xx G (120, 150, 180, something like that) 2½" drive.

surface (a "failed landing"), then stiction is definitely going
to happen. Modern platters are relatively smooth (2nm amplitude).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stiction#Hard_disk_drives

Ah, I see, having read that, I see that they're using the word
differently to how I understood it: they're using it as a synonym for
sticking. To me, stiction meant the often-hard-to-explain behaviour of
mechanical items where extra effort is required to move them from a
non-moving Poisson (often very noticeable when pushing a car).
[]
When a HDD suffers a loss of power, it uses the motor as
a generator, and the generator action maintains power for
things like the voice coil [I still don't know if I believe
this, as I've seen no tech explanation for how that works
at the chip level]. But rather than "hammer" the
head assembly, like a spring loaded arm which would hit the
"stop" on the side of the HDA with readily-audible noise
effect, the voice coil moves the arm to the landing ramp
with a critically damped motion, before slowly working
the heads up the ramp. It would move "fast" from hub to
[]
In my case, this had definitely not happened: the heads were clearly on
the platters when I opened it (unpowered).
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

.... social media's tendency to knock on front doors and run away.
Andrew Collins, RT 2017/8/5-11

In message , micky
writes:
In alt.windows7.general, on Tue, 26 Feb 2019 00:58:54 +0000, "J. P.
Gilliver (John)" wrote:
[]
Mine wasn't stiction, by which I take you to mean excessive friction or
similar in the bearings, meaning they need more than the usual force to

Seems that _wasn't_ what Paul meant.

start spinning: a head had actually stuck to a surface! When I opened up
the drive (power off), the head assembly was not in its park position.
On attempting to rotate the spindle (the hub could be rotated by the
same size torx screwdriver as had removed the cover screws), I felt a
tiny freeing, and the head assembly sprang back to its rest position,

That sounds great. If the occasion arises, do I really need a clean
air cabinet or can I just hold my breath? Wear a mask and hold my
breath. After all, Baltimore has hardly any heavy industry these days.

Oh, I think ordinary levels of household dust (or pollen if outside)
will be _far_ greater - probably by orders of magnitude - than the air
quality in drive plants. (If there are any smokers present, forget it.)
I've had experience of moderate-level clean rooms (I didn't work there,
but as part of being the test equipment department, I did the periodic
air cleanliness measurements. Even that involved bunny suiting.)

However, I mainly used it because I had access to it. If - as was my
intention - the intention is just to do it once to get the drive running
long enough to get the data off, and then not use it any more - you
might be OK. For what it's worth, I did out of curiosity power up the
drive once or twice after that, and I got the impression (can't remember
why - SMART or chkdsk or something) that it was deteriorating noticeably
every time, to the extent that I wouldn't use it for anything.

If I need a cabinet, I wonder if I could just go to a nearby university
chem lab ask to use their place when no one else was there.

Worth asking! Might well not be chem lab - physics, or - especially -
semiconductors, though that's more likely to be rooms rather than
cabinets.

Or you can probably make your own: the counter-intuitive aspect is that
they operate under _positive_ pressure. There must be notes on the web
(probably giving conflicting advice, obviously!).

and the stack rotated freely. I think it must have been a very tiny
spotweld. I couldn't actually see any damage, but it would only need be
microscopic. On reassembling, all worked well enough for me to get most
of the data off.

--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

.... social media's tendency to knock on front doors and run away.
Andrew Collins, RT 2017/8/5-11