Acer Aspire One Netbook - died

[W3DRM]

Here's my SpeedFan report for my HP desktop. I'll get one for the Acer tomorrow. Am just too tired to mess around with this any longer tonight.

I haven't looked but I am assuming there must be some documentation that describes all of the readings and their meanings.

[Sigdigit]

So Don, did the freeze work, or you just replaced the drive?  I'm still on my first Aspire One.  Not good hearing about your failure.  I need to start backing things up.

[W3DRM]

So Don, did the freeze work, or you just replaced the drive?  I'm still on my first Aspire One.  Not good hearing about your failure.  I need to start backing things up.

Now that is an embarrassing question to answer, I completely forgot about the disk in the freezer (wonder what my wife thought when she opened the door???) Hope she didn't throw it away. I have been so busy with some other things, it slipped my mind. That's what happens when you get to my age. 

Guess I'll have to drag it out and see what happens. I do have a USB mounting device that I can use to plug it in. I have already replaced the old HDD with a new one and it's working just fine. Too late tonight so will try it in the morning and let you know how it goes - I'm not holding my breath as I think it is too far gone to resurrect.

[Farmtalk]

I also have an Acer Aspire One, have had it since May 2009. I have beat the crap out of it from just being ditzy and dropping it, but it has held well. It needs a new screen because about 1/4 of it blacked out a few months ago, but everything else works fine. I have saved everything on my flash drive that I wouldnt want to lose.

[W3DRM]

Well, after several days of being in the freezer the results were the same as before - NADA - NOTHING - ZILCH... 

When initially powering up, the drive sounds like it is going through a series of seeks to find the boot sector on the drive. Unfortunately, the drive never gets to a point to be recognized. So, looks like all is lost on this HDD. As I mentioned, I did have it backed-up, except for a short period of time before it died - THANK GOODNESS FOR ROUTINE BACKUPS!!

[C5250]

Well, after several days of being in the freezer the results were the same as before - NADA - NOTHING - ZILCH... 

That's because most, if not all, drives these days have hydrostatic bearings. The ancient freezer trick doesn't work on drives with hydrostatic bearings.

[Mark / Ohio]

I bought a laptop cooler today and so far like what I see.



http://www.officemax.com/technology/computer-accessories/notebook-computer-accessories/product-prod3291094

I decided I could power it from a spare USB powered hub I have laying around but instead found the power supply for the hub has the correct voltage, plug size, and spare amp capacity to operate it directly.  It has dual fans and a thumb wheel to adjust the speed of the fans.  I have it set at about 3/4 rpm at the moment.  CPU temps are averaging 15-20°F cooler and the hard drive is 10°F cooler with inside ambient temps still around 72-74°F.  

Without Cooler:



With Cooler:



FWIW, I've also noticed since I've been paying more attention the last few days the mother board temps are displaying somewhat intermittent, especially Temp 1.  When they both are displaying they match up pretty closely together.  The hard drive and CPU temps are solid though.  Not sure if it is a bad connection, flaky thermistors, or maybe they are just low priority for when the system is not monitoring other things.  The monitoring priority theory probably being wishful thinking.  

I also decided it was a good time to shut it down and vacuum the keyboard and vents.  I really could not see any dust buildup from the last time on the vents.  With the dual fans pulling air through I imagine more dust will show up and will have to keep a closer eye on it.

Now the key will be how long the fans on the cooler hold up running 24/7.  I'm hoping by not running them full speed that it will help extend their life some.

[W3DRM]

Mark, that looks promising and it also gives you a tilt to the keyboard. I need that as my netbook sits on a shelf that is about head height so I have it propped up with a small cardboard box. That also gives me a little better ventilation under the unit but the fans would be much more efficient. I'm impressed with the temp changes you are showing. Will look around here to see what i can find. I too have a USB hub that is self-powered so could do the same thing you did with the fans. COSTCO had a similar model on sale a month or so back They may still have it and will look the next time I'm there.

As for my old Acer disk, I have been looking around for recovery software. I found a software package "Find and Mount" that is supposed to restore partitions. Am currently running it on the old acer HDD. I can hear the drive doing something but it may take some extended period of time to give me any results. The basic test showed the HDD was okay. Not sure what that means except that is looks like the Master Boot Record was corrupted which is why the system can't recognize the drive itself. I know this is wishful thinking on my part but I'm going to do whatever I can to find out what happened to the drive. I've been reading quite a bit on HDD failures and see that if a virus gets into the boot sector and runs it can diable the drive but really not destroy the actual data on it. Am going to see if i can restore just he MBR and perhpas get some of the data off of the drive itself. Mechanically and electrically, it appears to be just fine. I never did see any evidence of any virus being detected so am not sure what it could be.

The link to Find and Mount is: http://www.findandmount.com

Will post the results of this test here in this thread. It's been running now for about 45 minutes.

[linuxfreak]

Another good bit of recovery software I've used over the years starting with the old MFM and RLL drives in my old XT and 386 machines is Spinrite from Gibson Research. Helped recover trashed drives on a system I ran for a BBS back in the late 80's early 90's. Took a while to run back then, but cpu's were slower and so were the drives. 

http://www.grc.com/spinrite.htm

George

[Cienega32]

SpinRite is still around?! That was a necessity back in those days!

[Cienega32]

I bought a laptop cooler today and so far like what I see.

I just bought that cooler today after reading your results. I have a 12 cell batt in my HP DV1000 so I don't really need the tilt but the cooling seems outstanding. I've never had my drive under 45C and it's hit 37C so far and it's definitely cooler overall.

[Sigdigit]

cool.

[Mark / Ohio]

cool.

That was the goal.   

[W3DRM]

Mark,

Your last post reminded me that I did not report the results of running Find and Mount on my ACER HDD. It never succeeded in even finding the drive to mount. I also purchased and installed SpinRite with the same results. My old drive is just dead and it looks like there is no hope in resurrecting it. I'm not about to spend the big bucks having it restored by one of the data restoration services. I looked into one of them and the price was a little over $1000 and possibly more depending on what they had to do to restore the data. It just isn't worth that kind of money for less than a week's worth of data.

Am also thinking about getting a laptop cooler of some kind so my netbook runs a little cooler. I'm in the 45C range now but everything seems to be running fine at the moment.

[SlowModem]

For constant service, wouldn't a solid state hard drive work better?

[Mark / Ohio]

For constant service, wouldn't a solid state hard drive work better?

My understanding was originally the solid state drives had a shorter life with all the reading and writing and near constant activity of weather software.  But maybe that is no longer the case? 

[Bushman]

For constant service, wouldn't a solid state hard drive work better?

My understanding was originally the solid state drives had a shorter life with all the reading and writing and near constant activity of weather software.  But maybe that is no longer the case? 

That's an urban myth.   SSHDs have special algorithms to manage I/O that allow long life.  http://www.storagesearch.com/ssdmyths-endurance.html for an interesting read. (No pun intended)

[W3DRM]

For constant service, wouldn't a solid state hard drive work better?

My understanding was originally the solid state drives had a shorter life with all the reading and writing and near constant activity of weather software.  But maybe that is no longer the case? 

That's an urban myth.   SSHDs have special algorithms to manage I/O that allow long life.  http://www.storagesearch.com/ssdmyths-endurance.html for an interesting read. (No pun intended)

Yes, a good read! So, the salesman at Best Buy who sold me my replacement HDD for the ACER Netbook was correct! He tried to sell me a new SATA SSD. It was a 160GB drive but had a price of around $180, if I remember correctly. I told him I thought they weren't good for use in a system that was going to be used in a 24/7 environment. He said - that's just a myth. I didn't believe him and bought the SATA HDD instead for a lot less too. Maybe I should have listened to him...

Thanks for sharing that link. I'll remember it next time I need to buy a replacement drive.