Bad hdd! No cookie for you! · [May 11, 03:49 PM]

Yesterday I found out that the harddisk on my laptop refuses to stop working. First thing I did was to use Windows Restore software to bring it back to a previous safely working point. This ended up with an unbootable windows and the computer froze in a weird way. Later I was able to boot the computer with Knoppix (a live stand-alone Linux distro that doesn’t need hdd) and save my precious stuff (Mathematica notebooks, TeX files, documents, and pictures) on an external harddisk. I noticed that I was able to copy files only the laptop was tilted at 30 degrees[*]. I tried in vain to reinstall windows or even linux afterwards but they would both freeze in a stupid way in the middle of the install.

To cut a long story short, Dell will deliver a new hdd tomorrow and I can finally finish up the “self-correcting quantum operations” and prepare my presentations.
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[*] Sina [The one who made “something” with which you could calculate the area under a curve using a bunch of capacitors when he was 12] once told me that certain problematic hdds would work if you tilted them. I also subjected the laptop to various other physical processes but only tiliting actually worked.

Comment

  1. I thought you were going to get a Mac? I just did… so far… so good! ;-)

    — Julia · May 12, 05:51 PM · #

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