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Did A Solar Flare Hose My Drive?

Solar Flare

I know what you’re probably thinking. Did Phil forget to take his meds today? Let me explain.

Yesterday I thought I would try my hand at upgrading to Vista. But first, being the conscientious geek that I am, I tried to mirror my current drive to a brand new drive.

I plopped the new drive carefully (as carefully as one can plop anything) into the machine, and the system wouldn’t boot. So I retreated, pulling the old drive out and putting everything back the way it was.

Or so I thought.

The machine still wouldn’t boot. I ran the entire suite of Dell diagnostics tests on it. I also ran CHKDSK /F on it. Nothing. I ran out and bought a new SATA cable. Nothing. As far as any software test could tell, the drive was fine. It was being recognized by the BIOS, it just wouldn’t boot.

I plopped my new drive (again carefully) into the primary spot and was able to perform a clean install on it. So my machine can boot on my new drive with Vista, but not my old drive with Windows XP. How strange! At least I can access my old drive from Vista in order to copy important files over to the new drive.

As an aside, why do we say we perform installs? It’s not like anyone is watching, nor would they really want to. Who is being entertained?

Today, I was still dealing with the aftermath of this drive failure when I chatted up Micah on Skype. He remarked that everyone in our company seems to be having computer issues today. Jon’s having problems with his sound card, Pat misplaced his laptop, and Micah’s USB flash-drive failed. He says,

Must be something in the air. Maybe there was a huge solar flare or something.

Then it struck me.

Light Bulb

I remembered reading that in fact there is a huge solar flare headed towards Earth. Well there you go, say no more. That explains it. A solar flare hosed my drive. Right now I am trying to mirror my new drive over my old drive to see if it’ll boot up with Vista. If it does, then it would seem to me that somehow Windows got corrupted on my old drive. Perhaps a solar particle flipped the AllowBootAndJustWork bit to 0. Just my luck.

In any case, it’s a good thing I have a couple of backup machines to blog from.

What others have said

Requesting Gravatar... Marcos Dec 15, 2006 4:08 PM
# re: Did A Solar Flare Hose My Drive?
Did you install your SATA driver on your new disc before doing anything else. I remember I had the same problem last year when I tried to restore my drive. Since Vista doesn't require the driver on the disc it will recognize your drive.
Requesting Gravatar... Jon Galloway Dec 15, 2006 4:22 PM
# re: Did A Solar Flare Hose My Drive?
Man, I am just fed up with solar radiation.

I mean, I get it. It's hard up in the sun. You've got the pressures of constricting magnetic field lines due to differential rotation rates of a superheated plasma; you've got a your nuclear flux, not to mention the crushing force of gravity that's just itching to go white dwarf like it was Danny DeVito in a toaster oven.

But twisted flux lines or no, you subatomic particles are not welcome here. Especially you charged ones! Now, some might miss the Northern Lights, but I say it's time for us to draw a line in the interplanetary sand and stand up to the sun. This injustice must not stand! Send your stream of particles to other planets if they don't have the guts to say no, but we're putting you on notice!

And don't try to slip a neutrino past us! We're on to you!
Requesting Gravatar... Haacked Dec 15, 2006 4:26 PM
# re: Did A Solar Flare Hose My Drive?
Jon, you wouldn't know a neutrino if it effortlessly passed through miles of solid earth into your underground hypersensitive water neutrino detection apparatus and just happened to collide with a particle just enough to be detected.
Requesting Gravatar... Jon Galloway Dec 15, 2006 5:03 PM
# re: Did A Solar Flare Hose My Drive?
That doesn't make any sense. If it's detected in my hypersensitive water neutrino detection apparatus, don't you think I'd be notified? If no, what's the point of constructing and staffing the aforesaid detection apparatus?
Requesting Gravatar... lb Dec 15, 2006 9:50 PM
# re: Did A Solar Flare Hose My Drive?
i'm with the J man on this one: the sun is over-rated and we would be better off without it thank you very much.

and re:
"As an aside, why do we say we perform installs? It’s not like anyone is watching, nor would they really want to. Who is being entertained?"

LOL.

But on second thoughts: "not like anyone is watching" ?? Hello?? turn timesnapper on. Someone is always watching. ;-)
Requesting Gravatar... Steve Harman Dec 16, 2006 10:42 AM
# re: Did A Solar Flare Hose My Drive?
It's not like anyone is watchng...
Well, apparently some one seems to think he doesn't need to wear his tin-foil hat today.

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