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[_kestrel_]

Thanks for your responses.  I took my stuff down to FAP and got it off the disc using the work computer.  ANd then emailed it to myself and saved it to a gmail account as well.  aAnd now I'm going to drive home and hopefully not hit anything and hopefully stay awake.  Relief=narcolepsy.

Comments

[aquietgirl]

Good to hear that the disc was readable!

Out of curiosity - and if you don't mind - what are the symptoms of the computer? (And my apologies if you've detailed them already; there are many ailing computers in my awareness these days!)

[_kestrel_]

The symptoms of my computer's death, or of this disc thing?

My computer turned itself off in the middle of the night, as it was sometimes wont to do. I went to turn it back on in the morning, and it informed me that it had no OS. Okay, I said. Reinstalling stuff. Cool. So I asked it more questions and it said that it had no hard drive. And then it started making horrible grinding noises. And I flipped out. And turned it off. And called Steve. And learned that the hard drive was able to resist even more extensive probing and was really and truly gone.

The CD was much easier. It said that it had one file folder and nothing else, but I could see those pretty lines of "Look, ma, I wrote information all over myself!" so I was hopeful (if terrified) as I drove it down to FAP.

[aquietgirl]

Wow - not fun! What kind of a system do you have? (I had an odd experience with an iBook, where it lost its startup disk, but after about half a dozen runs of Norton's disk utility stuff, magically realized that it hadn't lost the startup disk after all.)

I'm even more relieved on your behalf that you got the data from your CD! :-)

[rosewater]

FWIW: that grinding noise is probably the hard drive trying to spin up. Removing the hard drive, putting it in the freezer overnight (in a ziploc!), and then reconnecting it and starting up immediately can be a miracle fix. Not a cure, though -- the drive's still toast, but you can spin it up that way long enough to get your info off.

[athenalaughed]

Oh my dear god...sleep well. You've earned it.