Why doofus needs to buy a new CD burner

[berelinde]

The "accidental damage" warranty on my 2-year-old computer expired yesterday.

 

This morning, I was backing up some data, changing CDs, and my cat jumped up on the desk, knocking a glass of seltzer water over and splashing the CD drive. I've got it opened up, hoping it dries out before it corrodes anything important, but I'm not optimistic.

 

*sigh* At least CD burners aren't terribly expensive.

[Miloch]

One of Murphy's Law's actually...

Everything will go wrong at one time...

1. When you least expect it;

2. When it causes the most difficulty; and

3. After any warranty expires.

Though in your case, maybe there is another corollary (4. When the cat is involved).

[berelinde]

I knew it was a mistake to name him Puck.

[cmorgan]

nope - you know very well that every kitten's middle name is Trouble

[TheWizard]

Being a hockey fan, I really like the name Puck for a cat.

 

And, oh yes, burners are dirt cheap nowadays. You can get a DVD burner (CD burners are so last century ) for $30. I hope the CD burner in your computer was the only piece of hardware that was damaged.

[berelinde]

Looks that way.

 

And it looks like it is completely fried. It just won't see any disk in there, no matter what I tell it to do. I'd hoped that it would be all right once it dried out a bit, but no joy.

 

The price of the drive isn't as bad as the hassle of installing new hardware: I hate that. Maybe I should price hard drives while I'm there. I'm at the 75% mark on my 80GB one, and it does make funny noises from time to time (thus, the frequent backups of all mod material).

[Smoketest]

I suggest running Spinrite from grc.com on your hard drive. It's cheap, fast, and infinitely better than anything you can get from Norton Bloatware. I've used it since the 1980s and recommend it to any serious tech, though you don't need to be a tech to use it.

 

Of course, it's a good idea to upgrade the drive, or offload some of your data if the drive is reaching capacity.

[TheWizard]

Ah! Spinrite! Steve Gibson at grc.com is the man! A little long-winded, but he knows his stuff, including hard drive tools and recovery. I definitely recommend Spinrite, although, your hard drive is still readable...for now...but hey, it never hurts to have the software "just in case."

[berelinde]

Spinrite sounds good, but it's going to have to wait until after the holidays. Frequent backups are a must anyway, since I'm adding material every day, so I had no choice about the CD burner.

 

And I agree that even if I'm going to need to upgrade the hard drive, it would be a good idea to purchase the software. Everything needs maintenance. I'm hoping the current hard drive can hold on another month, but I'm making lots of backups just in case. Spending $90 on myself right now with the holidays looming is probably not the way to keep my family happy...

[Miloch]

Ah! Spinrite! Steve Gibson at grc.com is the man! A little long-winded, but he knows his stuff, including hard drive tools and recovery.

Why all the bad press then?

 

http://groups.google.com/group/comp.dcom.x...aeee32323c2978e

http://grcsucks.com/unmaskinggibson.htm

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2001/06/25/st..._really_is_off/

 

US$90 for a hard disk utility doesn't seem all that cheap to me. I've never used or even heard of this program, and I'm not saying it's a bad deal necessarily. I just check everything out before using it.

[berelinde]

Alright. Putting even thinking about doing anything more substantial than backing up my hard drive off until after the holidays.

[Smoketest]

Ah! Spinrite! Steve Gibson at grc.com is the man! A little long-winded, but he knows his stuff, including hard drive tools and recovery.

Why all the bad press then?

 

http://groups.google.com/group/comp.dcom.x...aeee32323c2978e

http://grcsucks.com/unmaskinggibson.htm

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2001/06/25/st..._really_is_off/

 

US$90 for a hard disk utility doesn't seem all that cheap to me. I've never used or even heard of this program, and I'm not saying it's a bad deal necessarily. I just check everything out before using it.

Well, those are haters and you know haters are as guilty as fanboys as far as never being completely objective. Steve's personality gets him enemies as well as friends, and I do agree that he has a tendency to overreact to things.

 

I'm not saying Spinrite's a cure-all, because I had a drive fail on me years ago due to a bad seal, and Spinrite could do nothing about it (though it clued me in to the fact of a physical failure). I've gone years without running Spinrite and had no trouble. Still, I'd rather use it than anything Norton or the other copy cats produce, and typically bundle with a lot of unnecessary bloatware.

 

Anyway, it was merely a suggestion.

 

(BTW, I consider any software under $100 to be 'cheap'. At least in relation to things like Adobe Photoshop, Maya, or a number of other applications and operating systems. But if all you do is buy games, then I suppose $90 might seem like a lot.)

[Miloch]

Well, those are haters and you know haters are as guilty as fanboys as far as never being completely objective. Steve's personality gets him enemies as well as friends, and I do agree that he has a tendency to overreact to things.

Okaayy... but why do they hate either the person or the software? There's gotta be a reason. Personality? They've all met this guy and he pissed them off or something? If I judged all the software I use on the basis of developer personalities, I probably wouldn't be using *any* of it.

 

You gotta admit though, there are some pretty wacky statements on SpinRite's site:

NO OTHER UTILITY analyzes the surface of a drive WHILE IT CONTAINS DATA

Huh? I think even MS Scandisk does this, as does Norton Disk Doctor. It goes on to suggest Scandisk doesn't do it as well as SpinRite, but it still does it, thus invalidating the statement.

Still, I'd rather use it than anything Norton or the other copy cats produce, and typically bundle with a lot of unnecessary bloatware. But if all you do is buy games, then I suppose $90 might seem like a lot.

I'm looking at relative prices. Yes it's cheaper than Photoshop or Windows... but that's comparing a tool to a full-blown graphics suite or an operating system. And I know Norton is bloatware and not the best, but I'd hardly call it 'copy cat' since it started out for DOS in 1981 (compared with SpinRite's 1988, so which one is doing the copying? ). And Norton didn't really become bloatware until they sold out to Symantec in the 90s and some genius there decided it'd be a good idea to hog all your system resources and services for no real reason whatsoever. Anyway, you can get Utilities and SystemWorks including the antivirus, the hard drive tools and the whole bloated suite for less than US$90. I'm not recommending someone *do* that - I'm just saying... $90 for just one of those components is a lot. On the other hand, if your business is refurbishing hard drives or something and SpinRite is good for that, then $90 isn't much of an investment. But for an average end user, considering also you can probably get a new hard drive for that price or less... ehhh I dunno.

 

Anyway... I'm not ranting or dissing your suggestion or anything... this is all kinda heavy for Noobermeet I guess. The stuff I read about the product just made me curious.

[berelinde]

FYI, that CD burner, that was supposed to come in around $30, was, in fact $90. I sent boyfriend out to buy it, so I have no idea why he chose such an expensive model. He is far more computer savvy than I am, though, and generally a smart shopper, so I'm inclined to believe him when he said it was worth it.

 

Anyway, I'm hoping he'll put it in for me today. I don't do anything inside the box except clean the fan filter. Everything else is his job. Before he was part of the picture, I used to have to do all of it myself, and managed to replace a HD and a motherboard on the old computer without breaking anything. After spending ages trying to install a new modem only to find that I had selected the wrong configuration, however, I'm content to let him play with it.

[Miloch]

FYI, that CD burner, that was supposed to come in around $30, was, in fact $90. I sent boyfriend out to buy it, so I have no idea why he chose such an expensive model.

Probably is also a DVD burner. I can't imagine a desktop CD burner being that much... even laptop models aren't that much these days.