May the force be with you mate.

I never had an issue with boot manager or CMOS seeing it in the near 8 months I've had it... not until Friday afternoon: when it effing-well died without warning. 

However, it's funny you mention how some Seagate drives have issues with the 'boot manager missing'... the new 500 gig I got didn't show the new installation of Vista Home Premium in the boot preferences screen.  Luckily, I was still able to boot up cos I had changed Win 7 to the default OS/it's HDD to first boot when the previous drive died   Anyhow, I fixed it by installing a 3rd party boot manager proggie and added the new OS that way... once detected I removed the app and I'm in business.

Yeah, I'll look into it... who knows, I might be able to save myself a bit of cash if I can get it running again and/or retrieve the data.  Funny thing is, when I disconnect/reconnect the powere adapter, I can hear it firing up and physically running... so that would suggest the platters are fine and rather that it's a circuitry thing. 

Oh well. I'll soon find out.

For sure, losing yours the way you did would have sent me ballistic and looking for blood.  Sadly, we're on opposite sides of the World, otherwise I'd have loaned you my spare rig until you could replace yours.... which hopefully will be very soon now.  While it can be useful in the short term to access reference materials, etc, it'd have to be a pain in the arse having to go out to use public machines in libraries and the like on a daily or regular basis  So here's hoping you're soon set up again with a rig of your very own again

     I've taken to heart some of the things said in the forums of late. Going to Best Buy or Staples, where I bought my last machine and paying nearly $800.00 for it, I thought was a pretty good deal. The original price $999.99. It was discounted because that particular model had been discontinued. It was a decent rig. HP Pavilion with 2 gigs of ram, 400 gig SATA HD, Intel dual core processor at 2.66 gigahertz that could be safely overclocked at 3.01 gigahertz. Could have upgraded to 4 gigs of ram, installed a second HD, in this case it would have been my XP drive which is a standard ATA at 250 gigs. Took the power supply from 250W to a cool 500W easily. Even had an external HD at 300 gigs plus a 19" Hi-Def widescreen LCD.

     Anyway...next one is by the piece. The mobo, processor, video and audio cards (no cheap shit). Not going to do a RAID setup I don't think because the dual boot is more to my liking. I won't give up my XP but I don't want Vista again. I'll go with Win7. I like doing custom builds. I'm looking into ways to build a custom case with 1/4 inch smoked plexi. I know a ground plane is needed for obvious reasons. That's no problem. An aluminum plate as a base, four supports and a frame up top is all that's needed. Front cover, sides and rear cover are all smoked plexi. This is not a tower or it could be...I don't know yet. I'm still running it through my head.  

Look at Newegg.com first, buddy!

They're one helluva lot cheaper in most cases!

I know...that's what I meant by taking things to heart. The kind of rig I had probably would have cost me like 4 or 5 bills as opposed to close to a thousand. I never knew Newegg existed prior to coming to WC. I figure I could build a decent rig for say 8 bills and get a lot of bang for my buck. I paid a lot of attention to the prices quoted in some threads. I was very impressed.

After recovery I reformatted disk and it has never crashed since but I no longer trust it really and don't use firewire for backups and storage either.

Yeah, I had a look but don't think it'll be the tool for the job, well not for me anyway.... the trial only allows you to preview files but not save them, and 2 reviewers say it is painfully slow, not worth the money.  Thanks for the link/thought, however,  but I'll look elsewhere, I think.

I just hate it when sh!tty things happen to really good people.

I'm frustrated. The last start panel, though I liked it, was all over the place. No telling how it would it have sized for different folks. In case you haven't noticed, I was trying to capture the 'retro advertising' look with the odd shapes. Keeping it in line with the 'atomic curried cabbage' idea.

I redid the start panel and made it more workable while still trying to keep the theme.  Let me know what you think. I 2want to get this part right before I move on. SOrry for the delay. Back and shoulders acting up againa nd they got me on new meds. But this is my only project until I complete it.

Looks good Po!

I like the left one more, the colors are really in keeping with the font and retro/deco look.

I think the buttons on the task bar would look better upside down...more like a 'brown bowl'.

I'm sorry about the shoulders/back, Po'. But you know that.

And I hate it when people do shitty things.

If the manufacturer hadn't kept my external drive overseas for six months and not sent it back with the issue unresolved, I'd have moved on sooner and would have had a new external drive for my backups months ago, meaning I would not have the issue of having to recover data from a sick or terminal HDD.

So yeah, I hate it when people do shitty things... like it takes 6 months to decide to do nothing! 

Won't buy any of their crap again.

Yup, still looks good and in keeping with the theme idea... I like it. 

I hear ya, Po`.  I too suffer with neck, back and shoulder pain (hips and knees as well) so I know what it's like to have days when things don't come together so well because of it. Worse still, due to a big gov't hullabaloo about prescription drugs, I'm having difficulty finding a doctor these days who will prescribe halfway decent pain relief... paracetamol as best offer is hardly adequate, but that's another story.

So anyway, go at your own speed and don't worry about taking your time with this, there are no deadlines and we appreciate your efforts in difficult circumstances.

Great. The people who need my help live impossibly far away, starkers being treated with a med better used to break a fever. Paracetamol is Tylenol. That's all they can do? Well that's pathetic. Truly pathetic. Hope that SOB falls into my hands someday. I'll give him a few lessons in pain management, Mark.

Now I hear my other son will be moving to Israel. With an Ahmadinejad in the world. Perfect.

Yup, it's pathetic orright... I might just as well be popping M&M's.  I also suffer with restless leg syndrome and muscle cramps at night when trying to sleep... I used to be able to get Antenex (a derivative of Valium) to help with that, but not any more. Instead I get told to walk more... yeah, right, being that I'm often mobility challenged due to chronic back and hip pain, I have more chance of moving mountains.  Besides, I used to suffer with restless legs back when I was still reasonably active, so it's more likely the result a nuerological condition caused by spinal issues.

Just like every other scumbag who wanted to stay in power, rigged the vote so he couldn't lose... even though he most likely did.  I see civil war erupting there soon if he doesn't use his Republican Guards to wipe out all those who are against him, which is likely, so it'll be overtones of Saddam Hussein all over again.  Israel is pretty adept at looking after itself, so hopefully your son(s) will be safe.

I'll get it done.

In April they told me vicodin and oxycontin were the wrong meds for my pain. So they started me on neurontin. 45 days into it I started stuttering like a fool. SO they stopped it...cold..and started lyrica..which they stopped cold after 7 days and started me on topomax and tramidol. And JOY of JOY..I go for a double nerve block this Thursday.  The last two nerve blocks took me 36 hours to get over. I am SO looking forward to the double.