Prepare the probe ship

[dolari]

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There is something really wrong with my laptop and desktop. It's not a virus, but something is killing my hard drives. I've had to completely reinstall my system so many times in that last few months on both my systems, I just figured I was "tinkering" too hard.

However, today, the laptop just up and froze. After trying to find some NTFS diagnostic tools that would run outside of Windows (NTFSDOS, God bless you), I managed to get CHKDSK to run and actually scan the entire disk instead of just checking the files and the disk directly underneath them. The laptop has been stuck at 56% for several hours although it just popped up to 58%.

It makes me think the main computer's hard drive may be going out, and that the memory errors I'm getting aren't me pushing the memory too hard, but the hard drive there going out as well. Which sucks. The 80GB main drive is only three years old, and the laptop's drive is less than a six months old.

Anyways, when it's all said and done, what I should do is put FAT32 back on these machines, and Scandisk the hell out of them. When my 400MB drive back in the day started giving me trouble, it would find new sectors every single pass through scandisk. So I just kept it on a batchfile loop, so it ran ans scanned all night long. When I woke up, I'd lost about 40MB in bad sectors...but it never found another one after that. And with the bad sectors mapped out, nothing ever got put on those problem areas.

What I need are new drives. But that's a long time from now....

Oh, all last week, I watched James Bond movies. :) I'd never really seen them before. My mom was really into them, and I caught one or two, but always throught he was pretty chauvinistic and the Bond Girls were pretty flighty. The first one I saw in it's entirety though was Moonraker, which my mom took me to, because she wanted to see it. I was bored through most of it, until they got into space.

A couple of years ago, I caught it on TV, and really watched it. I got into the globe hopping in it, from California (via France) to Venice to Rio de Janero and finally space...but I was really impressed by Dr. Goodhead (although ot impressed at her name :) ). Despite her woeful lack of emoting, I thought she was really more of a partner to Bond than simply eye candy. I figured there might be more so this month, I actually sat down and watched a LOT of the movies.

They're really damned good. :D I dig the constant globe hopping, and espionage, although those Europeans filmmakers need to realize that "Being American" does not equal "Louisiana."

And while some of them have the Eye Candy Give Bond Some Sex When He Demands It girls, most (especially the ones from the late 70s up) actually have Bond Girls who work along side him and complement him, instead of being trophies.

After seeing a million Roger Moore movies, two Timothy Dalton movies, one George Lazenby movie, one Sean Connery movie and one pseudo Sean Connery movie, I've decided I like Roger Moore best.

In the one movie I saw Sean in, he was a little too womanizing for my tastes, and while Roger had his share of Bond Girls, I think his time during Women's Lib kept the women in more active roles, and out of the sack with him. George Lazenby...well...he came across as a big softy Someone to take on a date, versus on a secret mission. And while Timothy Dalton had great focus and drive...he lacked a little compassion. I couldn't believe him in some of the "treat the girls on the Queen's bill" scenes they had him go through.

Now I wanna see some more Sean Connery - too many people say he's too good for me to dismiss in just 1 and 1 half movies. I'd REALLY like to see some Pierce Brosnan. He was born and bred to be James Bond....

Comments

[drkbish.livejournal.com]

My thoughts!

Personally, Moore was my least favorite Bond. I only liked a couple of his films... and Moonraker was NOT one of them. Moonraker was just TOO damn unrealistic (kinda funny to say about a Bond film, but true). My personal favorite Moore Bond film was For Your Eyes Only (when they finally got back to following Fleming's stories) and his first one, Live and Let Die.

A lot of people give Timothy Dalton shit, but I loved The Living Daylights. He was actually the closest one to how Fleming originally wrote Bond.

As for Sean Connery... the three of his I'd recommend are the classic Bonds: From Russia With Love, Goldfinger, and Thunderball.

Finally... Brosnan does make a damn good Bond. It's too bad that with one or two exceptions, he's been given crap to work with...

[jenndolari.livejournal.com]

I liked Moonraker mainly cause it was the first one I saw. :) Although for me, a lot of the Spectre stuff is over the top and silly for me. The Living Daylights was good and so was Live and LEt Die (I really dug Live and Let Die).

I did see Thunderball, which was really good...I also saw Never say Never Again...which was...well...Thunderball. :)

[drkbish.livejournal.com]

You actually see SPECTRE a lot more in the movies than you do in the books. Throughout the books, the main villain organization was SMERSH (which was referenced briefly in Living Daylights), which was a brutal KGB counter-espionage unit. However, near the end of Fleming's life, the Cold War thawed somewhat so he created SPECTRE as a less nationalistic threat. SPECTRE was only shown in three books, and Blofeld died at the end of the third one. The only SPECTRE books were Thunderball, On Her Majesty's Secret Service (which actually is supposedly the most faithful book to movie translation), and You Only Live Twice.

[hemlock-martini.livejournal.com]

The early Moore films are his best. He had this great edge to him where he could go from suave to brutally psycho at the drop of a hat--that was his thing, especally in "Man with the Golden Gun." But the late 70's/80's Moore Bonds played up the goofy gadgety angle and just weren't very good.

I never thought Dalton did a bad job per se, I enjoyed seeing his portrayal as a kid, but for whatever reason I've never revisited his Bond era.

The Brosnan era have all been good-to-passable, with the exception of "The World Is Not Enough." Avoid that one like the plague. I've never seen a movie with such wasted potential. If you find you like the Connery era, then "Goldeneye" seems like a return to form; a lot of people bash it but I love it--it's the quintissential modern Bond, AND the badguys are Russians.

My favorite Bond movie is still "You Only Live Twice," though I'd like to think it's because it's a fun film and not because of any latent Japanophilism.

[jenndolari.livejournal.com]

>The early Moore films are his best. He had this great edge to him where he
>could go from suave to brutally psycho at the drop of a hat--that was his
>thing, especally in "Man with the Golden Gun."

I really really REALLY liked that about him. He'd be suave and debonair one minute, stone cold killer the next. And Man with the Golden Gun was GREAT.

[fragment00.livejournal.com]

wait. what's this about louisiana????

[jenndolari.livejournal.com]

Guy Hamilton and Richard Lester (directors of the James Bond movies and directors for Superman 2 and 3 (Guy was gonna do Superman 1 until Richard Donner took over)) have a tendency to show Americans as podunk backwards hillbillies. Look at the "East Houston" stuff in Superman II and watch that Louisiana Sherrif in one of the Moore 007 movies. Podunk backwards hillbillies.

[drkbish.livejournal.com]

Two of them, actually. I believe that same sheriff encountered Bond while vacationing in the Orient in The Man With the Golden Gun.

(It's been a while, so I could be mistaken.)

James Bond is iconic

[primalsoul.livejournal.com]

after watching all of the Bond movies do yourself a favor and go back and watch the Austin Powers stuff again it sort of makes the satire a little more "deep" in a way.

[lovelyangel.livejournal.com]

I recommend you visit Wikipedia's Entry On James Bond for good history, analyses, trivia, etc. There is a table which links to Wikipedia entries on each of the Bond movies; each of those entries is quite interesting.

Since AMC ran Bond movies all last week, I got to watch sections of many of the movies -- although not in widescreen, darn it. They also ran the Bond Girls Are Forever documentary. The Bond movies are reflections of their times, so attitudes towards women have changed over the course of the series. I generally take that into consideration. Even in early Bond movies where women were sex objects, they oftentimes were unusually liberated and independent for their time.

Heck... I'd throw myself at Sean Connery, too. :D

My personal take is that Sean Connery is the best Bond -- the right balance of sexy, subtle, intense, and funny. I think Brosnan would be right in there -- had he been given the best material -- which he wasn't. So those are my 1, 2 picks. I've never warmed up to Moore for some reason.

[jenndolari.livejournal.com]

>All of the original novels take place in the late 1950s and 1960s. That's
>where he belongs, in the world of Aston Martins and SPECTRE and memorable
>villians. Nowadays, its just hard to take that character and adapt him to
>modern times.

I coudln't get into the Spectre stuff. It was so...Dr. Evil. I guess cause I saw Superfriends and Dr. Evil before I saw Spectre, I just giggle when I see Blofeld. :)

But yeah, he hasn't fared very well recently, has he?

[amw.livejournal.com]

Roger Moore is the master. Most Bond afficionados don't like him because he was overly smarmy and his movies were overly gadgetified, but i reckon that's the essence of Bond! For more Moore goodness, check out "Ffolkes" or "North Sea Hijack" (same movie, different name for different release zones). It's like all the smarmiest, most chauvinistic parts of Bond thrown into a wonderful 80s anti-terrorist flick. It's hilarious. Moore is like the template for Travolta and Affleck. Go the smarmy men :-D

As far as the other Bonds go, i enjoyed Timothy Dalton and Pierce Brosnan. I find Sean Connery hard to swallow because the movies are all so ancient. He just looks like some guy who should be tap dancing in Mary Poppins or something. I don't remember Lazenby much. The one bad thing about the newer Bond flicks is that there's no Cold War. It's hard to take a spy seriously when there's no real baddies. I guess you can have criminal masterminds or North Korea, but it's not really the same.

[jenndolari.livejournal.com]

>I find Sean Connery hard to swallow because the movies are all so
>ancient.

One thing I can't really swallow in these movies is Spectre. Everytime I see Blofeld and his cohorts, I think "MEANWHILE, AT THE COUNCIL OF DOOM!" < /badsuperfriendsvoice >

>The one bad thing about the newer Bond flicks is that there's no Cold
>War. It's hard to take a spy seriously when there's no real baddies. I
>guess you can have criminal masterminds or North Korea, but it's not
>really the same.

Yeah, I noticed that. It was one thing to go up against the Russians...it's something else to go up against One Crazy Man...or a vague terrorist group....

[kisai.livejournal.com]

nay, FAT32 is bad. FAT32 has no journaling ability so if something gets damanged, the entire file or directory is gone. NTFS can reply it's journal to repair most problems.

However...

If there is even one bad sector on a hard drive replace it, because what happens over time is that you'll see the bad sectors "spread" . Some peoples machines I've seen in the last two months, the bad sectors have two patterns "one spot" usually near the inner track where the boot sector, partition table and FAT32 filesystem is, if the bad sector is in the FAT, then all the files are kaput. Or the bad sectors are in clumps of repeated patterns.

The latter indicates physical damage, jarring. The former indiciates wear. Usually the most read/written to section of the drive is the filesystem table. Somehow a bad sector forms here when the drive is shut down or loss-of-power while writing, causing it to gradually get worse till it's unusable.

Also environmental factors are REALLY common.
1. Electrical problems, Buy a UPS, man peoples computers just up and die and we have to replce the power supply and motherboard, and sometimes the CPU and RAM.
2. Dust, lots of dust = heats up like mad = cpu electromigration = permenent damage. Best solution here is to blow the dust out every 3 months if it collects a lot of dust (people who have pets or people who smoke tend to have the most amount of death-by-overheating)
3. Wear. Contrary to popular believe, turning your computer OFF is no better than putting it in standby. moving parts wear out by being constantly on, BUT there is MORE wear by them being stopped and started frequently. Computers should only be turned off for extended periods of time (ie, going away for days). CRT monitors and LCD backlights have a limited lifespan, though the lifespan is in the 7+ years department, the degaussing coils in the CRT will wear out if you turn the monitor on and off a lot (rarely seen, usually the power supply in the CRT just goes *BANG* before that.) the LCD backlight usually will burn out after a long time, but there is a thing called a FL inverter which is a cheap part that converts the voltage that usually wears out before the backlight burns out (20$ part, just hard to get.)

So I'd suggest if you use your computer frequently, just don't let it turn off. If the hard drive is dying replace it before it's too late.

Note... you can usually get away with lower-grade hard drives in external drive enclosures since the write-caching is disabled when you use external hard drives. If bad sectors form on external hard drives (which almost always run FAT or FAT32 so Mac's can also read them) usually just the partition dies, but the rest is usuable. I spent nearly half a day running various troubleshooters on this one one samsung drive that was in the IoGear external drive enclosure, it would always fail the first partition, so I ran everything I could throw at it and discovered that the onboard cache of the drive seems to be the culprit (testing it always made the drive crash the computer.) So I put this drive into a different computer, zeroed it, and then installed linux on it, since I don't value the drive to be worthy of storing my precious data on it. The drive may be perfectly fine, and just the diagnostic software is unpredictable. At any rate I partitioned the drive so the first 2GB of the drive was just a /tmp partition, and it always boots off the second partition, the first 2GB was the same partition area that the diagnostics told me "timed out" after doing tests on the cache. Also was consistant with windows not picking up the first partition when it was formated fat32.

There's my long horror story about fat32.

[jenndolari.livejournal.com]

I'll give you the NTFS journalling. FAT32's "fixing" of files was pretty pathetic and in all the scandisks, NTFS had no problem recovering the bad file. My problem with NTFS (other than being nigh impossible to fix if you can't get Windows up) seems to be that it doens't really mark out bad parts of the disk (anytime I write a new file to the disk, I get the same freezups that CHKDSK ends up fixing on a reboot).

This laptop's HDD is physically damaged. And I know why it's damaged (oops - but man, LCD screens take a licking!). If I could just get that part "marked out" I might be able to save the drive till such time as I can get a new HDD.