smeezekitty wrote:

120V hurts pretty bad. I can't even imagine 230-240

Believe me, 230V hurts! 😊 😵

smeezekitty wrote:

AidanExamineer wrote:

I remembered a silly happening. […]
Show full quote

I remembered a silly happening.

I was replacing a user's computer, and they told me I didn't need to back up their files because they'd already moved them to their network drive. The swap went fine, their laptop was almost immediately reimaged to be given to somebody else.

A week goes by, and they call us saying their files are missing. We scramble all over trying to find the files, realize the laptop was reimaged and we have no backups, and prepare to apologize.

But then we check the user's network drive. It turns out they clicked and dragged everything from their desktop into the network drive. But since the Recycle Bin and My Computer were also selected (and you can't move those), a batch of shortcuts to their files were created in the network drive. Instead of copying a few GB of desktop files, they copied a few KB of shortcuts.

Didn't work out well for the user, and now I make it a point to not believe anybody when they tell me they backed up their own files.

Who keeps GB of files on their desktop?

More people than you can even possibly imagine. Unfortunately for me, this includes my wifey. 😊

(Deleted)

8086-ProGamer wrote:

smeezekitty wrote:

120V hurts pretty bad. I can't even imagine 230-240

Believe me, 230V hurts! 😊 😵

It kills. Without the leaked current relays, which are a must in every circuit for years, it simply and surely just kills. 110V is not that different in that matter too.

Human body is considered to be as a resistance of 2500 ohm and the limit current (current kills, not voltage) to be harmful to the human body is considered to be as 20mA. This means that, anything above 50V (50Hz AC) is considered harmful. Actually the effects also closely related to the where in the body is current passing thru (heart is bad) and the time you are in contact, but it really can kill, when the above mentioned superfast circuit breakers are not in place and you are in contact long enough (anything above 20mA can cause you to not being able to cut contact due to involuntary muscle tension).

tayyare wrote:

It kills.

Still here after at least 10 x 220v shocks in my life. 🤣 🤣 🤣
(one of them before the age of 12)

brostenen wrote:

tayyare wrote:

It kills.

Still here after at least 10 x 220v shocks in my life. 🤣 🤣 🤣
(one of them before the age of 12)

Same. That doesn't mean one shouldn't be careful with electricity.

brostenen wrote:

tayyare wrote:

It kills.

Still here after at least 10 x 220v shocks in my life. 🤣 🤣 🤣
(one of them before the age of 12)

Next time, try something bigger than 30mA (about 60V in 50Hz AC) for about 2-3 seconds. 😈

By the way, I'm smoking 1-1.5 packages a day for the last 25 years, and not died yet, so smoking does not kill. 🤣

Can kill != will definitely kill. Obviously mains shocks should be avoided. But deaths from getting zapped with the socket are realistically rare.

How often do you see electrocutions in the news?

A 220V won't kill if its just a short between fingers on the same hand/points on the same finger, which is probably the most common way to be zapped. It will kill if you are grounded and the current passes through the heart. Even then I don't think the heart is the preferred path for the current depending on how you are grounded and what part of the body touches the live wire.

smeezekitty wrote:

AidanExamineer wrote:

I remembered a silly happening. […]
Show full quote

I remembered a silly happening.

I was replacing a user's computer, and they told me I didn't need to back up their files because they'd already moved them to their network drive. The swap went fine, their laptop was almost immediately reimaged to be given to somebody else.

A week goes by, and they call us saying their files are missing. We scramble all over trying to find the files, realize the laptop was reimaged and we have no backups, and prepare to apologize.

But then we check the user's network drive. It turns out they clicked and dragged everything from their desktop into the network drive. But since the Recycle Bin and My Computer were also selected (and you can't move those), a batch of shortcuts to their files were created in the network drive. Instead of copying a few GB of desktop files, they copied a few KB of shortcuts.

Didn't work out well for the user, and now I make it a point to not believe anybody when they tell me they backed up their own files.

Who keeps GB of files on their desktop?

Damn near everyone.

Honestly, at my dad's work there is this salesman whose notebook was having all sorts of trouble and he blamed lack of space. Apparently whoever formatted it partitioned the HDD and moved the "My documents" folder to the other partition. This second partition was 90% free, but the system one had under 100MB of free space. Guess where gigabytes and more gigabytes of files were. Every PC I've ever formatted (not including mine) has too much stuff on the desktop... it is amazing oO

I have a lot of stuff on my desktop but they are mostly shortcuts.

Also I put two CD`s to drive, and when I using XP I tried to install 98 near him at setup I agree to configure my disk by setup and setup wipe out my entire 80gb disk of everything and that pain much. Other day I buyed new Athlon 1800+ and mainboard ECS K7S5A and I killed them, I only runned them once but I crushed some core on processor by cooler and that mb with cpu died, also I burned Athlon 1700+ on ECS K7VZA but mainboard survive this, after that I buyed Athlon 64 3200 with ASUS mainboard and I killed that by bad very cheap PSU. I saw friend used toothpaste on Athlon 1000 and overheated and burned him. After that I use Intel for years but I also killed LGA775 motherboard ASUS P5SD1 with Pentium 540 3.2, because I added pasive 8500GT and closed it in small case without fans and it died after one day.

Well, there is of course the classic joke:

I opened up Norton Commander, and saw that I have Drive C: on the left panel, and also on the right panel. So I thought - why do I need two C: drives? And erased one of them.

😜

I maintain a few PC's still, but have narrowed my request list significantly over time. Now it's close friends and family, including my ex girlfriends father. He still gets slaughtered by clickbate, adware, spyware etc when he is browsing the news and watching SKY or whatever. Usually every 12-16 months I get the call that his PC has slowed to a crawl, his homepage has changed and his anti-virus is going haywire or stopped working completely. I go round with a few beers and my repair kit and get to reformatting, maybe throw in an upgrade every now and then.

So last week I went to do this. I backed up his family photos and documents to his external 500GB drive and, after checking I had taken everything I needed, inserted the Windows XP disc ( he refuses to try anything newer but XP does everything he needs it to anyways ) and restarted his PC, booting from the CD. After the initial driver loading stage, I went to delete his partition of the boot drive in order to do a clean format. For SOME reason (perhaps the beer?) I thought his primary drive was partitioned. So I deleted the first partition, and then the second, before I realised I had just deleted his external drive...

... a chill went up my spine and I figured I had just binned 5 years worth of photos and documents, that he now will never see again. I couldn't tell him, I didn't have it in me. I simply installed XP and told him I needed to get a few more drivers from my own PC and would bring them tomorrow. When I got back I did some research into if it was possible to bring a deleted partition back, and I managed to figure it out. The next day I ran the software and with fingers crossed clicked "Try to recover partition" and boom, it was there. Managed to get everything back.

Pretty big mistake, perhaps I should stop drinking when working on other peoples computers. But it's the only thing that gets me through most times. My hands are built for building houses, not for fiddling with jumpers or SATA cables.

Still, there was a happy ending this time. Thank God!

Something a friend of mine did is worth mentioning. He bought himself an awesome new DELL 1440p IPS screen a few years back for around £450. I loved that monitor almost as much as he did, and he replayed lots of the games he had already finished because they just looked so good. His other hobby is fixing and improving air rifles / pistols. He buys graveyard air guns and either machines new parts himself or buys them in and brings these guns back to perfect condition and sells them on at a decent profit.

So a few months after buying his new screen he was putting together a gun he had re-conditioned which was a gas powered air pistol, and his wife always tells him "no shooting in the house", but his man cave is tucked away behind the stairs and this particular gun had a silencer. He keeps a box of rags under his computer desk so he can just fire into the box in order to test compression / set springs etc. So he loaded this gun, inserted the gas canister and fired .. but nothing happened. So he fired again and still nothing. As he brought the gun up to investigate, it fired ... straight through his brand new DELL screen. Apparently the gas had frozen the barrel and it had cooled down enough to release the pellet exactly as it was leveled with the monitor.

He got into major trouble from his wife that day.

smeezekitty wrote:

Who keeps GB of files on their desktop?

My DOS Games folder in 95.6 GB.

Getting back data from a drive that has had files deleted is relatively easy. Getting files back from a formatted drive is just as easy. Both are like ripping the contents pages out of a book - you just need software that can find the files without needing the contents or that can rewrite the contents. The best thing to do in either situation is to shut the machine down immediately to avoid new files being written to the drive and overwriting the sectors where the old data resides.

Recovering data from a drive that has suffered physical failure is also easy, if it's a controller issue and you can find a like-for-like replacement. If there was a head failure you need a cleanroom and a like -for-like replacement so you can transfer the platters into the working unit. I've never tried it in a normal room.

Recovering data from a drive where it has been zeroed or where the platters have been physically damaged: next to impossible.

... a chill went up my spine and I figured I had just binned 5 years worth of photos and documents, that he now will never see again. I couldn't tell him, I didn't have it in me. I simply installed XP and told him I needed to get a few more drivers from my own PC and would bring them tomorrow. When I got back I did some research into if it was possible to bring a deleted partition back, and I managed to figure it out. The next day I ran the software and with fingers crossed clicked "Try to recover partition" and boom, it was there. Managed to get everything back.

I hate that feeling. Kind of like when you accidentally overwrite an important file 😊

So a few months after buying his new screen he was putting together a gun he had re-conditioned which was a gas powered air pistol, and his wife always tells him "no shooting in the house", but his man cave is tucked away behind the stairs and this particular gun had a silencer. He keeps a box of rags under his computer desk so he can just fire into the box in order to test compression / set springs etc. So he loaded this gun, inserted the gas canister and fired .. but nothing happened. So he fired again and still nothing. As he brought the gun up to investigate, it fired ... straight through his brand new DELL screen. Apparently the gas had frozen the barrel and it had cooled down enough to release the pellet exactly as it was leveled with the monitor.

Ouch. Relevant video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXTLVQ1eiik

My DOS Games folder in 95.6 GB.

I mean on the desktop screen itself, not "desktop" as in desktop computer. I have 600+GB of data on my machine -- just don't keep it on the desktop folder.

Whew that is a lot of games though.

Getting back data from a drive that has had files deleted is relatively easy. Getting files back from a formatted drive is just as easy. Both are like ripping the contents pages out of a book - you just need software that can find the files without needing the contents or that can rewrite the contents. The best thing to do in either situation is to shut the machine down immediately to avoid new files being written to the drive and overwriting the sectors where the old data resides.

I recently used photorec to get data off of two corrupted SD cards. One was completely recovered and the other was probably about 75% recovered

I saw few times dead harddrives because are mounted too near each other, I also see here on vogons that hard drive mounting, why people mount hd`s with no space between them ? That deadly for them, I see two from Maxtor died that way and also from Seagate. I always mount hd`s far from each.