Out Of Business..... Options

[tedstryk]

Well, it looks like I am out of business, at least for the time being. My computer suffered a catastrophic crash. I am a bit better prepared than when this happened a few years ago - more backups - but not everything is backed up (recent stuff). And I have no machine to work on. We had a big power outage today. When I rebooted, the hard drive acted funny, and then, at about 7:00 tonight, died. The recovery software I have is showing it as empty and partitioned (which is odd - my hard drive is not partitioned. I am working on some last ditch efforts before taking it to data recovery experts, but, assuming these efforts fail, I am without a functional computer. What I really hate is that my archive of family, friends, and landscape photography is mostly totally lost if I can't recover the data from the drive, as well as e-mails dating back to 1993. Ironically, I had ordered a 260 Gigabyte external drive to forever end my backup problems, and it shipped two days ago...It should be here any day now, and would have prevented loss of personal data in this. Ughhhh....

[deglr6328]

You might have some luck trying the freezer trick..... Or if it is the drive electronics that you suspect have been damaged you can order another hardrive of the EXACT same make and model and just swap the PCBs (its easy). I recently did this with a HD that didn't even spin up and to my utter shock it acutally worked.

[Guest_Richard Trigaux_*]

I already suffered this problem twice, so I understand your feeling.

So I insist upon everybody to make backups of everything they want to keep, even if it is a really tedious task (especially for emails, which have to be saved one per one, as Outlook Express seems unable to recover emails from a backup of its own files, even in the very improbable case we are able to locate these files). I do a backup every month, and it now requires two CDs. I also have an old hard drive that I use as a backup more frequently, so that even if my main drive is dead, I still have this one.

When my mother bought a computer (she knows nothing about it) I strongly recommended her to have windows and softs on the C: partition, and her files on the D: partition (even if most softs alway try to save data files each in the most improbable place such as in c:\program files). She also installed a CD burner, but seldom used it. When she had a software crash, she had no way but reinstalling windows in the C: partition, but she recovered all her data intact from the D: partition.

Once I had a window crash (thanks to a virus) and I had to reinstall windows, but I was able to boot on my windows installation disk and make a complete back up before reinstalling windows. But this is not possible on several laptop PCs which have "special" installation disks!!! The only problem I had was when reinstalling programs, as I did not saved the downloaded file! I had to beg for a CD of this program. So when you buy an (expensive) soft, alway: 1) have a CD backup 2)write the installation key on this CD!!

In your case tedstryk it seems that there was a survoltage or other power problem which broke your drive. It is very difficult to protect from this, and also from lightning. The only protection against lightning is to completelly disconnect the computer from both power line and phone line as soon as we hear thunder. There are some power protections which can be efficient, but only at a certain point: when lightning is close enough to make the power plugs spark, I think nothing can do.

But also it happens that Windows cannot bear a power cut. Once I lost a file like that, and had to run scandisk to purge any false entry. But bad softs too can play tricks, such as softs written in C:. This language can use indexes on the whole drive, so in case of any bad functionning it can write anywhere (anywhere will be in most case on the famous FAT, which index is near zero) and I had my first big crash like that. There is no protection against this, except... making backups.

To avoid any window problem, I tried Linux... but there are OTHERS problems there and I quickly prefered to come back to Windows!

[Bill Harris]

Ye golden rule: backup, and backup often. Nowadays, with CD r/w drives, that is so easy. As recently as 10 years ago, a data backup on a 250mB QIC tape took a couple of hours and was a major PITA.

That having been admonished, I don't recall the last time I backed up and need to do that ASAP.

Sorry for your loss...

--Bill

[Guest_Richard Trigaux_*]

Backing up with CDs can be tedious too, especially if we have much data (I have two CDs)
Today we have USB keys with flash memory, so it is very easy to backup data, so long as it don't exceed about 245-512 Mo. Hope the capacity of USB keys will increase.

[Nix]

Sorry to hear that man, that sucks. I hope you can recover your data. I also recently lost some things, some mosaics and such but not that much. I managed to do that while copying data to a new disk to prevent problems, just like you.

Nico

[Guest_PhilCo126_*]

O.K. Backup is really necessary ... but for total systems You should not only back-up but also try a restore from time to time!

[RNeuhaus]

It is bad that your computer had run problems. I use two backup methods:

1) I have two computers, I put anything that is not related to OS in a user directory so that I can do a FTP all contents from this computer to the other computer, every between two and four weeks.
2) The other, the smaller ones, I plug an USB memory to backup the most recent information in less than one week.

These are the fastest backup methods. If you have the Ethernet of 1 GB, the backup will fly!. The USB are even faster than CD and easier since it does not need to reformat.

Understand your feeling but the next fix computer, start to use the backup.

Rodolfo

[ljk4-1]

Very sorry about what happened, Ted. Perhaps some of the images and data you need are saved on this forum?

One of the two things I am always wary about with computers - their crashing and losing data and their components becoming obsolete and unreadable. Books may be "primitive", but you can still read a book that's a thousand years old without any special equipment (barring language barriers, of course).

[um3k]

I have 36gb worth of photographs, and about a third of them aren't backed up.

I'm going to back those up today.

[Chmee]

Yes, Always backup! I have a DVD burner and now I am up to 2 DVD's just to backup my files. Its my pictures and email that take up the most of it. 5GB's of pictures and 2GB of email (going back to 1993).

Anyway, Here is another tip. After you make a CD/DVD backup of your files, send a copy of it to a relative or friend in another location. That way if you have a fire/earthquake/hurricane at home which destroys BOTH your computer and disks, you still have that to fall back on. My "remote location" is my mothers house about 300 miles away and I give a copy maybe once every 6 months.

I have thousands of photos that are irreplaceable, so I am a little paranoid!

[Guest_Richard Trigaux_*]

Yes, Always backup!  I have a DVD burner and now I am up to 2 DVD's just to backup my files.  Its my pictures and email that take up the most of it.  5GB's of pictures and 2GB of email (going back to 1993).

Anyway, Here is another tip.  After you make a CD/DVD backup of your files, send a copy of it to a relative or friend in another location. That way if you have a fire/earthquake/hurricane at home which destroys BOTH your computer and disks, you still have that to fall back on.  My "remote location" is my mothers house about 300 miles away and I give a copy maybe once every 6 months. 

I have thousands of photos that are irreplaceable, so I am a little paranoid!

Not paranoïd enough: DON'T TELL where is your copy.

[ilbasso]

I got a relatively inexpensive but blazingly fast 120 GB external hard drive. I have Restrospect Express set up to automatically do a complete backup of the laptop every week and incremental backups every evening after I have gone to bed. Added bonus - I have all my iTunes music stored on it rather than my laptop's hard drive. I also back up important files to CDs, which I store in a fireproof safe that's rated for storing computer media.

[lyford]

Sorry to hear about your problems - good luck with the recovery!

[Phil Stooke]

Good luck, Ted. I'm paranoid about this, like everybody else. My book stuff is backed up all over the place.

Phil