# Asta Lavista Baby



## Maryak (Sep 28, 2010)

Going going gone. 

Where ???

Don't ask me :-X

All I did was hit the enter button and WHAMO...................................... A blank screen. 

Booted from a CD.........................................A blank HDD.   

Thats OK I'll restore from my DVD's of my HDD only backed up a week ago not much lost. ;D ;D

WRONG.............. 2 hours later after lots of beeps and a satisfying whir.... Your backup files are corrupted.  :'(  :'(  :'(

Almost 3 days realtime, 10 years off my lifetime...........................Fully reconstructed computer. Totally frustrated and exhausted. At least I'd also managed to put My Documents and My Pictures on my notebook so they were recovered.

To those of you who have completed projects, joined or otherwise posted some great stuff please excuse me if I've missed saying so.

I've had plenty to say but mostly :fan: :wall: th_wtf1 th_wtf1 th_wtf1 :redface2: :redface2: :redface2: *club* *club* *club*

Best Regards
Bob


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## SAM in LA (Sep 28, 2010)

Isn't it amazing how much time can be consumed trying to make this wonderful, labor saving device work. Have you noticed how computers have made us paperless. Now everyone in the world has a paper consuming printer in their home. I have paper everywhere. Time to go shred more paper.

SAM


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## Troutsqueezer (Sep 28, 2010)

Backing up to two different media is the safest way to go as you've seen, Bob. I back up to a USB hard drive and to DVD. My wife has hundreds of documents and projects and I have thousands of photos and mp3's. Came close to losing it all a time or two. No more.


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## bearcar1 (Sep 28, 2010)

Oh man Bob, that is a real bite in the backside. I've lost some stuff early on that I was able to find again after a long time of searching the web. Now I do a ritual backup of my 'important' files such as engine plans and pictures to two separate memory sticks and to CD disc at least 4 times a year. I keep the sticks in two different places and the discs in a secure area to limit the chance of them getting damaged. Having to re-construct a hard drive to me is the worst thing to have to do. I'm a firm believer in backing up files on a regular basis. I break the collection of files down into manageable sizes too, that is photo files get sorted into several categories such a 'home', 'friends', 'misc', etc. and placed in separate folders. It sounds a bit anal, but I feel that by doing so it reduces the amount of data that will be lost if a corruption should occur. Don't know for certain but it makes me feel better and it makes it easier and faster to locate a specific picture or plan that way. Hopefully you'll be back up and running in short order.

BC1
Jim


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## ksouers (Sep 28, 2010)

Bob,

(And anyone else who owns a confuser...)

Buy an extra hard drive the same size, make and model as already in the computer. Windoze allows you to create a mirror drive, an exact copy of your primary drive (in fact the computer will use both in tandem allowing for faster access). 

This is an automatic backup of anything you do! Hard drives are cheap, cheap, cheap now days. If a drive fails it's a simple matter of figuring out which one it was (the machine will tell you) and replacing it. The mirror will rebuild itself while you sleep/work/eat etc.

Google RAID, mirror, windows or your specific OS for details on how to do it.

The great part is that it's automagical. You don't have to do anything extra like burning DVDs or swapping tapes.


Oh, glad you were able to get Humpty Dumpty back together again, Bob.


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## mklotz (Sep 28, 2010)

Kevin,

That's interesting to a total computer dummy like me. Is it possible to do this if the backup drive capacity is less than the main drive capacity?

Here's my situation...

main drive = 289 gig of which I use ~37 gig (252 gig free)
external USB backup drive = 150 gig

On the backup drive I've been religiously copying my main folders (web page, legacy, photos, mp3, etc.) as well as doing the standard XP backups. These latter are done as a complete every first Friday of the month and a differential every non-first Friday.) Every 90 days all the main folders are copied out to DVDs so the backup drive is not a single point backup for the really critical stuff.

So here's my question(s) (finally)...

Given that my main disk usage is only ~37 gig, if I dump all the XP backups, is it possible and reasonable to mirror my main disk onto the USB drive and have it all done automagically?

If the answer to the above question is no, would it make sense to buy another external USB hard drive with capacity >= 289 gig (cost is not a concern)? Could such a mirror drive work in concert with the 150 gig drive mentioned above or is that a problem?

I'm not trying to make you my personal computer consultant but this thread has hit on one of the many aspects of computers where I'm totally naive. I'm a physicist by training and, while I program the devils, I've never had to deal with them in depth at the hardware level so any help you can provide will be immensely appreciated.


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## Dan Rowe (Sep 28, 2010)

Bob,
I have had a few close calls but nothing that bad wow that kind of stuff is scarry.

Marv I use or untill just reciently had a set of raid drives that held my data and a third drive for the OS and programs. Well that is fine but when the power supply goes you are dead in the water untill you can get it fixed. Lucky for me I keep all my drawings also on a usb drive so I only had to load programs on a spare computer to be back up to speed while the other box is on the lift.

Dan


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## ksouers (Sep 28, 2010)

Marv,
No need to apologize, I'm more than willing to help where I can. I have to admit I'm not very knowledgeable about Windoze. I swear at it daily, and use it because I have to, but I know very little about it. My preferred OS is Unix with VAX/VMS a close second. That being said, there are some things I have learned about it to make my life a little easier.

I've never tried creating a mirror with a USB drive. Interesting concept, I'll have to try that out, however USB is rather slow compared to the IDE or SATA drive interfaces. Because of this inherent slowness I doubt it will seem advantageous, if it even works at all. I've always used internal drives, and that is what I recommend.

The drives don't have to be an exact match, it just makes it easier. The mirrored set will be the size of the smallest drive; a 100 gig drive and 150 gig drive will end up with a 100 gig mirrored set with a 50 gig unmirrored partition available. Windoze will take up some of the space for management overhead, so the actual drive space will be slightly smaller.


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## shred (Sep 28, 2010)

I use a Windows Home Server. It's been great as it does redundant network file shares as well as automatic daily and weekly incremental backups of all the PCs on my network. Installs and works great on obsolete PCs too. Except the boot drive on mine took a dump Friday morning and although you're supposed to be able to recover it without losing data, so far I've got the data and the server both fine, but they're still not all back in one piece.  ???


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## bronzecaster (Sep 29, 2010)

Sorry to hear about your loss Bob,
   I too recommend two sources for backing up data. I use two different USB drives for the purpose__ formatted FAT32 to avoid a proprietary format. After many years of restoring MS operating systems for my friends, I've resolved to never store data on the Operating System drive. The OS drive is constantly working, reading and writing programs, temporary files, and doing other tasks like booting the system. They are most often under attack from outside viruses and scripts. It's no wonder that they tend to fail first.
   Mirroring drives is a good idea with a smaller chance of lost data due to drive failure alone. I prefer to use a dual backup drive and backup-backup drive system. The USB drive gives my data portability in case of a catastrophic computer failure, say a line surge that shorts the power supply to the main buss smoking everything. The data can be read on almost any computer. I then store my backup-backup drive outside of my house for off safety. This could have prevented a data loss suffered by a close friend of mine--a semi-pro photographer who digitally converted all of his photos. The computer was stolen by some kids after school and 55 years of memories were lost for a $45.00 pawn........Now I've got to cool off my fingers before they start cussing.
   Anyway, separating my data from the Operating System and even the physical location of the computer is the route I have chosen. The USB drives are cheaper now than they have ever been, are fairly fast, and are more archival than all other media except magneto-optical. 
  Everybody does things differently.
  I wish you success in restoring your system

Chuck


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## rondunn (Sep 29, 2010)

I don't rely on hard disks any more. Too many problems to trust them with anything I want kept in the long term.

These days I have a Dropbox account (http://www.dropbox.com). $100 per year for 50Gb and I've got my important documents and files available no matter what happens to my computers - broken, stolen, or even if the whole house burns down.


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## kvom (Sep 29, 2010)

That's "Hasta la vista"  ;D

Other than Spanish spelling correction, I can't add much to the discussion , other than noting that RAID systems use identical disks, and that the OS is not involved in mirroring. The drive system does the duplexing invisibly to Windows or any other OS. 

For most home systems, regular backups work well assuming that they're done regularly (which can be a bigger problem than disk failure). Also, a boot failure might not mean lost data. If the disk is moved to a different machine as a separate drive, the file system may well be readable. Depends on where the failure occurs (assumes corrupted boot files rather than a head crash).


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## Maryak (Sep 29, 2010)

kvom  said:
			
		

> That's "Hasta la vista" ;D



I blame Arnie for his bad pronunciation. Sorry about that 

P&O had a ship in fact several called Himalaya. As this is a family forum I can't reveal it's nickname but it had something to do with chickens and homosexuality. : Much more dangerous than a Yeti. Have a great time.

Best Regards
Bob


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