Had to call in the GEEK squad today!..

[TDC57]

YES I made the ultimate / rookie mistake!, Lessened learned the hard way!.

To make an extremely long story short, the home computer suffered a critical era and ultimately I had to re-format my hard drive! IE losing everything for the past four years.. 200+ gig of crap..

YES I never backed up anything!.. (IE) Rookie mistake!.. I don’t know what I was thinking, but I did pay the price!.. I’ve paid the geek squad $190.00 to save all of the files and pictures I had, then I went out and spent another $100 on a 500 gig external hard drive to back up everything I had.. (little late!) I know but I’m that much better off now..

This problem happened on Thursday afternoon and I’m still trying to recover my system.. more than 15 hrs at it, I’ve now successfully downloaded and updated the basic window system & McAfee programs and have all of my old files on the external hard drive waiting to be installed..

Now / for the next 10+ hrs (give or take a few) I’ll re-installing all of my programs I had, then I get have the ultimate enjoyment of going thru my external hard drive and copy and paste back into the original programs.

So to recap!, if I had spent $100 on an external drive and backed up everything I had (before) I would have saved myself lots of money and TONS of wasted time to ultimately get back where I was (3 days ago)..

Moral of the story!,, spend the $100.. Get the external hard drive and for GOD sake!.. back up your crap..


P.S.
There’s one / two things that did come out of it to my benefit, I was able to talk with the wife (who knows nothing about computers) and ended up with a total of 2 gig of SDR, 400 MHz memory and a 1 gig Geforce video card..

P.S.S.
I would post a picture of all my programs and manuals laid out but I’m not that for into installing the programs yet.

What a way to start he new year!.. I get a new computer (so to speak)..

Have a great one guys and I’m sorry I just needed to vent!, let you know I fricked up!, (IE) don’t pull a TDC.. LOL.LOL.. (backup your system before it’s too late!).. and for god sakes stay off those (cough / sex sites!)..

Have a great night everybody!..

[t-maxxracer32]

damn.

that blows

just recently i bought a new laptop and a 500 gig external HDD and everything i download onto my comp goes straight to the HDD. so this could suck in the end if i lose my hdd orrr it crashes... then ill have no movies songs applications or anything!! but at least i can transfer it real easy if i need to other comps

right?

its good to hear your looking on the bright side! got more ram, new video card, and a sweet External hardrive!!

[TDC57]

Ooohhh Ryan,
I'm going to miss you good outlook on life!! best of luck this coming year with School..

Just know.. It's totally worth it Sir..

Best of luck this coming year!..

Shaun.

[pedeboi364]

my comp is gettin old so my dad just picked up a 320gb external HD, it was the smallest circuitcity had. im gettin a new laptop soon, any suggestions?? (nothing super fancy, under 1k)

Oh I hate those kind of things.For me,pics are really all I care about saving.I burn a backup cd of them every few months,but a backup does seem like a good idea.

Originally Posted by pedeboi364

my comp is gettin old so my dad just picked up a 320gb external HD, it was the smallest circuitcity had. im gettin a new laptop soon, any suggestions?? (nothing super fancy, under 1k)

I got my Toshiba laptop from Bestbuy less then a year ago, the screen has a great picture for a laptop but the battery only lasts for about 30 mins...itis a 1.9 GHZ AMD processor, 2 Gs ram and a 160 G hard drive for under $700 I have never had a problem with it but I had heard that Toshibas have had a problem with them going in sleep mode for no reason while people have used them, this never happened to me. All you have to do is go into the energy management program and make the selection to never sleep

[What's_nitro?]

I feel (and have felt) your pain, TDC57! My old laptop crashed (Dell, enough said) and took 120GB of MP3s, DVD movies, pictures, videos, my Autodesk Inventor files (), programs, games, etc. After that (it was 4 years ago) I broke down and bought this laptop. It has two 100GB HDDs, so I use the second one to hold all of my media, and the first one is where the OS and all programs are installed. I have crashed it 6 times because I am constantly tweaking the system. All I have to do is reinstall the apps and voilla!

Note: The Dell crashed all by itself. I was not "tweaking" at the time.

[George16]

Originally Posted by What's_nitro?

Note: The Dell crashed all by itself. I was not "tweaking" at the time.

Yea right . Once a tweaker, always a tweaker .

[What's_nitro?]

I hadn't been a tweaker once until after that, so !

[Arct1k]

I would get another exteral disk and double backup...

Put one disk in a fire proof safe or leave with a trusted relative...

You forget if you have a house fire you are still screwed!


PS If anyone wants a Core 2 Dual Core 6600 on a evga 680i MB with a 8800GTS 640MB video card - Runs perfectly stable at 3.2 GHz LMK - I'm toying with upgrading...

[TDC57]

Well it’s nice to know I’m not the only one.. misery loves company!..


Chris..
That’s a great idea, a second backup (for just incase)…

Thanks Sir..

[rawfuls]

Funny.. My computer just crashed as well, so today is my birthday, so my dad just picked me up a cheap combo (Intel Core 2 Duo, E8500 w/ a ECS Mobo, POS) - 7200GS - 250GB IDE HD, Creative something Gold Sound Card.. Chameleon case, and it's a beast...

I just need to get my USB working now.

P.S. I need to back up my C, D, and G drive to my F drive (500GB External, WD Element)... Sigh, this is gonna take awhile...
Total of 400 gbs from C,D, and G

[Gee]

This is a bit long winded I tried condensing it a bit, but wanted to try and explain it so even my Grandma that doesn’t use a pc could find it helpful

Here’s a tip to save you some $$, hours of frustration, and more importantly your time. There are many other ways out there to reach the same goal. This is not the way, just an alternative to the machine. It could take me a couple of hours to have my pc exactly where it was after a virus and a reformat. That’s if it took me an half an hour to find a screw driver to take the PC case off. Went to the grocery store for milk and ran one of my RC for 15 minute. Yeah about 2 hour then.

Little background
There are a few reasons a HD fail. One is due to a physical error of the HD itself. Nothing can be done about that. It can and will die just like you and I. There are signs that are it coming. Some start making more noise or you get Read/Write failure errors from it. There is also some scanning software that also checks for physical errors on the hard drive. The more common and potentially destructive is a virus. It attacks the operating system of you PC. As you know, screwing things up, slowing things down or just plain making your PC useless. Some virus can be removed without a lot off problems. Once a reboot is done on you PC the fight is usually over and the virus has won. That only leaves one alternative. Reformat and reinstall. Virus don’t attack data drives. They go after the operating system. Never have I had a virus destroy the data on any data (slave) drive at home or at work. Got over twenty years under the belt providing IT support at my work place. I will deny knowing anything about pcs to anyone and everyone outside of work, which includes friends or family. Some of you know exactly what I mean. Close to having a little hanging over the belt, but that’s a different battle.

How to get around storing anything on you C: drive.
An external HD is nothing more then and internal HD with a case around it. You can find used internal HDs for only a few dollars. Befriend one of the Geeks, he has access to old pc’s with plenty of HD lying around. There are a lot of different HD connectors like the one I have linked at the bottom. These let you plug a HD, CD/DVD, etc into a USB port. Use the HD and adapter to create backups of data or for just some more HD space. You can have as many of these connected as you have available 2.0 USB ports. They use external power so they are not going to create a problem with you internal power supply. Here’s how I use them and my recover process from a crashed or virus infected operation system.

I have HDs that are attached through the USB adapters that have just one reason to be there. To store information and data files that I want to keep. I use a different HD to store different files. This is how I have it setup.

C: Operation system and installed programs
D: DVD/CDROM R/W

E: DVDs, Videos (mpg, avi, etc)
F: Music
G: Pictures, Documents, Spreadsheets, User Manuals, PDF
H: Downloaded or CD Installation files for programs, CD-Keys, etc

I also have HDs that are not attached but I hook up via USB port to backup the data stored on the slave drives above. In case the hard drive should get a physical error on it and die right now with out warning. Takes just one HD for a backup up F: G: and part of H: Don’t need to backup the program installation files that I have already the original cd for.

Get a plan
I have a small 120 GB HD that I took the time and installed it in my PC as the c: drive. I installed XP on it and got it up and running to the point that I had internet access and all the PC hardware devices worked properly. That HD now is setting on a shelf. If my current 120 GB hd with the operating system gets infected to the point that a reformat is the only cure or it just stops working. I have an operation system HD that will get me up and running on the net in maybe the 10 minute it takes to put in into the PC case. That’s 10 minutes if I reattach it with screws, less if it’s just left to dangle from the connectors.

I have a HD (H:) with all the reinstall programs files on it. Copies of the original cds and programs I have downloaded and installed onto the C: drive. I’m from the days when the cd rom (4x) drive was really slow compared to reading from the HD. It doesn’t take long to reinstall any new programs that I didn’t have or installed at the time I built the backup. I just run them all from my H: drive.

All my data is stored on separate drive then the operation system. It takes a couple minutes to plug the infected drive in as a slave through the adapter and make a quick scan to see if there was anything I inadvertently saved to it. After a couple of weeks (in case I need to recover a cd-key or copy right info from an installed program) I format that drive and place the basic XP operating system on it like the one I just put in and it takes it turn waiting on the shelf.

There is nothing to restore, no 750gb of music, DVD movies, avi files, pictures, documents, etc. It takes a lot of time to copy all that stuff back onto a hard drive. Even more intolerable it would be from the hundreds of DVD data CD that would be needed to back all that up. All of my data is still there when I put the other HD in and started up the pc. It comes up and read the connected drives that I have connected as slaves. Outside of work I have never experienced a virus that has attacked anything other then the operating systems hard drive.


There all kinds of these adapter available. One of these and couple used hd for probably less the 60 buck total and you got a plan .
http://cgi.ebay.com/USB-2-0-to-IDE-S...QQcmdZViewItem

There are jumpers on HD that are used to tell the BIOS of the PC and the Hard Drive itself if it is a Slave or A Master. Master is your C: drive, slave is everything else. The CD/DVD connections can also have a Master and slave configuration.

It’s defiantly worth just getting something additional to store everything on. If your PC came with a 650gb hard drive, You should really consider buying a smaller hard drive for cheap. Install it as your c: drive with the operating system. The 650mb hard drive is much better put to use storing all you valuable data.

Again a virus will attack and disable your operating system. In short separate the data you want to keep from your operation system. Physically separate not create two partitions on the same drive.

Have to post this, the more I removed from it to shorten it up the more I add. See there I go again.

[BrianG]

I may seem a little paranoid, but I have a total of 3 external HDDs. One is at home and two are at work (to provide an off-site place in case there is a house fire or something). I then rotate which one is at work so things are current.

Each of these contain the same stuff. I don't back up programs because you just re-install those, and you'd also need the reg entries and such to make them work. So, I just back up the pertinent info in my login profile and anything else I deem worthy.

I have several batch files that calls up windows backup program, backs up certain files and folders I identify, checks the backup, and then stores that file as "my backup_mm-dd-yyyy.bkf". Pretty easy to do and because there is a date in the filename, allows multiple backups of the same stuff if I want. Each backup does a certain thing; one for my pics, one for videos, one for mp3s, one for all kinds of install apps for different programs, etc. Keeping them seperate allows me to recreate the backup for only the items that changed, which takes less time.

At the same time, I have extracted all the program install CDs as ISO files and store them on the external drives as well. When I want to install something, I can either make a new disc or mount the ISO as a virtual drive.

All this stuff is mirrored on all three external drives, and one set on a IDE drive inside my PC ("C drive", programs, profile, etc is on a set of 35GB RAID0 SATA Raptor drives).

I also backup my money info (checkbook log, etc) and various account stuff in an additional way. Once I finish my accounting, I have a batch set up to gather all those files, WinRAR them with a password, and then FTP them to a secure folder on the net somewhere. This is closer to a "real time" backup for some things that change frequently. Again, all automatic.

[Gee]

I wouldn't call that paraniod, I'd call it the proper way to do it. Your setup is much more like a buisness would handle it. Mirroring is a fantastic way to do it if you have the resources. I was talking to an HP tech that came to work on a warrenty call and he was telling how much the off-site real time backup buisness had grew since 9-11. Never really thought about it until he brought it up. Nice method also.