Live & Learn...

[Tim Aucoin]

So, I come in this morning after enjoying a great long weekend and what do I have waiting for me? A PC with the message at the bottom of the screen that says; "boot disk not found, insert system CD and restart".

So, I insert the Vista DVD and restart the computer. Wait... wait... wait... ooh, I get a message that says "hit any key to boot from CD". So I tap away at a key.... nothing. I tap away at a few keys... nothing. I frantically hit every bloody key on the keyboard like a madman... STILL NOTHING! A new screen appears with a bunch of techno WINDOWS stuff like;
1. Insert original Windows Vista DVD and restart computer.
2. Boot from Windows DVD.
3. Choose language preference and continue.
4. Select Repair Volume.

Then some other stuff about a missing or corrupt system file. WTF happened here??? It was working perfectly fine on Friday afternoon before I headed home for the weekend. It was happily printing stuff to the L25500, the Gerber and to my envelope printer. We were giggling together about how wonderful life with the PC has been!!! What went wrong??

So, I follow the instructions very carefully, but the frigging keyboard will not respond. I try another keyboard... still nothing. I call the place where I bought the computer (Memory Express, 14 months ago... 2 months out of warranty ) and he mumbles something about hard drive failure. I SCREAM inside my head. I curse the PC (although it's likely the hard-drive's fault!). The only thing that keeps me sane is the fact that just 1 week before I hooked up a 2TB Western Digital My Book drive and had been FULLY backing up the PC. So, all of my data is SAFE but IF Memory Express can't fix my drive and give the computer back to me WORKING normally, I will have to re-install all kinds of software, printers, drivers, dongles, wongles, bongles, etc... to get back to "normal".

LESSON LEARNED HERE:
I, Tim Aucoin, being of sound mind and in full control of my own decisions WILL PURCHASE A SECOND HARD DRIVE and MIRRORING/IMAGING SOFTWARE for the PC and will make sure I ALWAYS have TWO HARD DRIVES that contain the EXACT SAME O/S, SOFTWARE, SYSTEM FILES, ETC...

Can any of you PC people recommend GOOD Mirroring/Imaging software so I can keep this promise to myself??

 

[Cross Signs]

I like Macrium Reflect. I use the free version

 

[Mike F]

If you're running Windows 7 It'll create a system image for you, just go to start and type in "backup" in the little search box and "Backup and Restore" should pop right up. Thanks for posting this by the way, reminds me I need to back up this laptop and get another external this weekend to backup my backup/data drive. That thing in about a year and a half old now and there's only 80 or so gigs left out of a terabyte, and it's mostly music, personal files, and a not-so-recent backup of this laptop, so if that goes, I think I might lose my mind.

 

[oldgoatroper]

Acronis TrueImage is great -- it has saved my ass a number of times... I (routinely) make backups of every computer's boot/Windows drive after installing programs/fonts, etc... on a purpose-bought portable USB hard drive. Like I said, its saved my ass....

 

[Letterbox Mike]

We've had so many mechanical drives fail on us that we've been using (or replacing them with) solid state drives. The warranties are much better and supposedly they'll outlast mechanical drives significantly. They're also a lot faster. We still back everything up, but having to restore is a pain.

 

[WildWestDesigns]

We've had so many mechanical drives fail on us that we've been using (or replacing them with) solid state drives. The warranties are much better and supposedly they'll outlast mechanical drives significantly. They're also a lot faster. We still back everything up, but having to restore is a pain.

As good as SSDs appear to be right now, they are still a little on the unproven side for me. Don't get me wrong, I'm for SSDs, in fact I'll be putting in one in my computer coming up after awhile, but they are still the new thing.

 

[Speedsterbeast]

I also have a purpose-bought external hard drive for the same reason, although I haven't had to use it yet thankfully. The only problem is having the discipline to update often enough.

I think I'll do mine right now.

You can also store your data online for a nominal fee (whatever a nominal fee means)

 

[SignBurst PCs]

If you're running Windows 7 It'll create a system image for you, just go to start and type in "backup" in the little search box and "Backup and Restore" should pop right up. Thanks for posting this by the way, reminds me I need to back up this laptop and get another external this weekend to backup my backup/data drive. That thing in about a year and a half old now and there's only 80 or so gigs left out of a terabyte, and it's mostly music, personal files, and a not-so-recent backup of this laptop, so if that goes, I think I might lose my mind.

This is what I always recommend. Create an image using the built-in backup utility. Even better, schedule your file backup using this same utility and it will prompt you to create an image as well. You can use an external drive (eSata or USB 3.0 would be best if your computer is so equipped), but you can also use a second internal drive to backup to.

The RAID 1 (or mirroring) is great until you get corruption or malware. The bad data gets "mirrored" as well and you now have two bad sets of data.

Good hardware is great way to prevent this kind of stuff from happening. Yes, all hardware can go bad, but the good stuff goes bad MUCH less often.

 

[Baz]

I loooooove my WD MyBook. I also have the 2tb version and have it set to mirroring. Makes backing up real easy!! I went even further ... A couple of months ago i built myself the exact replica of my pc that is running my printer and plotter. This is a 2004 computer. So i bought all the same parts and built another one. From 1200.00$ in 2004 to less than 200.00$ in 2011. Now if my production pc goes on the fritz i can swap the whole computer and not lose any production time. This was important since my printer is connected with an LPT1 cable/dongle and my plotter is on a COMM port. New computers don't have those connectors anymore .

 

[signage]

Tim I highly recommend Acronis. This will image your hard drive and have you backup in running in no time! It is also good for backing up you files and archiving!

 

[choucove]

The two most common tools I see lately for making full system images and backups are either the Windows Backup & Recovery system (in Windows 7 only) or Acronis True Image. I use Acronis almost on a daily basis, and it has been great software and very simple to use. You can install it on your computer and it will perform backups to an image file.

It may take a little extra work, but what I would actually recommend is to get a second hard drive and use Acronis Boot Disk to load up before you get into Windows even, and then create a full disk clone of your original hard drive onto the secondary spare hard drive. This way, in the even that your primary hard drive does fail, all you have to do is unplug the old hard drive and plug in the new one and you are up and going again. If you make frequent changes to your partitions (like installing a new program, loading lots of files, etc.) then you're going to want to made a clone regularly. However, if you can get into the habit of storing all your regular data on a separate hard drive (and backing up to a separate hard drive as well) and not really store any company data or customer data or anything on your OS partition hard drive, then you should really only have to make one disk clone after you get all your software and settings done and you're set.

This is actually what I have gone to doing instead of using RAID anymore. Don't get me wrong, RAID still has it's advantages and it's places, but from my experience dealing with RAID when it fails, there's just more advantages to doing a disk image or clone instead. There's a lot of things that can go wrong with RAID which aren't necessarily an issue with the disk cloning method.

And Casey made a HUGE point above that I'd like to reiterate: Quality hardware makes a huge difference. All hardware will fail eventually, but good high quality hardware will last a whole lot longer, perform much better, and most of the time will be covered by a much longer warranty!

 

[GAC05]

You can grab a copy of Acronis True Image from the Western digital site. It checks and if it finds at least one WD or Seagate drive will run and allow imaging or backup to any drive attached to the system, maybe the network but I am not sure.
Think most of the other drive manufacturers have something similar that works with their brands, just have to dig a little.

wayne k
guam usa