Backup my backside
Some of you may have seen from the other site that I have been having some wee PC problems?
My trusty old laptop crashed with a complete hard disk failure. Bad sectors and tracks everywhere.
Fortunately, it is a duel disk machine and all my data [and Grandad’s] is on the other disk. However, I can’t get at it!
The only thing I can do is to reformat the faulty disk and re-install the operating system. However, the laptop came with no disks, so I have the licence, but nothing to install from. In an ideal world, Microsoft would just send me a new disk, seeing as I have already paid for the damned thing, but no – we are talking Microsoft here, and they will send a new disc, provided I buy it along with a new licence.
I bought a new laptop. It may sound a bit drastic and expensive, but Grandad’s site will pay for it, and seeing as he is the likely cause of the crash in the first place, it is only fair.
Then of course I had the problem of reinstalling all the software. That may sound simple, but each piece of software has its own settings. For example, my FTP software was configured to log into about 60 servers, each with its own settings and passwords. Luckily I had backups of the really critical settings for that, so I was able to restore it more or less intact. The same goes for my bookmarks and the like.
So far, all I have really lost that is important is my photograph collection, a load of sound files and a mountain of personal stuff. All Grandad’s mail is gone, but by business stuff is backed up onto another machine, thank God. If ever I lay my hands on a Vista DVD, then I can retrieve all the lost stuff anyway.
They tell us [whoever they are] that we should backup often. What they don’t tell us is that even with a backup, that reviving a machine, or building a new one is a complete nightmare.
Anyone got a spare copy of Windows Vista?
I may be teaching my Grandad to suck eggs here, but …
If the disk hasn’t been badly corrupted then the recovery partition might still be working, have you tried F11 when rebooting, this would bring up the recovery dialog?
You should also be able to order a recovery CD/DVD from the laptop’s manufacturer. It’ll cost , but nothing like a new copy of Vista and it will have the advantage of having all the necessary drivers for your specific laptop.
If you know somebody with a similar machine, get them to create a recovery DVD (if they haven’t already and most people have not, being unaware that they can and should!) you then I think can use it on your pc (works with XP but might not with Vista).
There are also various “liveCDs” http://delicious.com/gobansaor/livecd usually Linux but some XP ones too, that would allow you to boot up the machine from the CD and to recover data from the 2nd disk.
Tom
Have you considered buying an external hard drive dock? They run about 35 to 40 dollars American. That way you could pull the second HDD (the one you can’t get at), stick it in the dock and plug it into a USB connector in your new laptop. At least that way you can retrieve what’s on the disk.
Another thing you might consider is using your new laptop to create a boot up disk (CD) for your old laptop. If you can get the old one to come up on the boot up disk you might be able to run “chkdsk /f” in hopes you might be able to recover the crashed drive long enough to get your old data off the drive.
Just a couple of suggestions.
Creature of habit that I am I keep forgetting to check the subscribe check box ‘cos it’s not under the comment field.
Sign of a weakened mind, that’s what it is.
Welcome Tom! I tried to get into the recovery partition but have a feeling it’s on the same disk as the OS. Rather shortsighted of ’em? The two options I’m going for are a) an offer I just received of a Vista .iso, and b) your suggestion of a LiveCD. I like the look of Puppy Linux? Thanks for that.
Kirk M: One of my possibilities is to create a boot up disk off this machine and try it on the other. I think removal of the hard disk is the last resort…
Shame about your photos. I back mine up on an external hard drive and DVD just in case. Otherwise, there’s little of value on my PC other than net access. Empathy to you! If mine breaks . . I get a ‘little man’ in to fix it hehe
Hola! Don’t know whether KP reads you but you have his email – see if he or one of his other software engineer friends can help – he had a server go down a few weeks ago and none of his customers had back ups. Fortunately it all came out well in the end!