Back up your hard drive!

cometcatcher (Kevin) · #1 27-04-2006, 01:40 AM

Well here I am typing away on the lappy. The main PC had a major meltdown taking the 40 gig hard drive with it. On that hard drive were all the pics from my Nikon digital camera since I bought it over the past two years and about the last year's worth of astronomy pics I've taken. I have bakups of most of the comet pics and all the early astro pics (which arn't so good anyway), but the rest, like the coolpix camera pics are GONE!

I never realised how devestated I would be in a non recovery situation. I guess I never valued digital photos the same as prints, until now. Two years of cat, plant, tree, sunset, planet, dish pics are all gone. Some pics I put quite a bit of work into. I was in the process of backing up but never gave it top priority.

Feeling pretty depressed right now and have a huge headache. I think a bad memory stick was responsible but still not sure. I don't like computers anymore and certainly don't trust them.

So make sure you all back up those precious pics you've taken. Not that I trust disc media either. I've had CD's lose data over time.

Anyway I'm off to wallow in self pity and smack myself in the head.

Yuzza · #2 27-04-2006, 01:48 AM

don't know how big your problem is but if the hard drives only corrupted their might be a way to retrieve your stuff using knoppix

Portmac · #3 27-04-2006, 01:55 AM

If the HDD is not dead (hardware failure) then it is possible you can salvage some of the data from it, put the HDD into another computer (as a slave) and see if it is detected.
If it is detected in Windows you should be able to copy the data to the other HDD, as long as you were not using EFS (encrypted file system).

iceman (Mike) · #4 27-04-2006, 05:55 AM

Timely advice on the backup front..

A colleague at work lost his hard drive, which had some important work stuff on it. Made me think how devestated I would be if I lost my laptop HD, which I use for both work and play (IceInSpace, images, etc).

I need to do a backup!

Robby · #5 27-04-2006, 06:48 AM

Yep backup backup backup... I run a backup to 2 other computers regularly. Mainly being self-employed, I'd really be in the crap if I lost client data!!! But good call re. photos. I don't do them very often to be honest.
Hope you get back up & running soon. In the meantime to get rid of the headache

[1ponders] (Paul) · #6 27-04-2006, 07:23 AM

I hope you can salvage something from it Kevin. I know how devastating loosing files like that can be. We had something similar at work only it was human stuff up. 8 years of photos of student projects the evolution of the gardens and grounds (I'm a hort teacher) gone overnight. How it happened is different, but I know the gut wrenching feeling your experiencing right now. I'm really sorry for you. I hope that something is salvageable.

vespine · #7 27-04-2006, 09:16 AM

I work in IT and defenitely encourage people to back up regularly. DVD burners and media are so cheap now you really have no excuse to back up your important data every few months/weeks.

Having said that, there is still a decent chance you can recover some if not all of the data off that drive, the 1st thing to do is employ the help of a IT savvy friend, I would try slaving the drive on another PC. Resorting to a professional data recovery service can be very expensive.

#8 27-04-2006, 12:12 PM

I have been employed many times over my 22 year IT career to restore data thought to have been lost from a hard drive. It can be restored in most cases as the platters (disks) in the drive are rarely destroyed in a HDD failure. Equally, it is quite easy to replace the circuit board on the drive itself (buy second identical drive off e-bay for a few dollars) which may have fried and the data is immediately available again. Dont throw the disk away, if you dont knwo how to get at the data yourself, find someone in the industry who can at least try to retrive it, you may be surprised. Dennis.

P.S. Paul, why didnt you request a restore from tape at work??????

[1ponders] (Paul) · #9 27-04-2006, 12:19 PM

Because the computers were already gone. It happened during a lease change over

Long sad story.

#10 27-04-2006, 12:57 PM

Oh yes, I remember that, like I said, if the data is still there then there is hope.

jjjnettie (Jeanette) · #11 27-04-2006, 01:27 PM

Kev,
Thats just awful. Tragic.
I bet if you had a swear jar next to the puter, you'd have enough money now to hire someone to restore your hard drive.

cometcatcher (Kevin) · #12 27-04-2006, 01:31 PM

Thanks guys, working on the problem now. The files are not visible to windows but will try a mate in IT if all else fails.

Then I'll back up the stuff, twice, on two different media brands...

Photon · #13 27-04-2006, 01:57 PM

FWIW, a few of my friends are using physically small USB hard drives of up to 100G capacity to back up their data, that also means you can plug it into virtually any other PC to access your data. IMO more versatile than another hard disk or on a CD. I hope you have success with the recovery!
Regards IanG

sheeny (Al) · #14 27-04-2006, 02:49 PM

Tragic! I know how you feel. In 20 plus years of computing I have been caught several times. Even when you do back ups, inevitably when it fails there is something missed, or you've gotten slack on backups etc. I know how it is!

I am now using an excellent piece of software called "Second Copy" http://secondcopy.com/ and an external harddrive to make sure I don't forget to back up. Current price is US$29.95 and worth every cent.

Every time I log off or shut down the PC, it backs up all my data (from my D: (60G) and L: (300G) drives) to my external HDD (250G). When I connect my lappy to the network at home I back it up to the removeable HDD as well (when I remember!

). When the 250G external starts to look cramped I'll upgrade

.

You can set it up to copy and store the data in different ways. I store mine as normal files so I can access them normally directly on the disk, I don't have to restore them. I also have it set up to make use of the archive bit, so it only backs up new or changed files. Just make sure your first backup is everything

then change it to backup only the changed files.

I got this idea from my brother who has an IT / photography background and now runs a photo restoration business. He does the same thing, but he takes his removable HDD with him when he goes out in case the house burns down!

If his house ever burns down, I'm sure he'll appreciate being disciplined... I"m afraid I'm not...

Al.

[1ponders] (Paul) · #15 27-04-2006, 03:21 PM

thanks for the link Al. I've just taken possesion of one of those fantastic looking maxtor 300gig external HDD (I'm already in love with it so don't tell my wife

) And that program may be just what I'm looking for. cheers

ThunderChild (Chris) · #16 27-04-2006, 03:45 PM

Another note : The use of mirrored drives (eg RAID 1) can also be a helpful addition to the mix. In brief, mirrored drives are where two HDD's are linked together and any operations are done to both.

This of course will offer no protection against catastrophy (eg fire) or against human error (eg overwritting/deleting a file etc) - but it DOES offer protection against HDD failure without the need to ever back up anything.

Actually, I'm running both RAID 0 and 1 - I have a mirrored drive where anything I want protected goes, and use my "striped" drive for things where speed is more important (eg for my video editing etc).

[1ponders] (Paul) · #17 27-04-2006, 04:36 PM

Al, a question or two about second copy. I intend to keep my new Ext HDD attached to my Desktop, simply because the desktop is faster for processing, but I also want to keep new AVIs that are taken on my Laptop on the Ext HDD. Will I be able to swap the HDD between Desktop and Laptop with nps

sheeny (Al) · #18 27-04-2006, 04:54 PM

G'Day Paul,

If you connect your lappy to your desktop PC by LAN, you won't have to swap the drive over.

I have two automatic profiles in Second Copy that backup my D: drive and my L: drive whenever I log off or shutdown. I have a third profile which is manually activated which backs up the D: drive on my lappy via the network when I want it to.

I played about with all sorts of settings when I got it, and I had profiles coming out of my ears to back up this directory and that, etc. In the end I organised things so:

1. most of my software installations are on C: drive (these usually have to be reinstalled anyway, not just copied back off a disk);
2. All "My Documents" and other data are on D: drive; and
3. my L: drive is really just an extension of my D: drive, but I mainly keep bulky things there like all my pictures, movies, mp3s, etc simply because its a bigger drive.

So my suggestions are simplify how you organise your data into some large blocks somehow (Even if you just put everthing under "My Documents") then set up a few profiles to suit in Second Copy.

Trap 1: if you try to back up "Documents and Settings" often you'll get errors because Second Copy is using some files in there, so it can't copy them.

Trap 2: think very carefully about how you set up your profiles. If you just copy everything, it will take a long time. If you decide to keep copies of old versions of files, the disk space used for backups can get really big. If you decide to use the archive bit (as I have done) to only save changed files, make sure you do a full backup first to get any files than may have had their archive bit reset for some reason... THEN for th second and subsequen backups change the profile to save only those with the archive bit set.

Don't hesitate to ask, if you have any other questions. I reckon as programs go Second Copy is a must have! I've been caught too many times!

Al.

[1ponders] (Paul) · #19 27-04-2006, 05:08 PM

I'm looking probably more along the lines of an archive system when computer drives can't take any more as well as backupping active important stuff.

I see there is a trial download. I might download that and have a play with it when I'm on holidays soon. .

sheeny (Al) · #20 27-04-2006, 05:08 PM

Sorry Paul... my Lysdexia is playing up again and I mis-heard your last post...

Yes you can swap the external HDD from PC to lappy. You'll just need to install Second Copy on both, set up appropriate profiles in each, and have separate destination directory on the external HDD for each.

E.g. I have directories set up:
K:\Dcopy
K:\Lcopy
K:\NotebookCopy

Not sure what'll happen if you don't have the HDD attached when an auto profile runs??? If it's well written software it should give you an error message and that's all. I would probably tend to make the PC auto profiles and the lappy manual? It's up to you. Think about it though.

Al.