Back up your hard drive!

[sheeny (Al)]

Archiving should be easy. There may be settings in Second Copy for it... I can't remember cause I'm not using that, even if it simply backs up, you can just copy the entire backup drectory to a separate directory every once in a while.

I'm sure you can set up a profile in Second Copy to backup/copy all files older than a certain time too if that's what you want to do.

Al.

[cometcatcher (Kevin)]

I'm making progress. Using a program called Getdataback and it is doing a fantastic job. Easy to use for morons like me too.

Gotta get back to it.

[Vermin (Tom)]

I have been saved from disaster twice.

I used to use Norton Ghost to make a complete image of my home PC's HDD (data, programs, operating system, partitions, boot sector and all) at least monthly to an extra HDD in the same machine. If anything went wrong it was a simple matter of restoring the image to the main drive using a boot disk.

I still use the same system but with the following additions:

Instead of Norton Ghost I now use Acronis true image, for many reasons but mainly; price, external USB HDD support and task scheduling.

Incremental backups are now done every Monday morning while I'm away from the machine.

And once a month I copy the image to an external USB drive which is kept off site (at work).

If you have a spare drive I highly recommend you download the Acronis Trial and give it a go free for 30 days (15 days?).

If you decide to purchase it from the web site by download, use the coupon code CHRISTMAS in the online order form to get it for $40 AUD instead of ~$80. http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing...cts/trueimage/

You can also back up individual files from the image if only a couple get corrupted / get accidentally deleted.

[Vermin (Tom)]

For HDD data recovery I can recommend Spinrite. http://grc.com/sr/spinrite.htm (~$90 USD)

It's a tiny program (written in assembler!), only 170KB, but very powerful. I have used it recover two drives so far.

I have also had excellent results recovering accidentally deleted files on a friends machine with uneraser, http://www.uneraser.com/ ($50 USD)

[cometcatcher (Kevin)]

Good news, I got all the piccies back. Trees, astro pics, cat and all. Getdataback is one good program.

My best meteor pic recovered too, although I uploaded it here as well. This forum might be a good place to find our deleted pics also.

I'm happy now.

[sheeny (Al)]

Well done!