Help from Computer Guru's Please
Submitted: Sunday, Jul 04, 2010 at 14:01
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Member - lyndon NT
Hi All
We lost quite a lot of our info in a computer crash at the start of the year and don’t want to go through it again. It’s not so much the backing up of photos etc that concern me, even I can do that ?. It’s loosing things like the settings Fred from EO has set up for the GPS (thanks again Fred), we lost an old family tree program that was on a floppy, no floppy access on the laptop, yes I know there is something to convert it.
Anyway, what I’m looking at is a mirror image of the hard drive, operating system included, this way I might lose a bit of current stuff but the all the programs, major updates etc will all be at hand should the worse happen again. So what program do I use? The more user friendly the better!! Wondering if I need an external hard drive or can it be done to a large usb thumb drive? If your HD is say 300Gb but it is showing only 110MB used could this be mirrored to a 128GB stick?
I’m sure there is plenty I’ve missed here.
Appreciate you help.
Cheers Lyndon
Reply By: Member - Graham H (QLD) - Sunday, Jul 04, 2010 at 17:21
Sunday, Jul 04, 2010 at 17:21
To make a mirror of the whole drive, bootsector and all you really need something like Norton Ghost which copies EVERYTHING to a second drive which must be bigger than what you have.
For the price a 1Tb WD external drive is only about $95 at WOW and can be partitioned into two 500gig drives and do what you want.
Copying files across wont copy the vital bits to make it go again Only A full copy program like Ghost or similar will do that.
A lot of lappys have a recovery partition that allows you to recover the operating system without losing any data. Usually boot into Dos and follow the prompts after reading the manual.
My netbook crashed a few weeeks ago and I got it back without losing anything other than some programs which I had installed later, emails and history.
All my documents and photos etc were still there
There are also Data recovery programs like GETDATA BACK NTFS that will recover stuff off even a formatted drive.
I mistakenly F disked a drive at 2 am once and realised it was the wrong drive.
3 hours later had everything back as it was, the whole 128gig of it. All is not lost wven when you think it is.
The main thing is DONT WRITE ANYTHING TO THE DRIVE AFTER THE CRASH as it can overwrite what is there.
Buy an external drive and back up your pics and documents and any other data once a week and you will be fairly safe
AnswerID:
423001
Reply By: Member - Allan K (NT) - Sunday, Jul 04, 2010 at 19:34
Sunday, Jul 04, 2010 at 19:34
Hi Lyndon,
As you have discovered it can be quite distressing to have a hard drive crash with no backup. While there are some free solutions, the better commercial programmes are worth the modest outlay. I have used successfully Acronis, Paragon, Nero and Norton Ghost. I am currently using Paragon Hard Disk Manager 2010. All allow you to image your disk to a variety of media such as DVD, hard disk, USB, network. All will give you a boot disk to allow retrieval following a catastrophic event.
Your choice of backup media depends on your need for speed and depth of pocket. DVD is quite slow but inexpensive, another hard disk is much faster but will cost more. Neither will last for ever.
I use a cradle in my desktop that allows a sata drive to be hot-plugged (used much like a very large floppy). An external sata (faster) or usb (slower) hard drive is just as good. What ever you use, try and have more than one copy of the data. 1 Tb drives now cost about $100, and an external case can be got for about $30. Pre-assembled units do not cost much more. (Unfortunately local NT prices do not seem to reflect southern prices, .)
It is a good idea to
check that your backup image can be restored before you have to rely on this function.
Also for a modest cost you can still buy usb external floppy drives which can use useful for those legacy install disks. With a bit of fiddling is usually possible to copy the floppy's to CD or DVD.
Cheers, AllanK
AnswerID:
423024
Reply By: Member - Bucky - Monday, Jul 05, 2010 at 04:35
Monday, Jul 05, 2010 at 04:35
Norton's Ghost, for your system. .. that's a good Idea !
Personally ....I am prepared to re-format my system every 3-6 months, if necessary. (but only if necessary) That's just the way it is.
As for your foto's ect, .. this is what I do.
I run 3 HDD's all about 100 GIG each, but I run foto's, downloads, and important things, in separete folders on HDD No.2, (Not system drive) and every month, or so I just drag these folders to the 3rd drive, and everything is updated.
I do admit that my 3 HDD's are a bit over the top, but I repair computers, in what little spare time I have, so It's easy for me, to get my hands on stuff.
I should get 2., 1 TB HDD's, (1 internal and one external USB.) and partition 200 - 300 GIG, of drive C... and the rest for my personal stuff. Foto's , downloads and documents.
Then every month just wack in the USB drive and drag everything across, as a back up drive
Cheers
Bucky
Simple as that
Cheers
Bucky
AnswerID:
423046
Follow Up By: Bonz (Vic) - Monday, Jul 05, 2010 at 06:19
Monday, Jul 05, 2010 at 06:19
yep me and Bucky are two peas in a pod, I do amlsot the same but 100 gigisnt big enough for me, I have 500 gig partitions
FollowupID:
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Reply By: Member No 1- Monday, Jul 05, 2010 at 09:12
Monday, Jul 05, 2010 at 09:12
having suffered from lost data by accidental deletion, and a hard disk failure I now back up important (company stuff) data every 4 hours and save it (each file) for one month where after it...the oldest copy, gets deleted with latest copy
I run a SCSI HD as the primary disk, with two additional HD's for storage
I then save My docs every 24hrs to 2 HD's giving me heaps of storage for additional stuff like burning movies and keeping the iso files....its cheap insurance considering the cost of a couple of hard disks in the 1 terabyte range
I have XP on the SCSI and XP on one of the two hhd''s. Should the scsi fail for any reason i am up and running in a matter mins....just need to load some programs such a quickbooks office etc etc to get me out of trouble till a new disk goes in
I am not in favour of running a mirror image on a partition in case the disk fails electrically/mechanically...my choice but others swear by it and I do see it has merit but, as I said a hd failure and you've still lost it all unless you can afford data recovery which is not guaranteed to work
I use Handy Back Up and have been for some 10 yrs now...its all auto to anywhere...even a remote server
AnswerID:
423059
Follow Up By: Member No 1- Monday, Jul 05, 2010 at 10:26
Monday, Jul 05, 2010 at 10:26
whatever you end up doing, make sure you backup your emails (and address book)....nothing worse than loosing all those lovely pics that your mates send to you...:))))
FollowupID:
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