Devastating loss in my household

My condolences.

Depending how desperate you are to recover your data, it can be done by specialists who charge an arm and a leg.

Here are the results of a Google search for Computer hard drive data recovery service.

 

sry bout ur loss......
I've NEVER backed up a hard drive.........! What does one use to back up a 80 gig drive?

 

Just dump a copy of your data/music/video files to DVD. Recordable DVDs are down to only 40 cents. DVD recorders can be found on sale for $79 (internal) and $129 (external).

Software is simple to backup too. Just buy a copy of Norton Ghost. It will allow you burn directly to DVD.

 

I'm really sorry to learn about this situation. First because of your own loss and second because my son will be starting college in August and the Latitude line is what the IT department at the school recommends. In fact, the D610 is what they'll be purchasing from Dell and packaging for sale to students. Sheesh!

 

You have learned a valuable lesson.

Just because a laptop is new is no guarantee. The harddrive can last a month, a year or more. The harddrive in my Mac Performa went 6 years before it failed.

The slim harddrives in laptops are a bit fragile. I back up my titanium regularly. I've had to replace the optical twice already. Once straight out of the box, the second time after two years.

Yes, you back up regularly. Get an iomega 120 gig external.

CDs and DVDs are so cheap now it's cheaper and easier to burn a backup.

You live and learn.

And I bet you'll never do that again.

And no, they aren't really designed to lean on.

 

Another alternative, and one I prefer for ease of use: another hard drive of equivalent size, in an external USB case.

Here's my backup plan for my home PCs:

• Every two weeks, backup all working files -- documents, Quicken files, e-mail, etc. -- into a ZIP file, and burn it onto a CD-RW. (Obviously, DVD-RW works even better.)
  I do this in batch format, using WinZip's command line utility. Just keep a list of directories I want backed up.
• Every 3 months, I back the entire drive up onto the external USB drive. (USB 2.0 is rather helpful here. )
  The idea is that, in case of catastrophic hard drive failure, I can restore an image that is < 3 months old, and then reinstall what few applications have been installed since then.
  • 
    This works well for me, based on the way my computer is laid out. Your mileage will vary.

 

Western Digital makes a very nice USB hard drive from 80 gigs and up. It comes with back up software. I bought my 80 gig unit on sale at Circuit City for around $90 with rebates. Easy to use and hopefully reliable.

 

DVD is more durable. A layer of plastic protects the data side, rather than leaving it exposed like on a CD.

DVD is more reliable too. There is better error-correction.

As for using RW, it's not the ideal choice... since it does have the exposure of being erased. Reusing a RW later isn't the best either, since someday you may want to recover an ancient backup. R is permanent, making it immune to virus attacks. They have a longer shelf-life too. Spending the 40 cents to have that instead could pay off later on.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(john1701a\";p=\"89700)</div>

DVD is more durable. A layer of plastic protects the data side, rather than leaving it exposed like on a CD.

DVD is more reliable too. There is better error-correction.

As for using RW, it's not the ideal choice... since it does have the exposure of being erased. Reusing a RW later isn't the best either, since someday you may want to recover an ancient backup. R is permanent, making it immune to virus attacks. They have a longer shelf-life too. Spending the 40 cents to have that instead could pay off later on.
[/b][/quote]

I agree absolutely with you, John, if I'm archiving files -- i.e., storing them for an indeterminate amount of time -- as opposed to temporarily backing them up.

But my backup scheme is basically keeping the document backups in ZIP files around for no more than 4-5 weeks -- basically a rotating number of CD-RWs. I erase the oldest CD-RW (and its backup files), and overwrite it with the newest backup.

I neglected to mention that every 3 months, I make an epoch archive of the current backup ZIP file -- on CD-R, just as you suggest. Those are for archiving, and CD-R or DVD (as you point out, the latter is better) is the choice there.

My fault -- I should have explained things better. And I am planning on switching to DVD soon, and moving my archived data from CD-R to DVD.

 

I think everyone learns this lesson too late. Fortunately I have a server that runs a daily backup using rsync. I keep a 2 week backup history.

Rsync is nice (from the developers of Samba) because it only copies the files that were changed (incremental) but always has a complete snapshot of the entire filesystem (using links).

There are a few other things I do:

1) Keep all my install CDs together.
2) All downloaded program installers I keep backed up on the server, along with documentation (SN, etc.)
3) Keep a list of installed programs and a blurb on what they are.

These keep me from hunting all over my house and thumbing through 100's of CDs for the install information in the event a catastrophe occurs.

DVD backup is nice, but with < 5 Gigs per disk this can get really clumsy to backup several 100 Gigs. I'd prefer to use an external HD (firewire or usb) as a quick recovery.

BTW, I just had the opportunity to use the Backup program built into WinXP, and although it creates an image in it's own format, it's not too bad. The stupid thing is that it wants me to put the catalog on a floppy! Not too many new machines coming with these installed. You can skip this step and it works fine.

 

PS The way I ended up with my current backup scheme is because my previous 2 backup schemes came up short when a problem actually occured.

Just wanted to point out that disaster was my primary teacher, too!

 

I feel your pain. I've gone through two unrecoverable disk crashes on my Dell's at work. I heard the clicking soon before they died as well. So if you hear clicking sounds, backup ASAP.

 

SO......my dell has the old usb...1.0?.........What should I go out and buy right now to back up with?.......John suggested a DVD drive and Norton Ghost!

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(bshef\";p=\"90217)</div>

Before getting a USB 2.0 card (about $25), I actually backed up the drive images to the external USB drive over USB 1.1. The key word is, overnight.

Which isn't that much of a hassle. Start it at 10 PM, go to bed, wake up next morning, disk image has been copied to external drive.

(I use a Norton Ghost-like product, Drive Image -- which come to think of it, was bought out by Norton.)

 

wow what a cheap POS if leaning on it destroyed the hard drive... of course some jobs (like mine) would definitely go with the cheap stuff. i can stand on a regular hard drive and not hurt it. kinda makes me wonder. the hard drive in my laptop has a metal case on it but its ancient...(my laptop also weighs about 10 pounds!... guess that is why im in the market for an upgrade)

as far as backups, an extra hard drive is so pathetically cheap these days, its faster, no disc change, if i have to swap a disc on backup then it aint for me since my backups only happen in the middle of the night. i should be more diligent on my backups...(if i was, my incrementals wouldnt be so big and i could put them on a CD like i should be doing...) but i am backing them up to 3 different physical drives so im not too concerned with losing anything and i like my setup...totally labor free. (i should verify a copy though...last time i did that was about 2 or 3... or maybe it was 6 months ago...)

 

MAXTOR

I just purchased this!