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View Full Version : Oh, the pain! ... Oh, the agony!


CPMcGraw
10-21-2010, 07:29 PM
Yesterday I had a system meltdown. My old friend, a scratch-built Athlon machine that I assembled back around 04 or 05, has taken a trip south without permission. I had been trying to baby this machine for as long as possible, because it contained all of my BARCLONE archives, including both posted and unposted designs, and because I had no secondary back-up of any of it.

For the next several weeks, I will be attempting to rebuild my 'posted' archives from messages here on YORF. I think everything listed in the catalog posts (one or two exceptions) is available, so I'm not completely in panic mode. Yet...

If I seem to drop deeper into the void than I have already, at least you'll know why...

Feyd
10-21-2010, 11:03 PM
Good luck. I recently signed up with one of the online backup services (Carbonite) and I'm so glad I did. $55/year and it backs up whatever I want on my home computer. Well worth it if I ever have a problem like you have experienced.

tfischer
10-22-2010, 08:43 AM
Good luck. I recently signed up with one of the online backup services (Carbonite) and I'm so glad I did. $55/year and it backs up whatever I want on my home computer. Well worth it if I ever have a problem like you have experienced.

I started using Mozy this year as well. Before that I had the system automatically backup to an external hard drive.

I really wish everyone would take steps to automatically back-up their PCs, regardless of how they do it. I keep reading stories like this on the various forums I'm on, and it makes me wince every time. It's not a matter of IF your computer will lose your data, it's a matter of WHEN.

For me, it was 3-4 months after my oldest son was born. All of his baby pictures were lost, except those we had printed. We actually would have lost about 4 years worth of other digital photos as well, but in a chance incident I had copied them over to a laptop to take on a vacation with us. The pictures of my son were in a folder on the desktop and were missed. I also lost a ton of financial information, etc.

Please don't wait until something like this happens to you to start backing up.

Bill
10-22-2010, 09:31 AM
Yesterday I had a system meltdown. My old friend, a scratch-built Athlon machine that I assembled back around 04 or 05, has taken a trip south without permission. I had been trying to baby this machine for as long as possible, because it contained all of my BARCLONE archives, including both posted and unposted designs, and because I had no secondary back-up of any of it.



You did not say how that machine died. Did the hard drive make ugly noises? Did you suddenly get lots of read and write errors?

Otherwise, there is a chance the drive and the data on it may be safe. Try moving the hard drive to another computer to see whether you can access the information on it.


Bill

Feyd
10-22-2010, 10:02 AM
My hard drive started doing strange things on my last computer and suddenly I couldn't boot any more. So I bought a new one and put the old hard drive in it as a secondary drive. Was able to get back all of my old data. I guess the boot sector was pooched.

So right now I have two hard drives in the case plus a 1TB external drive I use for backups and other things.

It's good to have multiple backup paths.

CPMcGraw
10-22-2010, 10:14 AM
You did not say how that machine died. Did the hard drive make ugly noises? Did you suddenly get lots of read and write errors?

Otherwise, there is a chance the drive and the data on it may be safe. Try moving the hard drive to another computer to see whether you can access the information on it.


Bill

It's a Vista Ultimate system, and I was able to see the files in Safe Mode. There are two drives involved, both set up as "dynamic". I started noticing some erratic behavior a few days earlier which I attributed to a thermal problem, and tore the machine down for a thorough blow-out of dust. This appeared to solve the problem, but within 48 hours the machine had corrupted its boot-up files to the point that Safe Mode was the only way I could get the desktop.

I'm setting everything aside until I can research the problem. I tried attaching one of the drives to my Win7 Pro machine, but it could not import or reactivate the disk.

As far as error messages, I don't use this machine as a primary workstation. It's set up in another part of the computer room and I connect to it through the "remote desktop" feature of Win7. The only indication I got of a serious problem was the machine would not connect. When I hooked it up to K, M, & M, I got a black screen. Not a "BSOD" blue screen, but a solid black nothing screen. The boot sequence gets just past the "rolling status bar" welcome screen, then hangs.

Windows... :( :confused: :mad:

CPMcGraw
10-22-2010, 10:20 AM
My hard drive started doing strange things on my last computer and suddenly I couldn't boot any more. So I bought a new one and put the old hard drive in it as a secondary drive. Was able to get back all of my old data. I guess the boot sector was pooched.

So right now I have two hard drives in the case plus a 1TB external drive I use for backups and other things.

It's good to have multiple backup paths.

The bad thing about this is one of my two drives is in an external case, connected via USB 2.0, and this machine was the only one of my 'big boxes' that could read this drive. I haven't yet tried to attach this drive to one of my laptops, which I'll try today.

If I put a new drive into this box, it will be the third primary drive since being built. The drive in the external case was the original. It got trashed out as a boot drive when it was hit with a virus that clobbered Norton and Zone Alarm in one blow. I put in a new drive and installed Vista when that happened, then slaved the old drive through USB. It had been working that way for two years without any other major issue.

Solomoriah
10-22-2010, 02:49 PM
I'd use a Linux boot disk (Ubuntu Karmic would be a good one) to attempt to access the drives. Windows tends to be rather stupid about dynamic drives from other Windows computers.

They weren't "spanned," were they? As in, two drives appearing as one? (Not the same as mirrored.)

CPMcGraw
10-22-2010, 03:24 PM
I'd use a Linux boot disk (Ubuntu Karmic would be a good one) to attempt to access the drives. Windows tends to be rather stupid about dynamic drives from other Windows computers.

They weren't "spanned," were they? As in, two drives appearing as one? (Not the same as mirrored.)


No, thank goodness! Just two separate drives. I'll try that Linux "boot disk" method. So far, no other machine has been able to read the drive. See It, yes, but not read it. What bugs me most is that this drive was made "dynamic" under Vista, but I cannot activate it under Win7. I could understand not being able to read it under XP (older version), but Win7 is a newer version.

I even tried moving the drive to a physical mount on the IDE cable, with the same results.

CPMcGraw
10-22-2010, 05:48 PM
An update...

During my sessions in Safe Mode yesterday, I created a new user account and instructed Vista to auto-logon with the new account. Several resets later, not seeing any improvement, I shut the machine down and let it sit overnight. After reading several horror stories from Vista users over the last two years which sounded just like this problem, I decided to try cranking the machine up and try one of the suggestions offered...

I left the network off, as well as not connecting the external drive. I then watched as I pressed the power button...

"ESCD Update Successful" on the pre-bios screen... :eek:

Roll-bar Windows screen...

Black screen, still long, but... WOW! There was my mouse cursor!...

Seconds later, I get the "Welcome" screen image...

Seconds later I get a pretty background and a "Windows update" status message box, saying it was "Personalizing" my configuration...

Seconds later, I get a new desktop with a bunch of icons, and the machine has fully booted up in my "new" user profile...

With some trepidation, I decide to go full-bore, and reconnect the network cable and the external drive. Internet OK, drive starts pulling in all of the partitions on the brick, all of my files are there and accessible! No data loss!

It was a bloody Windows Update!!!

Needless to say, I am going to take some steps to copy my very important data (including the BARCLONE archives) to another disk, and even put them on multiple machines. Since I can now run RockSim (slightly degraded performance) on a Linux box, I will transfer the archives there to act as one backup.

Feyd
10-22-2010, 05:59 PM
Run, don't walk, to Windows 7 or XP and get off of Vista. I absolutely hate that version of the OS. I have it at home and I can't wait to upgrade to 7. Wish I could stay at XP but that's just not possible.

Of course I'd rather be running Linux, but that's another story.

CPMcGraw
10-22-2010, 06:25 PM
Run, don't walk, to Windows 7 or XP and get off of Vista. I absolutely hate that version of the OS. I have it at home and I can't wait to upgrade to 7. Wish I could stay at XP but that's just not possible.

Of course I'd rather be running Linux, but that's another story.

This machine will be running Linux as soon as I move these files. My primary workstation is a slightly newer machine which I loaded with 7 earlier this year. Totally agree about getting off of Vista. Win7 is a much better platform.

My plans are to load up Rocks 5.3 on this machine, and use a couple of lesser-grade Athlon machines as slave nodes. QnD cluster.

CPMcGraw
10-22-2010, 06:53 PM
Big test - I just connected remotely from Win7, and ran an application. It's working properly again...

For how long? "...Only the Shadow knows..."

brianc
10-22-2010, 08:04 PM
One word-

SyncBack !! http://www.2brightsparks.com/freeware/

LeeR
10-22-2010, 09:33 PM
If you do not subscribe to an online backup service, at least consider a USB external drive. You can get a Western Digital 1TB drive at Sams for under $100. I have an older Seagate 160GB I bought for about $60. No power cord either, it is powered off USB. Get a couple, and keep alternating them, and keep one offsite away from home.

CPMcGraw
10-22-2010, 10:06 PM
If you do not subscribe to an online backup service, at least consider a USB external drive. You can get a Western Digital 1TB drive at Sams for under $100. I have an older Seagate 160GB I bought for about $60. No power cord either, it is powered off USB. Get a couple, and keep alternating hem, and keep one offsite away from home.

Already thinking in a similar direction...

Synology 2-Bay NAS (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822108041)
Western Digital 2 TB Drives (2 of them) (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136514)

I've got about seven USB cases with drives in them. They're good, useful, and relatively cheap; but I'm really looking for NAS this time. The above system allows for RAID (mirroring).

o1d_dude
10-22-2010, 10:45 PM
Glad to hear the design repository is safe for the moment.

What Feyd said is spot on. Even Windows nay sayers agree that Win7 is the best version yet.

Now get thee a back up solution be it online or an external drive! :D

BEC
10-23-2010, 01:20 AM
Even Windows nay sayers agree that Win7 is the best version yet.

I don't know if I'd go that far yet....but then the only Win7 installation in our house that I have ready access to is an Acer netbook with Win7 Starter on it. All the rest of the Windoze boxes are XP Home (or XP Pro in the case of my Boeing-furnished machine). The Macs are on 10.6, 10.5 and 10.3 depending on vintage.

My son has some other Win7 version on the Windoze side of his MacBook Pro, but I don't know what version is is. He was happy to get rid of the Vista he had on there before.

Glad to hear you can get to your data!

I am hit and miss about backups myself except for this Powerbook which has a 1TB Firewire drive attached and is running Time Machine, so an incremental backup is made every hour....(which is a bit too frequent, but much better than not at all).

Solomoriah
10-23-2010, 08:53 AM
RAID mirroring and backup are both good; don't ever rely on RAID alone, as it only protects against hardware failure. Malicious software or user FUBAR could still wipe out valuable things.

If you go with Linux on your main workstation, there are lots of good free software options to back up your data. I prefer external hard drives myself, and use good ol' tar to do them. The rule I give my customers is, you need at least three "sets" of backup media (where a "set" is enough media to back up your valuables once). Use them in rotation, never using one twice in a row.

The rationale is like this: You have one backup set, and it's in the computer (connected, whatever). Lightning strikes. Now you have nothing.

So now you have two backup sets. One is in the computer, and lightning strikes. Well, you still have the other backup (from yesterday, last week, whatever) so it's not a total loss. But say, before lightning strikes, that one of the sets dies; suddenly you are vulnerable to the lightning.

Three sets is therefore the minimum number I recommend. More is always better, of course.

Solomoriah
10-23-2010, 08:56 AM
What Feyd said is spot on. Even Windows nay sayers agree that Win7 is the best version yet.
I'm a Windows nay-sayer, and I say that XP was the best. Vista was a joke, and Windows 7 is better than Vista, but XP runs everything my customers need just fine.

A properly supported 64 bit XP would have been a good thing. Changing the standard user setup so that the normal user is a "Power User" with the option to temporarily elevate permissions would have been better than faking it as Vista and 7 do.