Hatrack River Forum: If you haven't done a backup lately, my Christmas present for you is...

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Posted by jeniwren (Member # 2002) on :

...a reminder to back up the data on your hard drive! Don't wait until tomorrow. Get off Hatrack, and do it now.

[Cry]

Last Monday, I went into my office to start work for the day, and found the ugliest message a person who has not done her backup in way too long can ever see: Insert Boot Disk, Drive Not Found.

Despite the efforts of people who are a lot smarter than I am (ie. people who actually backup their data rather than just talking about it), the drive was not recoverable, and I lost a year's worth of pictures of my daughter ( [Cry]

) and all the writing I've done since time began (on this computer), as well as all my financial tracking for the past three years, which included budgets it took months to put together. I have no excuse -- the machine has an excellent CD-R drive. In some respects, it is well deserved -- I can't tell you how many of my customers I've counselled on the best disaster recovery planning, all of which include backups to clean media and planned archivals. Of course it should happen that after a *year* of not making any sort of backup, my hard drive should fry. The arrogance of the hypocrit comes home to roost.

Needless to say, after I get everything reinstalled, I will be backing my data up at least weekly.

So, Merry Christmas to you all, and back up your data if you haven't done it recently. [Sleep]

<---pretend that's me with a Santa cap [Smile]

Posted by slacker (Member # 2559) on :

Are you on a network at work? If so, you might want to talk to the IT guys to see if they'll set up a home directory for your stuff on a server (since they should be backing that up regularly).

I always hate having to tell people that they've lost their work cause they didn't want to save anything to the network (they've got a limit of 50 megs of space on the server).

Posted by Bob_Scopatz (Member # 1227) on :

Fortunately for me, all my best stuff is here at Hatrack.

Sort of pathetic when you really stop to think about it...

jeniwren, I'm sorry you got bitten. I have 2 computers and I swap files between them on a regular basis. Guess what...both had HD crashes within days of each other. Very little was backed up externally.

What a bonehead I am!!!

I did lose one treasured piece of writing, but most of the stuff I'd been working on for a long time was saved elsewhere.

Whew!

[Grumble]

Posted by jeniwren (Member # 2002) on :

slacker, I telecommute to work from home, and the machine that I lost my hard drive on was my personal machine. Ironically, the company owned machine toasted its hard drive in July, and I hadn't gotten around to having them ship me a new one. (It should have been a HUGE warning, though -- I even remember thinking, gee, I should cut a new cd of Rayne's pictures. I didn't do it...grrr!)

Anyway, to answer your question, yes, I have access to the network, but I link in using Remote Desktop rather than VPN. It makes moving the files up to the network a little more complicated. Even so, when my IT guy found out what happened, he was great....said he'd give me whatever space I want for the future. I'll have to find out how long it takes to do a backup over the internet.

Fortunately, I do have all my applications on CD, even the stuff I bought and pulled down from the Web.

Geez, Bob, that's a terrible story. You'd think yeah, one machine could go out, but *two* in a matter of days? I'm glad you didn't lose everything.

Posted by Storm Saxon (Member # 3101) on :

Jeni, it's highly likely your stuff is recoverable if you want to spend the money.

Posted by aspectre (Member # 2222) on :

Yep, don't dump that disc. Or allow your "smarter people" access to try to fix it. Or even attempt to use data recovery software, if it is really important. Unless you've failed to mention spectacle-beyond-headcrash, your problem should be relatively simple to recover from.
There are disc recovery outfits which can perform near-miracles.
The only question is how much money those photographs are worth to you.

Posted by slacker (Member # 2559) on :

that sucks that it was your home machine. I've lost countless emails and pics that way too.

I finally put together a large file server for all my backups (and other files that people don't like me to talk about here). I've also got several drives in my pc as well so that I can do periodic backups to.

I'm not sure if you've done this already, but you can schedule windows to do a backup for you on a set schedule (just leave your machine on).

Posted by jeniwren (Member # 2002) on :

Stormy, I'm going to call on that today. The place I took it to (the place with the smarter people) said they tried to clone it, and couldn't get it to recognise itself at all. They recommended a lab that does the kind of recovery work that requires a clean room.

I have the disc right here, just in case I can afford it.

Posted by zgator (Member # 3833) on :

You have cleaned your room, right?

Posted by jeniwren (Member # 2002) on :

LOL...I *knew* someone wouldn't be able to resist that.

I think my data is gone for good. To have real specialists look at it, it'll be between $1,200 and $2,700. Ouch. A little out of my price range.

Posted by aspectre (Member # 2222) on :

How about between $300 and $1050 depending on your disc size? With no charge for an evaluation?

Posted by Storm Saxon (Member # 3101) on :

And just to make sure, you have tried just making your old hdd a slave to the new one to see if you can pull anything off of it? It would be very wierd if the whole hdd was not readable rather than just being merely not bootable.