Oh the agony

[TravelingSquirrel]

I ordered my Vista HCx, 2 GB MicroSD card and Topo 2008 from Amazon.com late last week. Of course the map was delivered today and the Vista should be here tomorrow. All this while I am in the middle of rebuilding my computer due to a dead motherboard! How much can one person take?

 

On the bright side, the computer is up and running and my data appears to be safe. For a little while, I thought my digital life had come to an end! Every file I have collected for years and years along with maybe 25,000 digital photos. Is it true, if you see yourself die in the digital world you die in the real world?

[SiliconFiend]

I ordered my Vista HCx, 2 GB MicroSD card and Topo 2008 from Amazon.com late last week. Of course the map was delivered today and the Vista should be here tomorrow. All this while I am in the middle of rebuilding my computer due to a dead motherboard! How much can one person take?

 

On the bright side, the computer is up and running and my data appears to be safe. For a little while, I thought my digital life had come to an end! Every file I have collected for years and years along with maybe 25,000 digital photos. Is it true, if you see yourself die in the digital world you die in the real world?

Dude. Backup.

[TravelingSquirrel]

Dude. Backup.

 

Backup? I had 3 copies. I gave the short story above, but here is the long story. I was running two drives mirrored as my primary drive. I had a 3rd drive as a backup and used SyncBack to backup my files to the 3rd drive over night. Then my motherboard died. So I put in a new motherboard and Windows would no longer boot up. It would start to boot and then get the BSOD. I am guessing that it is because it was using RAID drivers for the old motherboard that aren't compatible with the new motherboard. So I figure since I have 3 copies of everything, I would just wipe one of my previously mirrored drives and do a clean install. So I get Windows up and running again with all the patches.

 

Now it's time to copy my data off the other drive back to my primary drive. Well, where I run XP Pro with multiple logins, it would not let me into my old "My Documents" folder. It was secured and locking me out! So I panic a little but decided to just get the data off my third drive. Guess what? It says my drive isn't even formatted! Now the panic sets in. One of my three drives was wiped to do a clean install, one says it isn't formatted and the last one is secured and won't let me in.

 

So I went googling. The first item I find tells me how to get in as the machine administrator, grant myself authority to the folders, and get my data! So now I have most of my data, though it will be a couple days before I figure out what might still be in other places on the old drive.

 

I avoided digital death this time, but it sure has me reconsidering how to safely back up my data from now on. But since I didn't see myself die in the digital world, I don't know if I would die in the real world.

 

The good news is, my Topo maps were delivered last night and I am reading the 3 sweetest words that can be said together on the UPS site: "Out for Delivery"!

[+pigpen4x4]

Glad it worked out for you.

I'll tell ya, I have been keeping my backups on a seperate (outside the box) drive. Have not needed it YET, but it's automated. Also use a thumb at work I carry home about once a week.

I'm really considering one of the HP home servers. Looks sweet.

PP4x4

[anethema]

EDIT: I see you already use raid1, nvm!

 

Raid wont help you if your computer catches fire, but at least you will not lose everything to a hdd failure (which is guaranteed to happen at some point)

 

I run a 1 terabyte radi5 array of 3 disks, and all my pictures are backed up off-site (flickr pro)

Edited January 30, 2008 by anethema

[SiliconFiend]

Dude. Backup.

 

Backup? I had 3 copies. I gave the short story above, but here is the long story. I was running two drives mirrored as my primary drive. I had a 3rd drive as a backup and used SyncBack to backup my files to the 3rd drive over night. Then my motherboard died. So I put in a new motherboard and Windows would no longer boot up. It would start to boot and then get the BSOD. I am guessing that it is because it was using RAID drivers for the old motherboard that aren't compatible with the new motherboard. So I figure since I have 3 copies of everything, I would just wipe one of my previously mirrored drives and do a clean install. So I get Windows up and running again with all the patches.

 

Now it's time to copy my data off the other drive back to my primary drive. Well, where I run XP Pro with multiple logins, it would not let me into my old "My Documents" folder. It was secured and locking me out! So I panic a little but decided to just get the data off my third drive. Guess what? It says my drive isn't even formatted! Now the panic sets in. One of my three drives was wiped to do a clean install, one says it isn't formatted and the last one is secured and won't let me in.

 

So I went googling. The first item I find tells me how to get in as the machine administrator, grant myself authority to the folders, and get my data! So now I have most of my data, though it will be a couple days before I figure out what might still be in other places on the old drive.

 

I avoided digital death this time, but it sure has me reconsidering how to safely back up my data from now on. But since I didn't see myself die in the digital world, I don't know if I would die in the real world.

 

The good news is, my Topo maps were delivered last night and I am reading the 3 sweetest words that can be said together on the UPS site: "Out for Delivery"!

I guess you've discovered that RAID != backup, especially when dependent on a particular RAID controller and drivers. I'm using Linux and software RAID (which has just as good performance as an unaccelerated RAID controller) and has the advantage of working on any Linux install (including a LiveCD). However, despite that, I still have DVDs of all my photos stored in a fire safe at my parent's house, 4 hours away. That should be "offsite" enough. If it's not, we all have bigger problems to worry about.

[TravelingSquirrel]

I have learned several lessons with this crash. KISS - Keep It Simple, Stupid. I will simplify my backup scheme to make it easier to restore next time. I must be more diligent in backing up to DVD and backing up my laptop which gets no backup right now.

 

On the bright side, my Vista HCx is receiving a heavy dose of topo maps at this very moment. I have run it through the web updated but have not found the software versions yet. I am going to surf here to find out how to find the software/bios versions.

[SporkSports]

Backups are always a good idea. The most secure is offsite storage of your data. If you have too much data to sign up for one of those internet-based backup services, you can also get a safe deposit box at your local bank branch and a pair of external hard drives. That's actually what I do. The external drives can be had for as little as $100 each and my safe deposit box is 3x10x15" and only $70/year. Quality backup software like True Image is $50.

 

It's a fairly simple process really. I always have one external drive at the bank, then one at home to create a new backup. About once a week I do a full cold backup of the entire hard drive to the external drive, then drive or bike to the bank, and swap the old hard drive with the new one. Then I take the old hard drive home to make next week's backup copy.

 

This way even if my house burns down, I still have a backup copy at the bank about 1.5 miles away. It doesn't protect the data in event of nuclear attack, but other natural disasters (hurricanes, tornados, floods) are extremely rare in Phoenix, so it's good enough for my purposes. Cheap, simple, and incredibly secure. I never have to worry about losing more than about 7 days of data at most now.