CRASH

[Guest imported_MrEarl]

in case anuone's notices, i haven't been around much latwly and this is why. a couple of weeks ago. my compiter crashed and i lost eveything. all pictures, emails and addreses, logs of all my car purchases and work done, all favorite links etc etc. it;s been pretty traumatic and depressing and annoying. depressong because i feel so stupid for not bacjing eveything up ane traumatic because of all the lost data and history.annoying because all i have mow is my daughters laptip and my hands are to big and i dont have patience to hunt and peck so thia is whT I GEt.

so fols, a little advise, if you don;t already back us ylu valuable files, 9and you don;t tealize how valuabl they are un thil they are gone) DO IT!!!

i'min the process of looking for a nes computer and will certainly include a back up systen. aNY SUYGGEstions as to what to look for in a new processor expecially regarding a back ups ystem/

me>

[Guest brh]

Sorry to hear about your technological glitch. My computer was going and I did all the "right" things, backups etc. However, when I transfered my info from one to the other I did something wrong. As a result I lost everything in my email program. So I would also suggest backing up and when transfering make a copy of your stuff just in case ya do what ever I did. Luckily for me all business info etc. backed up o.k. Currently, I do not have a backup system I just periodically backup a folder I stick all new info in. Get a C.D. burner in the meantime.

[Guest invicta592]

Hey Lamar,

Remember The Cadillacs?

"Well now they often call me Speedo but my real name is Mr Earl"

Must be a connection there somewhere so Hi Speedo

Get a DVD burner. They are only about $40 and can hold 4.7Gb of data. Blank DVD disks can be had for nothing, probably two for a dollar if pricing is anything like the UK. Re-writable ones are usually about 3 times the price of a use once disk, but have obvious advantages for backup purposes. You can burn CD's in it too, if the need arises If you make sure its one of the new Dual-layer ones, when the disks are more readily available and cheaper, you'll be able to get 9.4Gb on a disk. How much Buick info would it take to fill that I wonder??

If you have to buy a new PC, rather than re-install your current one, why not consider one of the new external DVD writers that use USB2. That way, you can take the writer to another machine, plug it into the USB port, and hey presto! instant access

Whats wrong with the old PC anyway? has it exploded? It would be unusual to lose all the data off a hard disk if its just a motherboard failure, or a power supply thats gone. Your data may be recoverable yet, as long as it's not the hard disk thats gone pooof.

And yes, your absence has been noticed.

[BigFella]

Even if your hard drive crashed and will not spin up or reload an operating system, all is not lost...for a price. There are companies that recover data off of disks like this. They charge a fee and recover as much data as possible and send it to you on new media. So if your losing pictures and history that are not replacable (for example digital pictures from a daughters wedding), then you may want to find one of these companies.

[Reatta Man]

Hmmmmm...

Was wondering if the people that built the Teeves brake system for the Reatta were the same people that built your computer? They have been known to cause a few crashes also......with much more catastrophic results.

Just kidding.

Joe

[serb]

Welcome back you ole' dawg.

Yes we missed your wit and charm. Good to have you back.

Stevo

[Terry29-26]

Mr Earl:

Sorry to hear of your crash: Like others have stated all may not be lost, The files are still there u need to find the problem and corect it. Find a computer shop that will trouble shoot you unit and repair it.

I have a custom built computer with 4 hard drives, every file is written to two hard drives so if one goes down the other is still usable. Cost was $500.00 . I don't have to worry any more about backing up files. If the the rest of the computer fails all I have to do is install the old hard drives in another machine. Its kind of like changing motors in cars. Even hard drives can be rebuilt without data loss.

Terry29-26

[Guest imported_Thriller]

I would probably just get one of the relatively inexpensive USB hard drives as an add on. Some of them even come with software for backing up data.

On a related note, if you can (either yourself or get someone else), take the hard drive in your system and partition it into at least 2 partitions. Use one for your operating system, program installations and such and use the second partition as a data partition for photos, documents and the like. That way, when Windows blows up on you, you have to re-install everything, but your data on the data partition is still there. A hard drive failure is still a possible issue though.

As for purchase recommendations, it is pretty tough to go wrong with what is out there...it really depends what your priorities are. If your needs are for reliability and warranty coverage, go with a name brand like Dell. If you are computer-savvy enough and comfortable enough, you can get a local computer shop to build you a custom system. One bit of advice though is that you can't go wrong with more RAM.

On another note Lamar, when you get settled back in from your computer woes, let me know if you want me to look at that potential toy up here.

[Guest imported_MrEarl]

thanks everydody, i'm looking fo someone to look at my old one to see if 1-the best buy geek squad knew what the were talking about and 2-to wee if anything can be retrieved from it.

thanks again!!!

[Guest JDHolmes]

Sorry to hear about your comp issues. It's very unusual to lose a whole system. You might have lost the hard drive (i've lost several over the years) or something else. Find someone who's a techno geek and remove the hard drive and put it in another system to see if the new system will read the hard drive. I consistently use the same hard drive in every system I build and I build all my own computers. The last time however, I upgraded to Win XP pro and lost some programs that didn't convert. However, the re-install was easy enough and no data was actually lost (i.e. my documents and such...I just had to find them and relink them correctly).

If you did actually lose the hard drive, then as others have mentioned, you can pay mega bucks to recover the data.

My suggestion for backing up data is to set up the comp to do backups every so often to DV-RW. You only need to back up data, not programs and this shouldn't take up that much space.

[Guest Roadmaster]

Lamar - I feel for you, I had the same thing happen to me. I took the PC to a reputable PC repair business, they recovered 99% of my data from old hard drive and installed a new hard drive for approx. $200. Be sure to get some serious Virus protection too! I would get an external DVD drive that writes. This way you can burn a DVD every week of your stuff so as to not lose anything. You could do monthly or whatever. If you get one that can re-write on DVDs, buy those re-writable DVDs and you only need a few. Plus burn some music on the side. These are great for picture albums (scan old pics also). Hope all is well. I thought you won the lottery and went on an extended vacation or sdomething. Glad it was nothing life threatening though. Later .....your Roadmaster buddy in Florida.

[Budd]

Well... the Buick community can breathe easy again-- I was able to recover the one most VALUABLE folder on Lamar's crashed disk. "Girls on Buicks"

The friendly Byte Geeks at Best Buy apparently aren't old enough to know or remember what a FAT is, and how it can be reconstructed. Even though they formatted his drive and wiped everything-- declaring "Dude, your disk died", there are utilities you can use to scour the drive and re-construct what was on the drive prior. Same tools that computer forensic folks use to catch bad guys. You'd be suprised what really stays on your hard drive when you think it is deleted. In this case, though, Lamar is innocent and he gets his documents, pictures, and such back.

Had this disk been physically damanged, ie. the heads hit the platter or won't spin up, then you have to pay the big bucks as mentioned to send it to the white lab-coat boys who keep oodles and oodles of old drive parts on hand to actually rebuild the failed physical part of your drive, and then attempt to spin it up and extract the data.

Cheers,

Budd

[Guest imported_MrEarl]

Don't know about the rest of the "Buick community" but you've made MrEarl one happy guy. You're my hero Budd!!! I've already got a new Dell and look forward to having all my old files back. Should be some new Girls on Buicks appearing soon.

Me>>

[Guest sixpack2639]

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">Don't know about the rest of the "Buick community" but you've made MrEarl one happy guy. You're my hero Budd!!! I've already got a new Dell and look forward to having all my old files back. Should be some new Girls on Buicks appearing soon.

Me>> </div></div>

Hey Lamar, does this ( Me>> ) mean you have MPD and there are ten of you in there!?! LOL

[55PackardGuy]

This is a good heads-up for me. I've been procrastinating (procrasturbating?) for about a year to get a backup system set up. Like you experienced, you can get a lot of data back even from a "crashed" disk. But who wants the hassle?

There are nifty backup programs that, if you use a re-writable media like a CD-RW, will back up ONLY new files and those that have been changed, not re-writing unchanged files that are already backed up. This streamlines the job and encourages you to do it more often. When I was working where I relied on data from my own standalone computer, I had Norton backup software and backed up ALL new and changed files every Friday, without fail. I couldn't go through a weekend knowing that the computer could be stolen and... my life would end. That's another reason for storing backups separately--a stolen computer is data lost forever.

Another thought: if you ever get rid of a computer with sensitive data and you REALLY want to be sure none of it can be read, take that hard disk out and beat the sucker to pieces. It's the ONLY way you can be sure the data is destroyed forever.

Good for you, Mr. Earl. You've had a scare, but in the long run, you've gained some valuable knowledge and peace of mind.

[Guest imported_MrEarl]

Guy, that reminds me of a joke

Jesus and Satan were having an on-going argument about who was better on

the computer. They had been going at it for days, and frankly God was

tired of hearing all the bickering.

Finally fed up, God said, "THAT'S IT! I have had enough. I am going to set

up a test that will run for two hours, and from those results, I will

judge who does the better job."

So Satan and Jesus sat down at the keyboards and typed away.

They moused.

They faxed.

They e-mailed.

They e-mailed with attachments.

They downloaded.

They did spreadsheets!

They wrote reports.

They created labels and cards.

They created charts and graphs.

They did some genealogy reports

They did every job known to man.

Jesus worked with heavenly efficiency and Satan was faster than hell.

Then, ten minutes before their time was up, lightning suddenly flashed

across the sky, thunder rolled, rain poured, and, of course, the power

went off.

Satan stared at his blank screen and screamed every curseword known in the

underworld.

Jesus just sighed.

Finally the electricity came back on, and each of them restarted their

computers. Satan started searching frantically, screaming:

"It's gone! It's all GONE! "I lost everything when the power went out!"

Meanwhile, Jesus quietly started printing out all of his files from the

past two hours of work.

Satan observed this and became irate.

"Wait!" he screamed. "That's not fair! He cheated! How come he has all his

work and I don't have any?"

God just shrugged and said....,

JESUS SAVES

[Guest imported_Thriller]

Our priest used that one a little while back...very nice.

In terms of the above comments about destroying drives, we use police developed software at work to wipe HDDs...triple writes with all 1s, all 0s, and date/time (to give a more random mix) before they are surplused.