Son Of A B* Well You What I Mean Rant

ronp · Feb 19, 2010

I was reading the forums when nothing was responding.
I tried every thing to do,system restore etc and kept getting an error that the hard drive may fail soon. I called Dell that took me at least 30 minutes to find the info I needed to get to the phone # 1 hour and 15 minutes to finally get through.

I keep getting the error message that the hard drive is failing so I may be missing until I get the new hard drive. I think I will just leave the computer on until I get the hard drive. Will this help?
They are sending me a new hard drive in 2 -3 days.

I will let you know how it turns out.

pit 4 brains · Feb 19, 2010

Somehow i think you can go into the widows system and create a backup / rescue disk(s) on cd-rom. I f you have the time to do it, it may save all your stuff for when the hard drive arrives. Until then, I wouldn't change anything and turning off the pc would be the last thing I wood do..

The above information is entirely the best guess of the author and no guarantee is made to it's factuality or benefit to the reader. The information above is soley written for entertainment purposes only.

Good luck Ron..

pineywoods · Feb 19, 2010

Frustrating I'm sure the wife told me tonight the Acer laptop I bought her for Christmas won't turn on. From what she told me it sounds like a problem with the charger but who knows sounds like I'll be taking it back when I get home

ronp · Feb 19, 2010

I may be gone soon I keep getting the error message that my hard drive is failing.

beer-b-q · Feb 19, 2010

Be sure to back up your files so if it fails you don't loose everything...

fore check · Feb 19, 2010

Most reputable computer repair shops (they're everywhere - just go local) can help you recover your data if it fails before you can back up. Apparently it happens often enough that the charge isn't tooooooo bad and it's more a function of what they can get for the job, rather than how difficult it is to do with the right equipment and expertise (yes, I've had to do this)

rbranstner · Feb 19, 2010

We always back up our laptop to an external drive so in the event something happens we dont lose all of our goodies.

rosencra38 · Feb 19, 2010

Yes, leave it on (that is assuming it's not dead already and you can't read this by now...). Hard drives go through more stress during the shutdown/startup process than they do if they are just running.

timtimmay · Feb 19, 2010

First you want to back up just the critical stuff you can't lose like photos and documents. AFTER that stuff is backed up you can attempt to back up the whole system.

Once a hard disk begins failing the liklihood of doing an extensive backup drastically increases the chance that the hard disc will die completely. The reason for this is the backup process works your disc pretty hard, accessing every file on the system; often that heavy activity will push a failing system over the edge. Copying just your photos and documents first ensures you get them off as a priority.

jonboat · Feb 19, 2010

Exactly! Back up your personal stuff first and foremost. All the other stuff can be re-installed on the new disc.

Other things to back up if you can:
Favorites/bookmarks
Address book/contacts
Email archive if you have one

richoso1 · Feb 19, 2010

Sorry to hear about the HD, hope you can get some backup before it quits. If it's possible, add another HD, and use one for the OS and programs, and one for the data. I have found this to be very helpful, aside from backups. Good luck Ron.

ronp · Feb 19, 2010

Well it is still working. I should be ok since I backup every sunday. I left it on all night. Thanks for the advice all.

ronp · Feb 20, 2010

I got lucky. I asked Sam's to look up my purchase on the laptop and I had 1 day left on the 3 month store replacment. So I took it back and got another Toshiba 17.2 screen 4 gigs ram, 500 gigs HD.

This is the 4th laptop gone bad in as many years, damn it.

I didn't want to be without a puter for a few days as that is all I have to do besides watch tv now that Carol is gone.

I am a pro at getting it loaded with the wireless connection, anti virus, security programs and I am now fully loaded.

Thanks everyone!

the iceman · Feb 20, 2010

I hate to say it Ron but...

If I have told you once, I have told you a thousand times...

fatcap · Feb 20, 2010

this won't help much now, but you can buy (mozy.com) for $5 per month, and it backs up your PC continuously to a remote server. never have to worry about it again, and you don't even notice it running in the background.

darkgt · Feb 20, 2010

Mozy is solid they are owned by EMC and they are one of the biggest players in the storage game. I would also look at iron mountain as they have backup solutions as well. Best thing to do to is a dual back up of pics, docs, etc... irreplaceable (sp?) stuff, one to DVD or CD and the other to an external hard drive, like a Western Digital Passport or you could go one step further and get a Western Digital My Book World Edition 2. That actually has 2 drives in it that you can mirror and it just plugs in to your network so you can access it all the time on your network. The mirroring allows one of the drives to fail with no data loss.

I am partial to WD products, even before I started working there I used their stuff.

wingman · Feb 20, 2010

Been there Ron. as mentioned above, I bought a 1TB mirrored External USB drive (Wester Digital Work Book) that I now keep all my data on. It has 2 1 Terabyte drives mirroerd to each other. When a file is written, it's written to both drives. One drive dies no worries your data is still accessible. rebuilding the system is fairly simple. Retrieving data from a bad drive is not.

Good luck man.

deltadude · Feb 20, 2010

Adding an external drive for backup is easy. In addition, you might want to partition your main laptop drive, c: d: e: f:

I have been partitioning my drives drives since the first PC I ever had.
Only windows OS and programs that might struggle if on a different drive letter go on C:. D: gets all the program applications installed there. E: is for my games and html site building stuff. F: all my personal data, taxes, pics, whatever I want to save goes on F: I have had hard drives fail and the drive wouldn't load windows, but the drive was still spinning, I simply plugged the drive into another PC copy all of F: and some of E: partition and put that on another new drive. I have read several studies that partitioning will length the life of your drive.

As for storing personal data online, if Google and the government and banks can't protect their data, why should I trust an online company with mine. Buy an external drive and keep your data to yourself and safe.

monty · Feb 20, 2010

Excellent point! I happen to value my privacy and online storage will never be an option for me. In today's political climate I want my stuff to remain mine.

Online storage may be safe and secure but only till the court order arrives at the storage facility. And in many cases even that is not required.

I prefer the two hard drive method. Two drives mirrored with one simply written to. If the working drive wants to quit just switch them. In this case Ron had warning. I once lost power at the instant my system was shutting down and it blew away my FATs rendering the drive totally unusable. At that time even the recovery "experts" could not help me. IT has been a number of years since that happened and very possibly technology has gone past that.

So, for what its worth, there's my $.02

Cheers!

wingman · Feb 20, 2010

To expand on Monty's commnet of secure storage. A theif breaking into your house and stealing your PC equipment can be a really big issue. Some do this then search the system for banking, and other personal information. Once they find it they log into chat rooms known to other for selling of this data and they litteraly sell it to the highest bidder at the time.

Strong Disk encryption should keep this from happening. There is a free product called TrueCrypt that provides 256 bit encryption using two encryption algorithims at the same time. Its seemless and transparent. Best of all its free.

I use to protect all my personal info like banking, social security, medical and stock potfolio type information. I just created a file of 10 GB encrypted it and gaveit a password. To open it I mount the file, give it a password and then it opens and displays as a drive with 10 GB of storage. It has a auto maount feature as well.

Sorry if this is a bit off topic. I'm in the IT field and security is our biggest issue these days. I thought I might share a nice free utility to protect data for folks.

TrueCrypt 256 bit encryption
http://www.truecrypt.org/

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