Fyi = For Your Information

[TheSmokingMan]

Data IE Information in this digital age is something we can't seem to live without. Now, I'm not the most computer literate person and I'm not "Computer Stupid" either. I spent two years working on my BS in computer science back in 89-91 in college. I have several (3) computers that I am always having to do something to each week just to make them do the simple tasks that I depend on them to do each day. As some of you know I own a business and the computers in my office are crucial to the workings of my business. I have sixteen years of information on my computers, I back them up regularly. My method of backing up was to dump everything on a Western Digital 250gig External USB Hard Drive. I have four such drives 2, 250 gig and 2, 1 terabyte drives. They have been faithful servants to my information storage needs thru the years.

Last Thursday the computer that I use the most started acting flakey as computers do from time to time. They seem to get overcrowded and confused by the little bits of information stored on them by websites, programs and interface with the network that I have setup here at the Home/Office that links everything together so I can fix my wifes computer with out getting up our of my nice comfy office chair out here in the office. So, I decided to make a back up of the information on my internal drive to my external drive and just restore the computer the way it was when I bought it from HP. This always seemed to me to be the easiest way to keep all of the junk that I don't need off the computer and causing problems, I have to do it about once a year. I have what I have always thought was an excellent army of software that keeps me invisible on the internet and kept my computer free of all of that junk. ZoneAlarm for a fire wall, Spy-bot S&D for a spy ware monitor, Piriform's CCleaner to scrub out the cookies, misplaced files and to scrub the registry. I run a virus scan and a spy ware scan everyday, keep current on all updates and clean my registry at least once a week. I use a browser that strips advertisements from websites and creates a bubble or a pseudo-environment for web pages to be displayed in and they never (supposedly) have access to my computer. All of these safeguards that I had in place all of the time I have invested in backing up my data. After backing up my information Thursday, I started the process of wiping the internal drive and restoring it. Of course this wipes out all of the updates from Microsoft and you have to spend an eternity and ten thousand reboots to get current. When all of that was finally done or almost done, I was bushed so of to bed I went and left the computer to download and reboot from it's final update. Friday morning I return to the office and the computer is hung, not normal, but it happens sometime. After restarting I got down to the business of reloading my information off of the external drive on the internal drive. But alas, the drive was sitting on the desk, but it was not showing up in the My Computer section where all of the other stuff shows up. That's odd, I thought. So after plugging and unplugging it a few time and going thru some motions to see that drive I couldn't see it or access it. I unplugged it and the other 250 gig that I couldn't see and moved them to another computer, same thing, couldn't see them or access them. I call a buddy that is "Super Computer Literate Guy" he said it sounded like a physical problem with the drive. He asked if it was making any noise, I told him that it was clicking. He said "yep", your going to have take it somewhere and have them extract the information, that drive is probably shot.

Being in the insurance restoration business, I work with companies that use electronic restoration companies that do this sort of thing regularly. Off the drive goes to them. They couldn't fix it so they sent it to a company in Austin, Texas that has a clean room and they could take it apart and extract the data. I got the call earlier today, they were successful in extracting the data off of the drive and I could come and pick it up at anytime. The bill? Well, that is why I'm writing this. The bill is $2,200.00 for about 40 gigs of data that they took off of the drive. They determined that the drives failed because of a series of bad sectors that were written when the computer failed to boot properly from that last update and that it was not so smart to have the drives plugged into the USB port when doing the updates, who knew?

Now, I'm not looking for pity, I just don't want this to happen to one of you. Make a second back up if your going to do something major or use one of those on-line backup services that automatically back up your information every night or whenever you schedule it to. It will save you a lot of money in the long run. I couldn't loose this information, it was everything concerning my business, financial, correspondence, job records, everything. One thing that my wife doesn't know, was I had all of the pictures of the kids, cats, dogs and our life on that drive too. So be smart, redundant backups are they way to go.

If any of you techie people out there that want to give me suggestions on how to effectively back things up, I'm open to options as the methods I have used in the past, failed me.

Edited December 17, 2009 by TheSmokingMan

[Christopher]

Wait, they told you a few bad sectors stopped the drive from booting? They could have just run some software to close off the bad sectors. I could have taken the data off myself. If it was making a loud clicking noise then yes it's probably physically broken which does happen from time to time. But from what they're saying that doesn't seem to have been the issue.

Either way if the updates corrupted the drive a few tweaks could have had it up and running in no time.

Anyway on to your question about the best way to back up. Well you have a few options:

1. Online back up services which is usually a month to month fee

2. Burn everything to a CD (This is the dumbest method)

3. Purchase multiple drives to backup the backups.

4. Or you can tape backup, which is what most major corporation do. (We use off site tape backups for the forums and store)

Look for something with a good MTBF (Mean time between failures)

[keenan]

Why is a CD wrong to do. Im asking out of total ignorance, I dont have a clue. I thought about using an online sevice.

[TheSmokingMan]

Wait, they told you a few bad sectors stopped the drive from booting? They could have just run some software to close off the bad sectors. I could have taken the data off myself. If it was making a loud clicking noise then yes it's probably physically broken which does happen from time to time. But from what they're saying that doesn't seem to have been the issue.

Either way if the updates corrupted the drive a few tweaks could have had it up and running in no time.

Anyway on to your question about the best way to back up. Well you have a few options:

1. Online back up services which is usually a month to month fee

2. Burn everything to a CD (This is the dumbest method)

3. Purchase multiple drives to backup the backups.

4. Or you can tape backup, which is what most major corporation do. (We use off site tape backups for the forums and store)

Look for something with a good MTBF (Mean time between failures)

A tape back-up? Really? I'm not knocking it, but I haven't seen a tape drive since that old Commodore 64 and VIC 20 that I had in the 80's

[TheSmokingMan]

Why is a CD wrong to do. Im asking out of total ignorance, I dont have a clue. I thought about using an online sevice.

I don't think that it's dumb to do this it's just requires the least intelligence. A CD back up is a good thing to have and I probably had the first 10 years or so on CD here in the office somewhere but finding it in the sea of CDs that I have #1 and then eliminating that data from the information that I wanted off the drive would have taken 2 weeks for me to do, on top of the other projects I'm working on. Like the 26 freaking hours of video that my mom wants me to convert to DVD with menus before Christmas. I finally finished the first DVD last night.

Edited December 17, 2009 by TheSmokingMan

[keenan]

The fact that it requires the least intelligence, and I want to do it, is NO small coincidence.

[TheGreen]

WOW TSM. I seems that I am always doing something with my PC. I think I am going to get a MAC. I do not do a lot with my PC but small video editing, storing and edited pics and surfing the web.

My Wife used a MAC at her previous job and she really liked it and they rarely had problems.

What do you all think?

[Christopher]

Yes Tape back up is still one of the best ways to backup your data, it's also the most expensive.

As for the CD's keenan, if you only have to back a few things here and there its ok. But the problem is CD are no reliable and believe it or not have a shelf life. If you keep a CD long enough the filament will actually disappear over time. Then your SOL. (The CD will just look like see through plastic)

[keenan]

Yes Tape back up is still one of the best ways to backup your data, it's also the most expensive.

As for the CD's keenan, if you only have to back a few things here and there its ok. But the problem is CD are no reliable and believe it or not have a shelf life. If you keep a CD long enough the filament will actually disappear over time. Then your SOL. (The CD will just look like see through plastic)

Wow, did NOT know that. When my laptop crapped out a couple of weeks ago, it got me thinkin about the best way to do it. I lost a LOT of music and pics. Probably gonna use an online service. And when I can swing it, Im definitley goin to Mac. I know a LOT of people who swear by them

[TheSmokingMan]

Wait, they told you a few bad sectors stopped the drive from booting? They could have just run some software to close off the bad sectors. I could have taken the data off myself. If it was making a loud clicking noise then yes it's probably physically broken which does happen from time to time. But from what they're saying that doesn't seem to have been the issue.

Either way if the updates corrupted the drive a few tweaks could have had it up and running in no time.

Anyway on to your question about the best way to back up. Well you have a few options:

1. Online back up services which is usually a month to month fee

2. Burn everything to a CD (This is the dumbest method)

3. Purchase multiple drives to backup the backups.

4. Or you can tape backup, which is what most major corporation do. (We use off site tape backups for the forums and store)

Look for something with a good MTBF (Mean time between failures)

As for the cause, that is what "Jack" told me on the phone a while ago. The information is already extracted and back in Houston, I am required to make the payment tomorrow, regardless. I don't think that I have been poked, this company comes to me thru a trusted customer and they have a good reputation, albeit there is always a chance that it's not Kosher. I'll have more information tomorrow when I pick up the information, hopefully there will be a cause and diagnosis sheet with the information, for that much money I'm expecting some paperwork from the lab in Austin.

I couldn't see the drive at all, It wasn't visible in MY Computer or the Data Sources section of the Administrator Management section in the Control Panel. I also opened a DOS window and using my ancient DOS skills looked for the drive and it was absent there also. I did this on two computers and couldn't access the drive. After it went to the guy "Jack" in Houston he called me and said that he couldn't get into it with the "special" software he had and it would have to go to a lab where there was a clean room and they wold disassemble the drive and remove the plates and extract the data from them using specialized equipment. However what is done is done, I just need to put a redundant system in place that will prevent this in the future, $2,200.00 will not bankrupt me, but I will feel it in the coming months.

I appreciate your input in this matter, as I do have a lot of trust for your advice considering your experience.

Edited December 18, 2009 by TheSmokingMan

[mcquinn]

It would take a lot of cd's to back up todays hard drives ,even a lot of dvd'sa cd holds 700 Mb's of info and a dvd 4 to 9 gigabytes ,With hard drives being so cheap it is best to put one or two in your computer and back up to them.A lot of computers these days can do arrays which actually makes carbon copies on two or more drives at the same time.The only downfall to this is you could write a virus to all of them at once.At our hospital we back up through arrays and offsite storage which I would assume is on drive arrays as well.

Edited December 18, 2009 by mcquinn

[TheSmokingMan]

Yes Tape back up is still one of the best ways to backup your data, it's also the most expensive.

As for the CD's keenan, if you only have to back a few things here and there its ok. But the problem is CD are no reliable and believe it or not have a shelf life. If you keep a CD long enough the filament will actually disappear over time. Then your SOL. (The CD will just look like see through plastic)

I have had a slight problem with the media material on some DVDs being dissolved or faded by sunlight. Burned copies of DVDs that my son leaves in the sunlight have faded in the past. But it seem that the ones that we have bought have a thicker coat of ink on them when they print the label on them and that would seem to help with the fading of the media material on the top. I have seen CDs and DVDs that have faded completely and are just almost clear disks of plastic.

[TheSmokingMan]

It would take a lot of cd's to back up todays hard drives ,even a lot of dvd'sa cd holds 700 Mb's of info and a dvd 4 to 9 gigabytes ,With hard drives being so cheap it is best to put one or two in your computer and back up to them.A lot of computers these days can do arrays which actually makes carbon copies on two or more drives at the same time.The only downfall to this is you could write a virus to all of them at once.At our hospital we back up through arrays and offsite storage which I would assume is on drive arrays as well.

That's why I generally backup to an external HD of considerable size, like the 2 250's or the 2 1TB drives that I have/had. both of the 250's were connected to the USB hub along with one of the 1tb drives. The 1 TB was unaffected but both of the 250's were unreadable.

[BirdDog]

WOW TSM. I seems that I am always doing something with my PC. I think I am going to get a MAC. I do not do a lot with my PC but small video editing, storing and edited pics and surfing the web.

My Wife used a MAC at her previous job and she really liked it and they rarely had problems.

What do you all think?

I have a been running Macs forever because of the industry I used to work in. I do have to say that they are very reliable machines. If I look back, I have only had 3 machines give out on me. All 3 lasted well beyond their years before going out. If needed, you can also install and run Windows on a Mac. You can either boot into Mac OS or the Windows system. I have not done this, but I do know people that have and they love it. My only complaint with Mac is the price tag. I have always had good experience when calling text support and the discussion boards on the Apple website are great for finding information.

[StevenP]

Yes Tape back up is still one of the best ways to backup your data, it's also the most expensive.

As for the CD's keenan, if you only have to back a few things here and there its ok. But the problem is CD are no reliable and believe it or not have a shelf life. If you keep a CD long enough the filament will actually disappear over time. Then your SOL. (The CD will just look like see through plastic)

Yeah, I found this out a few days ago, when I used to back up to DVD's. I found a batch of DVDs I kept in the closet, so when I checked, it came out almost like clear plastic. The computer only read parts of it, it would have a hard time reading, saying CRC errors.

I heard the difference between buying retail DVD's in the store and burning them yourself is that retail DVD's are pressed and have a longer shelf life as to burning.

Edited December 18, 2009 by StevenP

[SmokinHammer]

First off, TSM, I know what a ***** it is to lose a bunch of data and I feel for you. Wow, this site has no love for female dogs!

Secondly, Green, Apple makes some really cool stuff, but the hard drives inside their machines are no different than any other. My wife has had two apple desktops, a iMac G3, and then a G5. Both work to this day, but I've replaced the hard drives in each. They both failed after approx 4 years of use. Luckily, when the G5 went down, we had everything backed up. That was from the experience we had from the first one. Back when her G3 drive took a dump, we had nothing, not even CD's, of any of her files; and, had to make the difficult choice to not pay the data recovery folks.

In both instances, I was able to, relatively easily, replace (and upgrade) the original Seagate drives. The G3 "bubble", with an upgrade to OSX, still runs in her studio, streaming and storing music for her, and the G5 is back to its old self, after restoring the data from the external drive that we now make sure to update weekly. My new Mac Mini is cool as heck, and has my files, including thousands of pictures backed up on two separate externals, awaiting what I now understand to be inevitable... internal hard drive failure.

As I write this, I'm thinking that tomorrow I will add a second external drive to my wife's G5... Better safe than sorry!

Edited December 18, 2009 by SmokinHammer

[FTJoe]

If any of you techie people out there that want to give me suggestions on how to effectively back things up, I'm open to options as the methods I have used in the past, failed me.

Here I sit, rebuilding my main PC. A nice, kick *** (at the time I built it), AMD based, 2 TB RAID 5 managed, UPS attached machine. Rebuilding because I neglected to back up my OS partition. Everyone else in my house is backed up to my raid array, not me though...ahhh - arrogance. So anyway, my point is, take my advice with a grain of salt as I wallow in my sins. FWIW - Machine is up, raid array intact, adding back all the things I care about. Using a Vista build (was XP), then I'll probably migrate to W7.

I'll tell you what I do on my wife's laptop way down in the post but it's overkill. I'm sure there are free utilities and freebies with the external drives that at least can keep your data backed up. You can either be satisfied with backing up your data, or backing everything up so you don't have to rebuild the software on a hardware crash. If it's just the data, get a 2.5 drive that plugs in to a USB port, or a bigger 3.5 that could be used to maintain an exact copy or a combo of both. I explore all varieties of backup on my wife's lappy but have the luxury of the main drive being a 2.5 drive.

Get a UPS if you can, even a cheap one. Make sure it talks to your pc. I have one that my cable modem, router and main pc plug into. When the power goes out, if not back in one minute my main PC does an orderly shut down. Leaves the battery driving just the modem and router so our laptops are still good to go as well as the phone which is through the cable. The UPS also provides protection from surges and brownouts.

If you can't get a UPS, get a real surge protector (I like APC products). I forget the terminology, but make sure it warns you when the protection is gone. Most cheap surge protectors will actually take a hit or two, then the protection wears off. When it wears off it continues to provide electricity without any protection. You never know that so next lightening hit, bang, you're dead. Get one that protects every connection to the computer, the power AND the LAN connection. People forget about the lan/cable connections. Don't understand why the PC or TV got fried when they had a surge protector, came in another route, that's all.

I also help friends out with their machines, I've saved many a hard drive (or at least long enough to get the data off) with a utility called Spinrite. Even ones going clickety clickety. Basically a drive might appear to be bad because it's reached the limit of errors allowed or the boot sector got whacked, etc. Using spinrite or even a manufacturer utility (they all have them) can mark these sectors as unusable so they aren't viewed as errors anymore. In other words, there are varying degrees of "bad" when it comes to hard drives. Out of the many I've retired for myself and others, I've only had one that was truly shot.

Best cleaners out there, bang for the buck, malwarebytes, superantispyware and spybot. Windows firewall is about as good as the free ones, free antivirus should be avast or avira. IMHO.

Agreed with the burning of CDs and DVDs. They are temporary at best, I think it has to do with burning versus stamping. Real movies on a a DVD are "stamped" and will last quite a while, the burning we do is temporary. I wouldn't bet on it for more than a year or two.

Wife's laptop: I've placed a large drive in the laptop and logically separated into two drives. I use Acronis True Image to make a compressed copy of her boot drive to this logical drive. The boot drive contains both the operating system and her data. My PCs usually have the OS separated from the data but that confuses some folks. This copy takes place once a week or so and it's really just in case she runs into problems on the road. I also have an external drive plugged into the docking station she uses and this is also separated into two logical drives. Two things take place on this drive, every night I make an exact physical copy of her main drive to the first logical drive. Should her drive crap out, crack open the cute case, pop the drive into the lappy, execute a couple of commands on the drive and should be good to go. So that gets her back to a working image no more than a few hours old. I also take an image of the machine to the other logical drive and over the network to my raid array on my machine. Once a week a full image, and every morning an incremental image. This is just an additional image that contains only the data that's been changed since the last full or incremental image. So now we can restore the machine to any day in the past up to the last full backup. I usually keep two weeks of data or so. Finally, to the same external drive, and her local drive if she disconnects, a cute little program from a company called memeo runs that backs up changed data. It came free with the Western Digital external drive. I tell it to just monitor the documents folder and keep five copies of any file that changes. This has two advantages, when a document gets saved that shouldn't have, we can look back at the previous versions and restore them if necessary. If she loses the main drive during the day and has to be restored, I have everything she's worked on that day as long as she saved or filed it.

Even going overboard these solutions cost a fraction of the money you spent to recover your data.

Edited December 19, 2009 by FTJoe

[FTJoe]

So shortly after posting the last post, I'm working on my daughter's laptop, everything backed up to my array, working on the image all day Friday. So getting ready t start pulling the data I've scrubbed off my machine, and I lose communication with it. Go downstairs and nothing is active, reboot, freezes on the bios screen (where it says press Del to enter setup). I guess my mobo is gone. I pulled the battery and AC and let it sit, back up today but who knows for how long. Aaaarrrrgggghhhhhh. Point is, backup your data!!!!

Edited December 20, 2009 by FTJoe

[TheSmokingMan]

So shortly after posting the last post, I'm working on my daughter's laptop, everything backed up to my array, working on the image all day Friday. So getting ready t start pulling the data I've scrubbed off my machine, and I lose communication with it. Go downstairs and nothing is active, reboot, freezes on the bios screen (where it says press Del to enter setup). I guess my mobo is gone. I pulled the battery and AC and let it sit, back up today but who knows for how long. Aaaarrrrgggghhhhhh. Point is, backup your data!!!!

Thanks Joe and to all of you who have responded to this thread. I feel much better about the future health and safety of my data now, I am also glad to see that I am not the only one who had stupid computer problems.

As a response to FTJoe's previous post that detailed all that he has done. I have taken steps to ensure that nothing in my home is vulnerable to a lightning strike or power surge. I have three electrical panels that service my property, the main service, a sub-panel in the office and a sub-panel in the house. Each panel has an industrial grade surge protector integrated into the panel with a indicator that shows if it has been compromised or not. The main panel had it built in and the two other panels have it added to them. I have also quad grounded the house and I have a secondary ground for the office. I have driven 6 ground rods on our place, one for the main service, one for the office and four for the house (one on each side. They are all tied to the same point at the main service. I believe in grounding.

I do not use a UPS and do not currently have an alternative power source connected in the event of a power failure, when the power goes out I have to drag the generator out of the shed and connect it to the main service and reduce power consumption as not to over tax the generator. A UPS is in my future for each computer.

I will take your suggestions on backing up under advisement. I received my information back from the data recovery company and I immediately made three copies of it and it now resides on each computer and the original media that it was returned to me on, which was a WD Passport External Drive. I had a horrific time getting the information off of the drive that they sent. Western Digital made me answer a boat load of questions for registration and then I had to download a bunch of software from them to get the drive to work. After all of that I had to turn off my firewall (ZoneAlarm) to get the drive to show up.

In speaking of software like Spinrite, I believe that is a Gibson Research Corp product. Steve Gibson is a great guy, I have spoken to him on several occasions and his web site GRC.com is very informational when it comes to internet security. I do not believe that any software would have helped my condition. I made every attempt to locate the drive on my end and I was unsuccessful at getting it to read, I then took it to a restoration company who also used some sophisticated software to read it and they were also unsuccessful, it then went to a data recovery company who physically disassembled the drive and removed the plates in a clean room and extracted the data from the plates. I received a brief statement regarding the condition of the drive, it reads as follows: "We have determined that your media has the following problems: Servo damage, Electrical damage, Alignment failures. Please check over file listing for requested data." In my opinion the Servo Damage and the Electrical Damage were the main problem where as the Alignment Failures were probably from me trying to get the heads to realign by an albeit Neanderthal approach, I beat it on the desk as it was booting up just to see if that would get it to read, I was really frustrated. The drive was very fortunate that I didn't put a 200 grain Jacketed Hollow Point .45+P slug through it, it would not have done the drive any good but it would have made me feel better.

Nonetheless, I have my data back and I am $2,200.00 lighter in the wallet. It has also been suggested by many that I utilize an on-line back up service for a daily automated back up of all files. I am not comfortable with my data and my customers data being on someone else's server. I'm sure that it's all available through other means, I would just hate to be the hole that it leaked through.

[FTJoe]

I have spoken to him on several occasions and his web site GRC.com is very informational when it comes to internet security. I do not believe that any software would have helped my condition.

Wow - he's like a god. Ya - sounds like you definitely had a hosed drive. Re Gibson, I remember reading this and getting a good idea about how little we all know about what goes on out there:

http://www.crime-research.org/library/grcdos.pdf

Love the irc chat with ^boss^

[StringDancer]

I agree with TheGreen... get a Mac and most of your PC issues will be solved. I've only used Macs, have since the very first 128k machine back in 1984. In all those years, I've had exactly one issue, when a drive on an old LC3 died after beating it to death for 5 years back in the 90s. And since 1995, I've been online, and I've yet to have an issue with a virus, trogan, worm or whatever the hell Windoze machines are vulnerable to (I don't really follow all that stuff, since they have never impacted me).

While my PC friends often come up with horror stories similar to yours, I just keep 'puting. I've never had to restore anything, never reinstalled the system, nor drivers, nor whatever else. Frankly, I couldn't endure the frustration experienced by the average PC owner. If Apple ever went out of business, I'd simply quit computing and go back to playing guitar all day.

It's true that in the old days there were certain chores for which a Mac didn't stand up well to a Windoze machine, such as spreadsheets and other major business apps. I don't believe that's the case anymore. Anything you need to do, a Mac will do it these days... usually better and easier than on a PC.

Plus the security is so much tighter, which is why the Navy went to using Mac servers several years ago, as they're very difficult to hack.

Yes, you pay more for the machines. But if you put a price on downtime, headaches and frustration, then the scales tip toward the Apple.