Back up ffs

[mrmod]

unfortunately if I remove the Drive to collect the data the guarantee is void.

Can you not ask the place where you bought it from to save the hard-drive so you can remove your files from it ?

[PimpQ]

You can take it to a repair shop like Geek Squad and they backup everything. That does not void the warranty.

[billy]

that will teach ya a thing or two you twat.

i feel for you gcjm
i don't have as much to save as most of you it seems.

most of what i want can be saved on a few usb keys.
addy has an external h/drive and thats about it here.

[mrmod]

If it's your business files then that's a bit of a problematic situation. I think I should probably back up now .

[DUBLIN5]

PC World actually allow you to replace the drive or any drive yourself,that does not void the warranty

[mrmod]

So did you find out what it was that busted it?

[RobertX]

Sorry to hear about your loss, gcjm.

I almost had a similar experience. My power supply short circuited and almost blew out the motherboard. I have an Intel D865Perl Motherboard bought from Hong Kong that costs a grand fortune.

---

My main home PCs have always been generic clones in tower cases that I assembled myself.
Over the years, I have used Abit, ASUS and Gigabyte motherboards to do that.
I also learned the hard way many years ago never to put data on my C-drive.
I keep all my critical data on a file server in the basement, which also has an email post office service running on it that holds all my mail.
That machine has a RAID1 mirrored drive setup, so it is not vulnerable to single drive failures.
The only data I keep on my workstation, on a separate D-drive, is my torrent seeding data and some downloaded movies and TV shows.
I burn most video files to DVD, and/or copy them to my external USB2 drives.

If you employ sound data practices, the loss of a workstation or its boot drive ought not involve any data loss other than the OS itself, the installed apps and their preference settings.

Sounds like a busy office, velvetfog. Do you network your computers to a LAN?

[RobertX]

That's quite overkill, velvetfog.

I only have two shitty computers, but I'm aspiring everyday to topple your computer setup! Bring in the 486s!

[mrmod]

I have around 20 PCs in the house, and my two story home is wired with one or more RJ45 CAT5e Ethernet outlets in each room. I have a 26-port (24 x 100 Mb & 2 x 1 Gb) Ethernet switch in the basement to power the LAN outlets, along with two 5-port Gigabit switches and two 8-port 100 Mb switches around the house. All my Ethernet switches are Netgear brand.

My Internet connection is a 6 Mbit/1 Mbit ADSL line that goes through a firewall router running Astaro Security Gateway v6.3 on a dedicated PC in the basement.

My basement server closet also contains a file server running NetMail ( formerly the Netscape Internet Messaging System) email post office software.

My living room TV setup with its 7.1 surround sound system has an ASUS O!Play media player that allows me to stream video and audio to my TV both from Internet sources and from the drives on my Windows workstation where I download media files via bit torrent.

So you might say I have a LAN.

I'm not pointing fingers but I think there is some pretty techproud users in the forum.

[billy]

my pc has an inbuilt abacus.

This is not the Sewer, stay on topic. /mod

[mrmod]

I have a D: drive built in my laptop for back up but it has only 15 GB in it. It used to contain the drivers for the laptop but somehow I (very foolishly) ended up deleting its' contents.

I think I should back up into my 120 GB external. Here's a question for the tech-savvy, though. Should I create a system image or just copy-pasta all the files?

[billy]

System images are not that useful, unless you know how to use them to do a proper full restore of the boot drive (C-drive).
Even then, their use is limited, since when the C-drive dies, your last system image is typically a number of weeks, or months, old.
I think it is better for the not so tech savvy to simply get a couple of external USB2 drives, which are quite cheap these days, and back up their stuff to them.
Any data that is super critical, simply copy it to folders on both external drives.

as a non tech savvy moron, i have to go with vf
i have a couple of keys that hold most of my stuff.
i also have a copy of my blogs tables sent to my email everyday so it never gets lost. not yet worked out how to save my tables on a daily basis for the pigpen.

any help would be appreciated.

[LokalHorst]

Ever thought of some online storage provider, like box.net ?
can also be integrated in firefox with the fireuploader plugin (better than using email).

as for system-images, I keep them on external hdd's, updated whenever something new was installed.
To save time and hassle with backup always seperate OS from data (partitioning).
Private data goes to a true-crypt image file onto an usb-stick and as backup to online storage.

[LokalHorst]

Using an online storage provider is not really viable if you have a lot of data.

Sure, for large amounts of data and the asymmetrical home connections (mine is 16m/1m = 16 x time to upload the same amount of data) , but it was in response of:

i have a couple of keys that hold most of my stuff.
i also have a copy of my blogs tables sent to my email everyday so it never gets lost. not yet worked out how to save my tables on a daily basis for the pigpen.

any help would be appreciated.

So my PC died today.

After 2 years 24/7 service she gave up the ghost.

No longer able to boot, no contact with the C-Drive.. fuckadoo

Yesterday,
All those backups seemed a waste of pay.
Now my database has gone away.
Oh I believe in yesterday.

Suddenly,
There's not half the files there used to be,
And there's a milestone hanging over me.
The system crashed so suddenly.
I pushed something wrong
What it was I could not say.

Now all my data's gone
and I long for yesterday-ay-ay-ay.

Yesterday,
The need for back-ups seemed so far away.
I knew my data was all here to stay,
Now I believe in yesterday.

[billy]

the stuff thats important to me is is pretty much failsafed. the rest i don't really care about.

[billy]

woop woop. good for you gcjm,

hopefully you'll see where you owe me money :0.

nice one.