The importance of a backup.
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This weekend I have learned why backing up your data on a regular basis is so important. My harddisk gave up on me. Not just a little bit but completely and without any warning whatsoever. I was trying to install VC++ .NET for which I needed to re-arrange my partitions with PartitionMagic (7) a bit to create room for it. Then trouble began... During startup PartitionMagic reported a problem in a partitiontable with the option to fix it. I choose to fix it, PartitionMagic reported the problem fixed and that was the end of my harddisk. Even the BIOS does not recognize it anymore :eek: I am sure that PartitionMagic is not to blame. I haver used it for years without a single problem. Still I was amazed that a harddisk could simply die like that... Luckely I had recent backups of most of my data but still quite a bit of work has been lost... All in all not a nice way to spend a saturday.
I'm a fanatic about backups. I backup to a second machine 3-6 times a day, to zip disk every half hour or so and to an offsite computer every day or two. I never walk out the door without my zip disk. The thought of having to rewrite code I've laboured over for hours and hours is simply too scary for my liking. My current favourite backup program is BackupXpress. It can back to FTP/Email as well as Disk etc. and offers strong encryption. And as we all know your hard disk/pc will always die at the worst possible time.:omg: Neville Franks, Author of ED for Windows. www.getsoft.com
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Nish, you should know by now how hard I work at being the alpha-geek. :-) Christian The tragedy of cyberspace - that so much can travel so far, and yet mean so little. "I'm thinking of getting married for companionship and so I have someone to cook and clean." - Martin Marvinski, 6/3/2002
I think nish asked that 'cause you said it took 8 hrs to install. In my machine P3-600-256MB running win xp took an hour and half for the install. What took you eight long hours :confused: Cheers Kannan
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I'm a fanatic about backups. I backup to a second machine 3-6 times a day, to zip disk every half hour or so and to an offsite computer every day or two. I never walk out the door without my zip disk. The thought of having to rewrite code I've laboured over for hours and hours is simply too scary for my liking. My current favourite backup program is BackupXpress. It can back to FTP/Email as well as Disk etc. and offers strong encryption. And as we all know your hard disk/pc will always die at the worst possible time.:omg: Neville Franks, Author of ED for Windows. www.getsoft.com
Neville Franks wrote: I'm a fanatic about backups. I backup to a second machine 3-6 times a day, to zip disk every half hour or so and to an offsite computer every day or two. I never walk out the door without my zip disk. The thought of having to rewrite code I've laboured over for hours and hours is simply too scary for my liking. My current favourite backup program is BackupXpress. It can back to FTP/Email as well as Disk etc. and offers strong encryption. I usually zip the whole project directory and burn it on a multi-session CD. Fast and cheap. My only problem is that I have to remind myself to do it ;)
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I think nish asked that 'cause you said it took 8 hrs to install. In my machine P3-600-256MB running win xp took an hour and half for the install. What took you eight long hours :confused: Cheers Kannan
The installer does not like it if you had beta 2 installed, even if you remove it. I guess they presume people who saw the beta are not going to buy the product :-) I had a virgin W2000, I had literally installed nothing else bar the OS, not even service packs until the install did it for me. Christian The tragedy of cyberspace - that so much can travel so far, and yet mean so little. "I'm thinking of getting married for companionship and so I have someone to cook and clean." - Martin Marvinski, 6/3/2002
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Neville Franks wrote: I'm a fanatic about backups. I backup to a second machine 3-6 times a day, to zip disk every half hour or so and to an offsite computer every day or two. I never walk out the door without my zip disk. The thought of having to rewrite code I've laboured over for hours and hours is simply too scary for my liking. My current favourite backup program is BackupXpress. It can back to FTP/Email as well as Disk etc. and offers strong encryption. I usually zip the whole project directory and burn it on a multi-session CD. Fast and cheap. My only problem is that I have to remind myself to do it ;)
Jan van den Baard wrote: I usually zip the whole project directory and burn it on a multi-session CD. Fast and cheap. My only problem is that I have to remind myself to do it Besides your memory the other problem with this is where you put the CD. I have a Fireproof safe. A small Fireproof safe isn't that expensive and is a definitely a good investment. One of the good things about BackupXPress is that it has a built-in schedular, so for example, you can set it to do a daily backup for you. If you have a Web site or somewhere you can FTP or Email to, this is a simple sure way to get things backed up safely off-site. Neville Franks, Author of ED for Windows. www.getsoft.com
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I've had hard drives die like that - the best thing is to run multiple HDD and put your valuable data on more than one. Oh, I installed VS.NET on Friday, it took over 8 hours. Christian The tragedy of cyberspace - that so much can travel so far, and yet mean so little. "I'm thinking of getting married for companionship and so I have someone to cook and clean." - Martin Marvinski, 6/3/2002
It took me 3 hours, but the installer displayed '53 minutes remaining' all long. In the last 10 minutes, the installer displayed '4 minutes remaining'. Then, it completed. Am I wrong or MS can do sophisticated data mining products, Excel, they have high end Maths researchers, but they cannot do a simple "time remaining prediction", even when the machine is dedicated only to the installer ? Crivo Automated Credit Assessment
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This weekend I have learned why backing up your data on a regular basis is so important. My harddisk gave up on me. Not just a little bit but completely and without any warning whatsoever. I was trying to install VC++ .NET for which I needed to re-arrange my partitions with PartitionMagic (7) a bit to create room for it. Then trouble began... During startup PartitionMagic reported a problem in a partitiontable with the option to fix it. I choose to fix it, PartitionMagic reported the problem fixed and that was the end of my harddisk. Even the BIOS does not recognize it anymore :eek: I am sure that PartitionMagic is not to blame. I haver used it for years without a single problem. Still I was amazed that a harddisk could simply die like that... Luckely I had recent backups of most of my data but still quite a bit of work has been lost... All in all not a nice way to spend a saturday.
<based-on-my-experience> Jan van den Baard wrote: I am sure that PartitionMagic is not to blame. I haver used it for years without a single problem. I would not be so quick to waive responsibility. I personally experienced a very similar problem where a drive was trashed completely after using PartitionMagic on it to split it into two partitions, and in the sweat and head beating that followed I managed to talk with a guy who was a professional data recoverer by day, and he explained to me that PartitionMagic works well in the long run, but when it does it go wrong it has catastrophic effects, and it can go wrong doing the most simple and routine of things. In short, he recomended me not to use PartitionMagic again. </based-on-my-experience> ________________ David Wulff http://www.davidwulff.co.uk Sonork ID: 100.9977 Dave …
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Neville Franks wrote: I'm a fanatic about backups. I backup to a second machine 3-6 times a day, to zip disk every half hour or so and to an offsite computer every day or two. I never walk out the door without my zip disk. The thought of having to rewrite code I've laboured over for hours and hours is simply too scary for my liking. My current favourite backup program is BackupXpress. It can back to FTP/Email as well as Disk etc. and offers strong encryption. I usually zip the whole project directory and burn it on a multi-session CD. Fast and cheap. My only problem is that I have to remind myself to do it ;)
After trying to use the Win2k Backup utility for a while (I did, honest!) I stumbled on a way that works better for me using the WinZip command line client - which has the added benefit that Zip files are so easy to browse when you need to recover something. :) What I did was to write some simple batch files and scripts which backed up critical folders (and do a VSS database analyse/repair ;)) on my laptop to a local "Backup" folder on my hard disk, then another one to map a USB network drive on the server and copy the lot across. The backup scripts run automatically overnight (along with a virus scan), so in the morning I've a complete set of backups to copy across to the server (if the laptop is connected to the network it will copy them anyway, saving me the job in the morning). Then, of course, I just copy the lot onto a CD-RW and take the disc into work "just in case". :) Andy Metcalfe - Sonardyne International Ltd
Trouble with resource IDs? Try the Resource ID Organiser Add-In for Visual C++
"I would be careful in separating your wierdness, a good quirky weirdness, from the disturbed wierdness of people who take pleasure from PVC sheep with fruit repositories." - Paul Watson -
After trying to use the Win2k Backup utility for a while (I did, honest!) I stumbled on a way that works better for me using the WinZip command line client - which has the added benefit that Zip files are so easy to browse when you need to recover something. :) What I did was to write some simple batch files and scripts which backed up critical folders (and do a VSS database analyse/repair ;)) on my laptop to a local "Backup" folder on my hard disk, then another one to map a USB network drive on the server and copy the lot across. The backup scripts run automatically overnight (along with a virus scan), so in the morning I've a complete set of backups to copy across to the server (if the laptop is connected to the network it will copy them anyway, saving me the job in the morning). Then, of course, I just copy the lot onto a CD-RW and take the disc into work "just in case". :) Andy Metcalfe - Sonardyne International Ltd
Trouble with resource IDs? Try the Resource ID Organiser Add-In for Visual C++
"I would be careful in separating your wierdness, a good quirky weirdness, from the disturbed wierdness of people who take pleasure from PVC sheep with fruit repositories." - Paul WatsonClever solution! I may have to steal it:-D
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Clever solution! I may have to steal it:-D
LOL be my guest! :D The thing that finally got me fed up enough to write the scripts was manually selecting which folders to back up on multiple user accounts...so in the end I wrote a set of batch files which backed up a single user account (including the Favourites and Outlook mailbox/address book) into one zip file. :cool: As a bonus, the one which handles "My Documents" ignores compiler intermediate files so the end result isn't too bloated. :-D One day I'll get round to rewriting them into CScript or whatever and making them more reuseable...;) Andy Metcalfe - Sonardyne International Ltd
Trouble with resource IDs? Try the Resource ID Organiser Add-In for Visual C++
"I would be careful in separating your wierdness, a good quirky weirdness, from the disturbed wierdness of people who take pleasure from PVC sheep with fruit repositories." - Paul Watson -
Nish [BusterBoy] wrote: How much RAM do you have? 640M. How much do I need ? Christian The tragedy of cyberspace - that so much can travel so far, and yet mean so little. "I'm thinking of getting married for companionship and so I have someone to cook and clean." - Martin Marvinski, 6/3/2002
damn! and i thought my 512mb was going to get the woohoo's --- "every year we invent better idiot proof systems and every year they invent better idiots ... and the linux zealots still aren't being sterilized"