well, that'll teach me to back-up religiously (schadenfreude fodder enclosed)
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BillWoodruff wrote:
a 1.5 gig
Isn't that a wee bit small? Marc
Imperative to Functional Programming Succinctly Contributors Wanted for Higher Order Programming Project!
Marc Clifton wrote:
Isn't that a wee bit small?
Why, "yes," Brother Marc: for a man of your Gargantuan stature 1.5 gigs would not back-up a smidgen's-worth of those of your neurons hat contain only the memory of one day ! I use the term "Gargantuan" here because, unfortunately, as in the case of "schadenfreude," English has no "native" word that refers directly to the weltanschauung of his fellow-giant son, "Pantagruel," of whose philosophy's guiding ethos Rabelais wrote: "une certaine gaîté d'esprit confite dans le mépris des choses fortuites" ... "a certain gaiety of mind pickled in the scorn of fortuitous things." :) cheers, Bill
«I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from the center» Kurt Vonnegut.
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And backup the backups of the backups. At least get yourself a Blue Ray drive that will hold 25GB on a single disc and burn your data to a set of BR discs.
How do we preserve the wisdom men will need, when their violent passions are spent? - The Lost Horizon
Cornelius Henning wrote:
get yourself a Blue Ray drive that will hold 25GB on a single disc and burn your data to a set of BR discs.
Thanks, Brother Cornelius, please respond by private e-mail to this message with your credit card information, and a link to which on-line store you would like me to purchase said item with. yours, Bill
«I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from the center» Kurt Vonnegut.
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Bill, Can you pull the HDD out of the USB enclosure and place the HDD directly in a computer to see if it is visible in the BIOS? If you do this, can see the HDD in the BIOS but Windows says it is not formatted, get the following. Download Parted Magic (about USD$10.00), boot from the disk and see if you can mount it directly from the Linux based desktop. If this fails, then open the Terminal and run Testdisk. If you get this far, search for a tutorial on line about using this to rescue data/fix the partition. If you can't find it, give me a yell and I will find where I put this link.
Michael Martin Australia "I controlled my laughter and simple said "No,I am very busy,so I can't write any code for you". The moment they heard this all the smiling face turned into a sad looking face and one of them farted. So I had to leave the place as soon as possible." - Mr.Prakash One Fine Saturday. 24/04/2004
Brother Michael, thanks very much for this very practical response ! For unknown reasons (possibly a teaser designed to lull me back into somnolence while the demons prepare an even greater misfortune), said WD hard-drive has re-appeared in the Bios after many reboots. I am now running chkdsk with options /f /r /x ... I see it's already fixed a few clusters, but it will take an eternity to complete the job. cheers, Bill
«I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from the center» Kurt Vonnegut.
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BillWoodruff wrote:
it appears with a red content-utilized bar rather than the usual blue ... signifying, I guess, "wounded."
Doesn't that just mean it's running low on space?
"These people looked deep within my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined." - Homer
Do you think I can understand plausible, rational, explanations at a time like this ? I'd say my current mental state must be (I guess) like that of many newcomers on QA. :) cheers, Bill
«I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from the center» Kurt Vonnegut.
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... update from the field-hospital at the front: mirabile dictu the gone-awol hard-drive has now reappeared after several re-boots ... viewing it in "This PC" it appears with a red content-utilized bar rather than the usual blue ... signifying, I guess, "wounded." ... Another small triumph for the demons: today, I tried doing a Win System Image (8.1) back-up onto a 1.5 gig (Sata 3.0) hard-drive (with lots of free space); it failed, and now the 1.5 gig Tb drive won't mount. I've done the usual bit about dis-connecting the drive and re-connectiing, re-booting, examining the BIOS info, etc. The fact the fried-critter don't show up in the BIOS is, I assume, a death sentencel, but I'll try mounting it on another machine and see what happens. Whilst the drive is still under warranty, and replacement under warranty here in Thailand (for WD drives) is fast and no-questions-asked, and no inscrutable forms to fill-out, this drive happens to have my entire prized collection of movies, downloaded British TV programs, music, etc., on it :( Now: don't you feel happy because this didn't happen to you; doesn't it make you just want to smirk and utter profound platitudes like "one back-up is never enough" ? cheers, Bill
«I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from the center» Kurt Vonnegut.
Sorry to hear that - it's horrible when it happens. Going forward if you have the spare cash you may want to consider some sort of cloud online backup. I recently bought 1 terabyte of dropbox storage for 79Ggbp for one year together with a "restore any file to any point in the year" service for 29gbp. It's not a huge outlay when you consider the amount of time and effort backups and storing and retrieving those backups from a safe location takes. (I will still be taking images every 6 months for my own peace of mind)
“That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.”
― Christopher Hitchens
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Cornelius Henning wrote:
get yourself a Blue Ray drive that will hold 25GB on a single disc and burn your data to a set of BR discs.
Thanks, Brother Cornelius, please respond by private e-mail to this message with your credit card information, and a link to which on-line store you would like me to purchase said item with. yours, Bill
«I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from the center» Kurt Vonnegut.
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A serious question: Which app did you use to create the image when the drive was fried?
How do we preserve the wisdom men will need, when their violent passions are spent? - The Lost Horizon
I was using the MS Win 8.1 file history => create system image facility. Years ago I used to use "Drive Snapshot," a lean/mean excellent (commercial) utility, but, as I went on to Win 7/8, I just used the built-in Win facilities. thanks, Bill
«I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from the center» Kurt Vonnegut.
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I was using the MS Win 8.1 file history => create system image facility. Years ago I used to use "Drive Snapshot," a lean/mean excellent (commercial) utility, but, as I went on to Win 7/8, I just used the built-in Win facilities. thanks, Bill
«I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from the center» Kurt Vonnegut.
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A serious question: Which app did you use to create the image when the drive was fried?
How do we preserve the wisdom men will need, when their violent passions are spent? - The Lost Horizon
If you are asking because you need to do one, I'm currently trying the free version of APMEI Backupper[^] as I'm looking for something before I update to Win10 next month. So far, I've created an image, but I need to do a trial restore which means dismantling the PC to fit a "disposable" disk so I'll try it probably this weekend. I'll generate a Windows System Image tonight and compare them.
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
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Sorry to hear that - it's horrible when it happens. Going forward if you have the spare cash you may want to consider some sort of cloud online backup. I recently bought 1 terabyte of dropbox storage for 79Ggbp for one year together with a "restore any file to any point in the year" service for 29gbp. It's not a huge outlay when you consider the amount of time and effort backups and storing and retrieving those backups from a safe location takes. (I will still be taking images every 6 months for my own peace of mind)
“That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.”
― Christopher Hitchens
Thanks, Guy, I have been thinking about purchasing some "cloud-space," and, since I've used DropBox for years now, considered DropBox. What holds me back, however, is the thought of how long it would take me to upload 900+ gigs of stuff, given that my internet connection here (Thailand) is a relatively slow ADSL, and I am too cheap to pay a lot for a faster connection. cheers, Bill
«I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from the center» Kurt Vonnegut.
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Thanks, Guy, I have been thinking about purchasing some "cloud-space," and, since I've used DropBox for years now, considered DropBox. What holds me back, however, is the thought of how long it would take me to upload 900+ gigs of stuff, given that my internet connection here (Thailand) is a relatively slow ADSL, and I am too cheap to pay a lot for a faster connection. cheers, Bill
«I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from the center» Kurt Vonnegut.
Good point - it will take a while to upload the data. It took me around four evenings(24hrs) to upload 40Gb of data on a 20mbps line - it's difficult to say whether it is the number of files or size of files which slows things down(although intuitively one might think it is size that matters it's not always the case when copying data.) I did my research before buying the space and Dropbox came out cheaper than google and Amazon by a long shot. I hope you manage to recover all if not some of your data.
“That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.”
― Christopher Hitchens
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Sorry... you have my sympathy. :rose: While all my data is actually backed up (duplicated) - the original and the back-up are located less then 2m apart so even a small localized fire destroys both. :doh: I really need to consider an off-site copy. :-O
Contrary to popular belief, nobody owes you anything.
Just send it to Bill ;P
GOTOs are a bit like wire coat hangers: they tend to breed in the darkness, such that where there once were few, eventually there are many, and the program's architecture collapses beneath them. (Fran Poretto)
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... update from the field-hospital at the front: mirabile dictu the gone-awol hard-drive has now reappeared after several re-boots ... viewing it in "This PC" it appears with a red content-utilized bar rather than the usual blue ... signifying, I guess, "wounded." ... Another small triumph for the demons: today, I tried doing a Win System Image (8.1) back-up onto a 1.5 gig (Sata 3.0) hard-drive (with lots of free space); it failed, and now the 1.5 gig Tb drive won't mount. I've done the usual bit about dis-connecting the drive and re-connectiing, re-booting, examining the BIOS info, etc. The fact the fried-critter don't show up in the BIOS is, I assume, a death sentencel, but I'll try mounting it on another machine and see what happens. Whilst the drive is still under warranty, and replacement under warranty here in Thailand (for WD drives) is fast and no-questions-asked, and no inscrutable forms to fill-out, this drive happens to have my entire prized collection of movies, downloaded British TV programs, music, etc., on it :( Now: don't you feel happy because this didn't happen to you; doesn't it make you just want to smirk and utter profound platitudes like "one back-up is never enough" ? cheers, Bill
«I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from the center» Kurt Vonnegut.
Not as good as off premises backup, but I use the following. (1) PC with two drives in a Windows ReFS RAID 1. (2) All computers back up to the RAID. (3) RAID backed up to a portable drive kept in Fire Safe. Why ReFS RAID 1: If a drive dies, then remaining drive is a duplicate. Either drive can be physically removed and plugged into another Windows 8+ PC for read if necessary. Decent performance. Free with Windows 8 or newer. The only maintenance is the occasional backup to drive in Fire Safe. Simple, no membership fee, yep it's not perfect but it's good enough for our family use.
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Bill, Can you pull the HDD out of the USB enclosure and place the HDD directly in a computer to see if it is visible in the BIOS? If you do this, can see the HDD in the BIOS but Windows says it is not formatted, get the following. Download Parted Magic (about USD$10.00), boot from the disk and see if you can mount it directly from the Linux based desktop. If this fails, then open the Terminal and run Testdisk. If you get this far, search for a tutorial on line about using this to rescue data/fix the partition. If you can't find it, give me a yell and I will find where I put this link.
Michael Martin Australia "I controlled my laughter and simple said "No,I am very busy,so I can't write any code for you". The moment they heard this all the smiling face turned into a sad looking face and one of them farted. So I had to leave the place as soon as possible." - Mr.Prakash One Fine Saturday. 24/04/2004
I have a seemingly dead 2TB USB drive, coincidentally also a WD drive. I will try to mount the drive directly and see if I can salvage it. Thanks for the information Michael.
Once you lose your pride the rest is easy. In the end, only three things matter: how much you loved, how gently you lived, and how gracefully you let go of things not meant for you. – Buddha
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Thanks, Guy, I have been thinking about purchasing some "cloud-space," and, since I've used DropBox for years now, considered DropBox. What holds me back, however, is the thought of how long it would take me to upload 900+ gigs of stuff, given that my internet connection here (Thailand) is a relatively slow ADSL, and I am too cheap to pay a lot for a faster connection. cheers, Bill
«I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from the center» Kurt Vonnegut.
BillWoodruff wrote:
What holds me back, however, is the thought of how long it would take me to upload 900+ gigs of stuff, given that my internet connection here (Thailand) is a relatively slow ADSL, and I am too cheap to pay a lot for a faster connection.
Relax Bill. When you are retired you have nothing in more abundance than time. :-D
Once you lose your pride the rest is easy. In the end, only three things matter: how much you loved, how gently you lived, and how gracefully you let go of things not meant for you. – Buddha
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I have a seemingly dead 2TB USB drive, coincidentally also a WD drive. I will try to mount the drive directly and see if I can salvage it. Thanks for the information Michael.
Once you lose your pride the rest is easy. In the end, only three things matter: how much you loved, how gently you lived, and how gracefully you let go of things not meant for you. – Buddha
You sure they're not just encrypted? With full installs of 8.1, MS decided that everything should be encrypted. If you did a system backup to the drive, I wouldn't be shocked to find MS decided to encrypt it too.. for your data safety, of course. I don't know if their encryption goes so far as the partition table or not. Also, if it was a USB drive, it might have decided you asked it to wipe the drive and use it as a bootable recovery drive.. and that certainly would be encrypted if the original install was. If the drive shows up under Linux, you may need to blast a few MB of zeros over the front if it before you can recreate the partition table. I've had to recover a few hard drives that way over the years. Windows is way too trusting of whatever garbage data is on the disk and can get terminally confused.
We can program with only 1's, but if all you've got are zeros, you've got nothing.
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Not as good as off premises backup, but I use the following. (1) PC with two drives in a Windows ReFS RAID 1. (2) All computers back up to the RAID. (3) RAID backed up to a portable drive kept in Fire Safe. Why ReFS RAID 1: If a drive dies, then remaining drive is a duplicate. Either drive can be physically removed and plugged into another Windows 8+ PC for read if necessary. Decent performance. Free with Windows 8 or newer. The only maintenance is the occasional backup to drive in Fire Safe. Simple, no membership fee, yep it's not perfect but it's good enough for our family use.
This is very similar to what I'm in the process of building at my house.. While I have cloud storage and fast enough internet that I could probably get my entire household backup set online within a month.. The issue is my connection is data capped.. And to bump my data cap up just to accommodate my online storage would quickly become prohibitively expensive.. So for the time being, the critical and/or "sentimentally important" stuff still comes in under 200GB and I have been incrementally moving it to online storage. My GoPro videos and music collection are scattered amongst multiple machines and multiple 500GB USB drives.. My movies, app installs archive, wife's Mac backups, and other non critical stuff are on a single 2TB on my HTPC just iching to fry as my 1 year warranty is about to expire. :-D Unfortunately, the old PC I was going to dedicate as the RAID backup box, started to flake out. So might have to find some bare metal box on ebay and build a new one.
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Bill, Can you pull the HDD out of the USB enclosure and place the HDD directly in a computer to see if it is visible in the BIOS? If you do this, can see the HDD in the BIOS but Windows says it is not formatted, get the following. Download Parted Magic (about USD$10.00), boot from the disk and see if you can mount it directly from the Linux based desktop. If this fails, then open the Terminal and run Testdisk. If you get this far, search for a tutorial on line about using this to rescue data/fix the partition. If you can't find it, give me a yell and I will find where I put this link.
Michael Martin Australia "I controlled my laughter and simple said "No,I am very busy,so I can't write any code for you". The moment they heard this all the smiling face turned into a sad looking face and one of them farted. So I had to leave the place as soon as possible." - Mr.Prakash One Fine Saturday. 24/04/2004
If I may be so bold to suggest forget buying Parted Magic and use the http://ubuntu-rescue-remix.org/. Follow the instructions on https://help.ubuntu.com/community/DataRecovery. DO NOT try and fix the failing drive as you will reduce your chances of success. The data recovery page will have you make an image of the failing drive. The more errors on the drive the longer the image will take. Even something as small as a 2TB drive can take weeks to image. From there you can work on the image.
Glenn
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You sure they're not just encrypted? With full installs of 8.1, MS decided that everything should be encrypted. If you did a system backup to the drive, I wouldn't be shocked to find MS decided to encrypt it too.. for your data safety, of course. I don't know if their encryption goes so far as the partition table or not. Also, if it was a USB drive, it might have decided you asked it to wipe the drive and use it as a bootable recovery drive.. and that certainly would be encrypted if the original install was. If the drive shows up under Linux, you may need to blast a few MB of zeros over the front if it before you can recreate the partition table. I've had to recover a few hard drives that way over the years. Windows is way too trusting of whatever garbage data is on the disk and can get terminally confused.
We can program with only 1's, but if all you've got are zeros, you've got nothing.
patbob wrote:
You sure they're not just encrypted?
Yes I used to use it to play movies on my TV - which will not accept an encrypted drive - and then after a severe thunder storm, when I wasn't home to disconnect it, it failed. Unfortunately, I also used it to back up other things, which are now beyond my ability to access. :sigh:
Once you lose your pride the rest is easy. In the end, only three things matter: how much you loved, how gently you lived, and how gracefully you let go of things not meant for you. – Buddha
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If you are asking because you need to do one, I'm currently trying the free version of APMEI Backupper[^] as I'm looking for something before I update to Win10 next month. So far, I've created an image, but I need to do a trial restore which means dismantling the PC to fit a "disposable" disk so I'll try it probably this weekend. I'll generate a Windows System Image tonight and compare them.
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
I have several questions about the same thing, I mean, how can you determine that a disk image save can really restore without physically removing the hard drive and temporarily installing a similar drive and then trying to restore the system? Does the temporary hard drive have to match the original exactly? What about the boot sector? How does this work with laptops (my current system is a lappie)? I have never opened it up. I would have to go out and buy a spare hard drive to even attempt this. How can you verify that ALL the data was restored - just take another disk image and compare the disk images? Would the second disk image be correct if the hard drives had different sizes (the temporary COULD be smaller as long as there was enough space to restore the data , right?) Back in 2000 - 2007 I did many disk image saves and restores, but I used PowerQuest, ran XP on a desktop, and never changes the hardware. Now that I am on a Pavilion, running W7, and using the internal tools, I just wonder "What would happen if.....". Dave.
