[NLRS] WA2VOI DISASTER

Fri Jun 29 11:54:29 EDT 2007

Since a crash a few years ago i have been paranoid about backup, though i 
was lucky and was able to recover most of the drive then.  I use a software 
called Acronis True Image to make a complete image of my main hard drive to 
a NAS, network attached storage.  This happens automatically on a schedule 
every couple days, you can do daily too if you use your computer that much, 
and it creates an incremental backup on the fly while still being able to 
use the computer while its working.

During the installation of the software you can make a recovery cd that's 
bootable, then if the main hard drive ever crashes or fails, which has 
happened since i have been using it, or if i wanted to upgrade the hard 
drive to a larger one, i just change out the bad drive and boot with the CD 
and in about 20 minutes i can write the entire drive contents and reboot 
back to normal.

I also recommend using a seperate drive for user files, keeping them off the 
drive which holds the windows installation.  In my case this includes the My 
Documents folder, Email storage folder from Outlook, Outlook Express, or the 
new Windows Mail 7.  The O/S drive in my experience is the one that usually 
goes first, due to its regular use, whereas the secondary drive has nearly 
outlasted most of the computers i have owned.  Of course backing up the 
second drive to another media is recommended.  I have both hard drives 
backed up to the NAS and to DVD media locked away in my safe.  The NAS 
updates are every couple days and the DVD backup is weekly.  There is a 
possibility that the NAS drive will fail some day also, hence the weekly 
backups from that.

I have suffered a couple failures since putting this routine in place, but 
nothing i can't recover from while eating breakfast.

73,

Scott KB0NLY
The Computer Doctor

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "S. Earl Jarosh" <earl at jarosh.org>
To: "'Chris Elmquist'" <chrise at pobox.com>; "'Donn Baker'" 
<wa2voi at mail.mninter.net>
Cc: <NLRS at mailman.qth.net>
Sent: Friday, June 29, 2007 9:48 AM
Subject: RE: [NLRS] WA2VOI DISASTER

At the risk of sounding like I am starting a flame........

Ok,  I am not a zealot for or against that company but they have always
included real backup tools with their OS's.  If anybody is unsure I can
guide them in every OS going back through DOS.  At the very least even I can
write a simple .bat file using the copy command and stick it in a schedule
to copy critical files across the network, internet, flash drives or any
other media attached to the computer or network on a daily or any other
scheduled basis but yes, there are many other better free and licensed
products that accomplish this.

With the price of HD's and flash today I stopped using tape a long time ago.
I now create backup servers with cd/dvd burn capability and rotate hard
drives out before they reach their MTBF specs.

By the way, Ubuntu is really really cool with a 3D graphics card!

S. Earl Jarosh, N0HZ
V.P. of Information Technology
Cell:  612.868.1313
Off:   763.545.3275
Fax: 763.546.0027
Money Centers of America, Inc. - I.T. Dept
5955 Golden Valley Rd., Suite 206
Golden Valley, MN  55422
6128681313 at cingularme.com
earl at moneycenters.com
www.moneycenters.com

-----Original Message-----
From: nlrs-bounces at mailman.qth.net [mailto:nlrs-bounces at mailman.qth.net] On
Behalf Of Chris Elmquist
Sent: Thursday, June 28, 2007 8:41 PM
To: Donn Baker
Cc: NLRS at mailman.qth.net
Subject: Re: [NLRS] WA2VOI DISASTER

On Saturday (06/30/2007 at 02:00AM +0100), Donn Baker wrote:
> Well, maybe a bit over dramatic, but still....
>
> I had a TOTAL disk crash over night Jun 27-Jun28.  This included, of
> course, my mail and address book.
>
> Basically, if you sent me mail yesterday and I didn't acknowledge it,
> most likely its gone forever.  If it was (is) important, please re-send.
Sorry.
>
> Anyone know of some place that does data recovery from dead disks ?

Sorry to hear Donn...

I have to ask of course, were you using Windows?  Does anyone ever wonder
why that OS vendor does not provide any backup tools?

These guys do data recovery here in town... but it is spendy:

http://www.ontrack.com/

Good luck.

Chris  NØJCF

--
Chris Elmquist
mailto:chrise at pobox.com
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