I have a Dell 5000 and Dell's PC Doctor says that 2 tests failed on
the Hard Drive ... 1 .. Targeted read test .. Fail ... 2 Smart
Short Self Test ... Fail.

The advice was that my HD is soon to fail ... and to backup my files
and get a new HD.

How seriously should I take this advice ?

Mike P the 1st

On 18/12/11 22:34, Mike P the 1st wrote:
I have a Dell 5000 and Dell's PC Doctor says that 2 tests failed on
the Hard Drive ... 1 .. Targeted read test .. Fail ... 2 Smart
Short Self Test ... Fail.

The advice was that my HD is soon to fail ... and to backup my files
and get a new HD.

How seriously should I take this advice ?

Mike P the 1st


Very. It might last a while, or it mail fail at any moment.

On Sun, 18 Dec 2011 22:37:57 -0000, Chris Bartram
wrote:

On 18/12/11 22:34, Mike P the 1st wrote:
I have a Dell 5000 and Dell's PC Doctor says that 2 tests failed on
the Hard Drive ... 1 .. Targeted read test .. Fail ... 2 Smart
Short Self Test ... Fail.

The advice was that my HD is soon to fail ... and to backup my files
and get a new HD.

How seriously should I take this advice ?

Mike P the 1st


Very. It might last a while, or it mail fail at any moment.

Do you care if your hard disc fails? If not, relax. Otherwise, act.

--
Rod

Mike P the 1st wrote:
I have a Dell 5000 and Dell's PC Doctor says that 2 tests failed on
the Hard Drive ... 1 .. Targeted read test .. Fail ... 2 Smart
Short Self Test ... Fail.

The advice was that my HD is soon to fail ... and to backup my files
and get a new HD.

How seriously should I take this advice ?

Mike P the 1st

Seriously Mike.

At the very least, I would suggest that you backup any important files,
along with any programs and drivers that you don't have CD/DVD ROM disks
for.

As with many things, the hard drive could run for a long time in this
situation - or fail quite quickly. Better to be safe than sorry data wise.
Cash

Mike P the 1st wrote:

I have a Dell 5000 and Dell's PC Doctor says that 2 tests failed on
the Hard Drive ... 1 .. Targeted read test .. Fail ... 2 Smart
Short Self Test ... Fail.

The advice was that my HD is soon to fail ... and to backup my files
and get a new HD.

How seriously should I take this advice ?


Very, if you care about the data.

The nature of the failure sounds not so good. You can get bad sectors that
will not read, but will be remapped on write using a few spare sectors all
modern drives keep for the purpose.

Sometimes, you can run the drive recovery tool (CD or floppy), the bad
sectors can get remapped and the drive can last for years more. Sometimes it
just gets worse, fast.

If it's under warranty (which is usually more than 1 year), request a
replacement. If not, back up the data if possible and consider running a
drive fitness test - downloadable from the manufacturer's website. If this
has a non destructive write test (ie reads a sector, writes some test data,
checks, writes original back) this can sometimes recover the disk[1]

[1] Depending on the tool, it can force a remap of the failed sector if a
read is not possible and you will get the consequant damage to that sector
(ie the new one is full of zeros or unknown data). You might even be lucky
and this is not even in a used area of the filesystem.



--
Tim Watts

In message , Mike P the 1st
writes
I have a Dell 5000 and Dell's PC Doctor says that 2 tests failed on
the Hard Drive ... 1 .. Targeted read test .. Fail ... 2 Smart
Short Self Test ... Fail.

The advice was that my HD is soon to fail ... and to backup my files
and get a new HD.

Are you telling me that it's not all backed up already?


--
geoff

On Sun, 18 Dec 2011 22:53:24 -0000, "Cash"
gently dipped his quill in the
best Quink that money could buy:

Mike P the 1st wrote:
I have a Dell 5000 and Dell's PC Doctor says that 2 tests failed on
the Hard Drive ... 1 .. Targeted read test .. Fail ... 2 Smart
Short Self Test ... Fail.

The advice was that my HD is soon to fail ... and to backup my files
and get a new HD.

How seriously should I take this advice ?

Mike P the 1st

Seriously Mike.

At the very least, I would suggest that you backup any important files,
along with any programs and drivers that you don't have CD/DVD ROM disks
for.

As with many things, the hard drive could run for a long time in this
situation - or fail quite quickly. Better to be safe than sorry data wise.
Cash


There is sooo much to backup .. files .. programs I have downloaded
... all this NG stuff and more .. pics .. 130Gb all told.

I had better do some research as I am sure you just cannot ghost a HD
onto anotherHD and expect it all to work. Dont even have XP disks from
Dell.
Gulp !


Mike P the 1st

On 18/12/2011 22:53, Cash wrote:
Mike P the 1st wrote:
I have a Dell 5000 and Dell's PC Doctor says that 2 tests failed on
the Hard Drive ... 1 .. Targeted read test .. Fail ... 2 Smart
Short Self Test ... Fail.

The advice was that my HD is soon to fail ... and to backup my files
and get a new HD.

How seriously should I take this advice ?

Mike P the 1st

Seriously Mike.

At the very least, I would suggest that you backup any important files,
along with any programs and drivers that you don't have CD/DVD ROM disks
for.

As with many things, the hard drive could run for a long time in this
situation - or fail quite quickly. Better to be safe than sorry data wise.
Cash


+1

I had an 8400 before my present optiplex, the 5000 seems to have the
same case and it's a joy to work on if you need to replace anything.

The 5000 is a bit long in the tooth, but it has SATA drives so new
replacements should work. If you do decide to rebuild, consider putting
in an SSD for the OS and a new hard drive for data. The SSD kits usually
come with the necessary software for cloning the OS, it's all very
straightforward. (I didn't have a spare bay for the SSD in my Optiplex,
but it wasn't difficult to cable-tie it on to the chassis).

You might want to pop the old hard drive into an external enclosure or
just get one of those USB to SATA/IDE cable kits

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/USB-SATA-I...item3cae275151

then you can always hook the old drive back up to the new system if you
need to retrieve anything.

Mike P the 1st wrote, on 18/12/2011 23:16:
On Sun, 18 Dec 2011 22:53:24 -0000, "Cash"
gently dipped his quill in the
best Quink that money could buy:

Mike P the 1st wrote:
I have a Dell 5000 and Dell's PC Doctor says that 2 tests failed on
the Hard Drive ... 1 .. Targeted read test .. Fail ... 2 Smart
Short Self Test ... Fail.

The advice was that my HD is soon to fail ... and to backup my files
and get a new HD.

How seriously should I take this advice ?

Mike P the 1st

Seriously Mike.

At the very least, I would suggest that you backup any important files,
along with any programs and drivers that you don't have CD/DVD ROM disks
for.

As with many things, the hard drive could run for a long time in this
situation - or fail quite quickly. Better to be safe than sorry data wise.
Cash


There is sooo much to backup .. files .. programs I have downloaded
.. all this NG stuff and more .. pics .. 130Gb all told.

I had better do some research as I am sure you just cannot ghost a HD
onto anotherHD and expect it all to work. Dont even have XP disks from
Dell.
Gulp !

http://clonezilla.org/ might help. The destination disk must not be
smaller than the source disk.

--
Dave N

On Sun, 18 Dec 2011 23:14:16 +0000, geoff gently
dipped his quill in the best Quink that money could buy:

In message , Mike P the 1st
writes
I have a Dell 5000 and Dell's PC Doctor says that 2 tests failed on
the Hard Drive ... 1 .. Targeted read test .. Fail ... 2 Smart
Short Self Test ... Fail.

The advice was that my HD is soon to fail ... and to backup my files
and get a new HD.

Are you telling me that it's not all backed up already?

Yes ... very little backed up, considering how much I have collected
over the years.

Mike P the 1st

On Sun, 18 Dec 2011 23:18:59 +0000, Newshound
gently dipped his quill in the best Quink
that money could buy:

On 18/12/2011 22:53, Cash wrote:
Mike P the 1st wrote:
I have a Dell 5000 and Dell's PC Doctor says that 2 tests failed on
the Hard Drive ... 1 .. Targeted read test .. Fail ... 2 Smart
Short Self Test ... Fail.

The advice was that my HD is soon to fail ... and to backup my files
and get a new HD.

How seriously should I take this advice ?

Mike P the 1st

Seriously Mike.

At the very least, I would suggest that you backup any important files,
along with any programs and drivers that you don't have CD/DVD ROM disks
for.

As with many things, the hard drive could run for a long time in this
situation - or fail quite quickly. Better to be safe than sorry data wise.
Cash


+1

I had an 8400 before my present optiplex, the 5000 seems to have the
same case and it's a joy to work on if you need to replace anything.

The 5000 is a bit long in the tooth, but it has SATA drives so new
replacements should work. If you do decide to rebuild, consider putting
in an SSD for the OS and a new hard drive for data. The SSD kits usually
come with the necessary software for cloning the OS, it's all very
straightforward. (I didn't have a spare bay for the SSD in my Optiplex,
but it wasn't difficult to cable-tie it on to the chassis).

You might want to pop the old hard drive into an external enclosure or
just get one of those USB to SATA/IDE cable kits

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/USB-SATA-I...item3cae275151

then you can always hook the old drive back up to the new system if you
need to retrieve anything.

Thanks for that, and other posters on here for the advice.

A rebuild would be something I would like to do.


Mike P the 1st

"Mike P the 1st" wrote in
message ...


There is sooo much to backup .. files .. programs I have downloaded
.. all this NG stuff and more .. pics .. 130Gb all told.

I had better do some research as I am sure you just cannot ghost a HD
onto anotherHD and expect it all to work. Dont even have XP disks from
Dell.
Gulp !

I just cloned my old drive to a new one using Paragon Partition Manager
which was free on last months PC Pro magazine.
Its easy, just put the new drive in a USB enclosure, plug it in, and select
copy disk and let it use the whole drive and away it goes.
It will take a while.
Don't take the old drive out before you clone it as its safer where it is.

Don't skip backups, drives can fail without triggering any warnings.
The warnings are there so you can plan a time to swap them, not to protect
the data.

On Dec 18, 11:16*pm, Mike P the 1st
wrote:
On Sun, 18 Dec 2011 22:53:24 -0000, "Cash"

There is sooo much to backup *.. files .. programs I have downloaded
.. all this NG stuff and more .. pics .. 130Gb all told.

I had better do some research as I am sure you just cannot ghost a HD
onto anotherHD and expect it all to work. Dont even have XP disks from
Dell.

Dell one art fouquet.

Proprietary stuff you can't just load Ubuntu or whatever real
operating system on.

But if you have good hard drive you can just copy sections at a time.
But you will have to get down to it as some of the files might turn
out to be blanks if you go at it in huge lumps.

With a duff hard drive I would do a few folders at a time and open
half of the files to make sure they are not crumbed. And hope the
others are fine too.

If you have Opera you can use that to transfer files. Just post them
on Unite.
I'd keep the thing running in the background from now until you
finally load the last file. It might fail to start and then you will
wish you spent less on research and more on instigation.

You can put 100 pictures a time on abums in myOpera, IIRC. It all
depends on how good your connection is. Then there's Google. Use their
online documents and email services.

Then put them on another drive. So you will have three copies, the
minimum required for safety.
When you have done all that, get a disc like: Ultimate Boot CD. (I
have no idea if that is any good. I just bought it today on a computer
stall at a fair. Others will suggest better, I am sure, if they have
any experience. I haven't)

Mike P the 1st wrote:

On Sun, 18 Dec 2011 22:53:24 -0000, "Cash"
gently dipped his quill in the
best Quink that money could buy:

Mike P the 1st wrote:
I have a Dell 5000 and Dell's PC Doctor says that 2 tests failed on
the Hard Drive ... 1 .. Targeted read test .. Fail ... 2 Smart
Short Self Test ... Fail.

The advice was that my HD is soon to fail ... and to backup my files
and get a new HD.

How seriously should I take this advice ?

Mike P the 1st

Seriously Mike.

At the very least, I would suggest that you backup any important files,
along with any programs and drivers that you don't have CD/DVD ROM disks
for.

As with many things, the hard drive could run for a long time in this
situation - or fail quite quickly. Better to be safe than sorry data
wise. Cash


There is sooo much to backup .. files .. programs I have downloaded
.. all this NG stuff and more .. pics .. 130Gb all told.

I had better do some research as I am sure you just cannot ghost a HD
onto anotherHD and expect it all to work. Dont even have XP disks from
Dell.
Gulp !

Pretty sure you *can* expect it to work. Personally, I would boot it to
linux using a live USB boot (eg Ubuntu) and then install and use a program
called ddrescue which is forgiving of bad sectors (it skips them). Copy one
disk to the other, eg:

dd_rescue /dev/sdb /dev/sdc

Just be sure that sdb and sdc are the input disk and output disk
respectively. The USB disk will appear as a /dev/sd? device too which
confuses things.

You can check by doing:

cat /sys/block/sda/device/model

etc and checking the disk's model number against what you physically see. If
the new disk is identical to the old disk, try doing

od -cv /dev/sdb

(etc)

The new disk will show all zeros (well it should). The old disk will spew
random numbers.

HTH

Tim

--
Tim Watts

Mike P the 1st wrote:

On Sun, 18 Dec 2011 23:14:16 +0000, geoff gently
dipped his quill in the best Quink that money could buy:

In message , Mike P the 1st
writes
I have a Dell 5000 and Dell's PC Doctor says that 2 tests failed on
the Hard Drive ... 1 .. Targeted read test .. Fail ... 2 Smart
Short Self Test ... Fail.

The advice was that my HD is soon to fail ... and to backup my files
and get a new HD.

Are you telling me that it's not all backed up already?

Yes ... very little backed up, considering how much I have collected
over the years.

Mike P the 1st

Let this be a lesson to you, good sir!

And be grateful for the warning.

There's a difference between "real" data, eg your photos and documents vs eg
some downloaded movies or CD rips which are potentially expendible.

How much "real" data do you actually have.

Get thee some sort of backup drive immediately and back it up, in addition
to fixing the problem. If small amounts of real data, a USB key (decent
quality) is a reasonable backup device - keep it on your keyring, so if the
computer smokes you still have your files. For larger amounts of data, a USB
disk if convenient for most people and inexpensive. And if you leave it
unplugges bar backup operations, it's resistent to a sudden virus/trojan
attack too.

--
Tim Watts

In message , geoff
writes
In message , Mike P the 1st
writes
I have a Dell 5000 and Dell's PC Doctor says that 2 tests failed on
the Hard Drive ... 1 .. Targeted read test .. Fail ... 2 Smart
Short Self Test ... Fail.

The advice was that my HD is soon to fail ... and to backup my files
and get a new HD.

Are you telling me that it's not all backed up already?



However ...

I got a similar message for a drive I use as a backup drive about 6
months ago

It's still going strong


--
geoff

On 18 Dec,
Mike P the 1st wrote:

I had better do some research as I am sure you just cannot ghost a HD
onto anotherHD and expect it all to work. Dont even have XP disks from
Dell.

Done it many times. It just works. I've even changed major components
such as mobos too, but it's a gamble there. Usually better in that case to
remove hardware specific drivers first so it uses mickysoft generic ones
during the changeover, which can be ugraded afterwards.

Had more problems with some flavours of Linux, where disks were recognised by
there hardware IDs. Also easily circumvented by changing the fstab entries
from a cd booted version.

--
B Thumbs
Change lycos to yahoo to reply

On 18/12/2011 23:16, Mike P the 1st wrote:
On Sun, 18 Dec 2011 22:53:24 -0000, "Cash"
gently dipped his quill in the
best Quink that money could buy:

Mike P the 1st wrote:
I have a Dell 5000 and Dell's PC Doctor says that 2 tests failed on
the Hard Drive ... 1 .. Targeted read test .. Fail ... 2 Smart
Short Self Test ... Fail.

The advice was that my HD is soon to fail ... and to backup my files
and get a new HD.

How seriously should I take this advice ?

Mike P the 1st

Seriously Mike.

At the very least, I would suggest that you backup any important files,
along with any programs and drivers that you don't have CD/DVD ROM disks
for.

As with many things, the hard drive could run for a long time in this
situation - or fail quite quickly. Better to be safe than sorry data wise.
Cash


There is sooo much to backup .. files .. programs I have downloaded
.. all this NG stuff and more .. pics .. 130Gb all told.

I had better do some research as I am sure you just cannot ghost a HD
onto anotherHD and expect it all to work. Dont even have XP disks from
Dell.
Gulp !

OK, hard drive clone and swap is no problem. However I would keep your
laptop off until you are ready to clone it - i.e. don't push your luck
with the current drive. It may last for ages, or it may fail imminently.

No need to panic.

Using another PC, search for Maxblast[2] and download it from the
Seagate web site. Install that, and then have it make a bootable CD.

Buy a new drive in an exteral box (handy because externals are not quite
as silly money as internals at the mo). If you fancy a performance
upgrade, then consider a SSD if you can get one large enough for your
needs at a sensible price.

Plug USB drive in, and boot from maxblast CD[1]. Have it clone internal
to external (make sure you get that one the right way around!) If the
new drive is larger it will adjust the partition sizes on the fly if you
want.

When done, put the new drive in, and retire the other to a shelf to act
as a backup. Windows etc probably won't even notice.

[1] Maxblast may whinge if one of the drives is not either a seagate or
a maxtor. Normally at this point it throws up a dialog saying "naff off"
and click ok to reboot. At this point do ALT+T, ALT+O and it will then
let you carry on ;-) (possibly in violation of the licensing terms, so
I will let that rest with your conscience)

[2] Basically a branded version of Acronis True image - a very good
imaging product.

--
Cheers,

John.

/================================================== ===============\
| Internode Ltd - http://www.internode.co.uk |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
| John Rumm - john(at)internode(dot)co(dot)uk |
\================================================= ================/

On Dec 18, 10:34*pm, Mike P the 1st
wrote:
I have a Dell 5000 and Dell's PC Doctor says that 2 tests failed on
the Hard Drive ... 1 .. Targeted read test .. Fail ... 2 * *Smart
Short Self Test ... Fail.

The advice was that my HD is soon to fail ... and to backup my files
and get a new HD.

How seriously should I take this advice ?

Mike P the 1st

Backup all your data ASAP. If your data is of any value to you, get a
new hdd. If not, just carry on, many such discs last years without
incident, some dont.

You dont need software to backup data, just copy it over in a file
manager, to another itnernal hdd or a usb hdd.


NT

Tim Watts wrote:

Get thee some sort of backup drive immediately and back it up,

+3.1415

@Mike P - Second drives[1] are essential these days (backing stuff up to
DVD is pointless as the £/GB is poor) but make sure to use 3.5" ones.
IME 2.5" drives are not reliable long term; I've had a couple die just
sitting on the shelf doing nothing. Conversely, I've got a 10YO 10GB
3.5" drive that, even after a long service life, gets woken up every now
and again and is problem free.

Scott

[1] Drives plural - two drives, two caddies, do backups to both for
redundancy.

Check the power and data connections then rerun the test if the same then
I'd definitely back up important stuff. I know we all really should do this
more but we don't do we?
Brian

--
Brian Gaff -
Note:- In order to reduce spam, any email without 'Brian Gaff'
in the display name may be lost.
Blind user, so no pictures please!
"Mike P the 1st" wrote in
message ...
I have a Dell 5000 and Dell's PC Doctor says that 2 tests failed on
the Hard Drive ... 1 .. Targeted read test .. Fail ... 2 Smart
Short Self Test ... Fail.

The advice was that my HD is soon to fail ... and to backup my files
and get a new HD.

How seriously should I take this advice ?

Mike P the 1st

Yes expect at least two full days sorting out the mess, but its probably
less than the week you will spend reconstructing it from scratch. The other
option is to get an old pc and use it to duplicate most of the data and then
with data in more than one machine it tends to be less hassle.
Most of the failures I've had have been brought on by dodgy power
connectors or in one case a dying mother board disc controller. its actually
very seldom a drive goes gradually, they tend to just go phut and are full
of errors.
Thats been my experience.
Brian

--
Brian Gaff -
Note:- In order to reduce spam, any email without 'Brian Gaff'
in the display name may be lost.
Blind user, so no pictures please!
"Mike P the 1st" wrote in
message ...
On Sun, 18 Dec 2011 22:53:24 -0000, "Cash"
gently dipped his quill in the
best Quink that money could buy:

Mike P the 1st wrote:
I have a Dell 5000 and Dell's PC Doctor says that 2 tests failed on
the Hard Drive ... 1 .. Targeted read test .. Fail ... 2 Smart
Short Self Test ... Fail.

The advice was that my HD is soon to fail ... and to backup my files
and get a new HD.

How seriously should I take this advice ?

Mike P the 1st

Seriously Mike.

At the very least, I would suggest that you backup any important files,
along with any programs and drivers that you don't have CD/DVD ROM disks
for.

As with many things, the hard drive could run for a long time in this
situation - or fail quite quickly. Better to be safe than sorry data
wise.
Cash


There is sooo much to backup .. files .. programs I have downloaded
.. all this NG stuff and more .. pics .. 130Gb all told.

I had better do some research as I am sure you just cannot ghost a HD
onto anotherHD and expect it all to work. Dont even have XP disks from
Dell.
Gulp !


Mike P the 1st

Mike P the 1st wrote:
On Sun, 18 Dec 2011 22:53:24 -0000, "Cash"
gently dipped his quill in the
best Quink that money could buy:

Mike P the 1st wrote:
I have a Dell 5000 and Dell's PC Doctor says that 2 tests failed on
the Hard Drive ... 1 .. Targeted read test .. Fail ... 2 Smart
Short Self Test ... Fail.

The advice was that my HD is soon to fail ... and to backup my files
and get a new HD.

How seriously should I take this advice ?

Mike P the 1st

Seriously Mike.

At the very least, I would suggest that you backup any important files,
along with any programs and drivers that you don't have CD/DVD ROM disks
for.

As with many things, the hard drive could run for a long time in this
situation - or fail quite quickly. Better to be safe than sorry data wise.
Cash


There is sooo much to backup .. files .. programs I have downloaded
.. all this NG stuff and more .. pics .. 130Gb all told.

I had better do some research as I am sure you just cannot ghost a HD
onto anotherHD and expect it all to work. Dont even have XP disks from
Dell.
Gulp !


Mike P the 1st


Whoever made the new drive usually has cloning software that makes it
easy I know seagate has.you usually do not have to hunt for third party
software.

I'd be very wary of any cloning solution that works with windows actually
running as windows will be updating the registry and other files as you are
moving them. The best solutions set up the basics in Windows, ie what you
are going to do what you need ie bootable tc and should it clone the low
level info identifying the drive, then you boot to either a cd and floppy or
ramstick which means you are running in a low level dos type environment and
no changeds should take place from what was present on the shut down of the
system.
Brian

--
Brian Gaff -
Note:- In order to reduce spam, any email without 'Brian Gaff'
in the display name may be lost.
Blind user, so no pictures please!
"Dave N" wrote in message
...
Mike P the 1st wrote, on 18/12/2011 23:16:
On Sun, 18 Dec 2011 22:53:24 -0000, "Cash"
gently dipped his quill in the
best Quink that money could buy:

Mike P the 1st wrote:
I have a Dell 5000 and Dell's PC Doctor says that 2 tests failed on
the Hard Drive ... 1 .. Targeted read test .. Fail ... 2 Smart
Short Self Test ... Fail.

The advice was that my HD is soon to fail ... and to backup my files
and get a new HD.

How seriously should I take this advice ?

Mike P the 1st

Seriously Mike.

At the very least, I would suggest that you backup any important files,
along with any programs and drivers that you don't have CD/DVD ROM disks
for.

As with many things, the hard drive could run for a long time in this
situation - or fail quite quickly. Better to be safe than sorry data
wise.
Cash


There is sooo much to backup .. files .. programs I have downloaded
.. all this NG stuff and more .. pics .. 130Gb all told.

I had better do some research as I am sure you just cannot ghost a HD
onto anotherHD and expect it all to work. Dont even have XP disks from
Dell.
Gulp !

http://clonezilla.org/ might help. The destination disk must not be
smaller than the source disk.

--
Dave N

On 18/12/2011 22:34, Mike P the 1st wrote:
I have a Dell 5000 and Dell's PC Doctor says that 2 tests failed on
the Hard Drive ... 1 .. Targeted read test .. Fail ... 2 Smart
Short Self Test ... Fail.

The advice was that my HD is soon to fail ... and to backup my files
and get a new HD.

How seriously should I take this advice ?

Very. There is still some time, but get anything on there that you are
really fond of off onto a memory stick ASP and/or burned and *verified*
to CD/DVD and preferably both.

An external USB HD with backup software might be a good choice for the
imaging the entire disk image at this stage. Shame HD prices have gone
through the roof at the moment, but I would suggest you don't wait for
the January sales or you may not need to buy one.

The next stage is when the Windows swap file or something else critical
becomes unreliable and then things get really hairy. I saw a machine
once with defective HD that took over an hour to boot. Someone had
disabled the SMART HD warnings because they got in the way. It didn't
live long after booting. Trying to do almost anything crashed it.

Regards,
Martin Brown

"Mike P the 1st" wrote in
message ...
I have a Dell 5000 and Dell's PC Doctor says that 2 tests failed on
the Hard Drive ... 1 .. Targeted read test .. Fail ... 2 Smart
Short Self Test ... Fail.

The advice was that my HD is soon to fail ... and to backup my files
and get a new HD.

How seriously should I take this advice ?

Mike P the 1st

Back up now while you still can. If possible, connect an external hard
drive or use a network attached device (or second PC) without turning off
the PC.

You are VERY lucky to get this warning because normally they silently appear
in a Windows log which nobody ever reads - probably the most stupid Windows
bits IMHO (and it's a big field to choose from!).

Back-up now, purchase a new HD, clone the old one, swap and relax. Or you
could ignore the warning, let the disk die, lose everything and spend weeks
reinstalling everything on a new hard drive.

BTW do you have all the required install disks in case you ever did need to
do this? Many manufacturers don't ship install disks and you are expected
to burn your own on receipt of the new PC.

Paul DS.

On Mon, 19 Dec 2011 08:46:58 +0000, Brian Gaff wrote:

I'd be very wary of any cloning solution that works with windows
actually running as windows will be updating the registry and other
files as you are moving them.

Not necessarily. I use an inexpensive cloning program, and it does it
fine. It uses the Volume Shadow Copy Service, which basically eliminates
the problem. On FreeBSD, I use FFS snapshots, which are basically the
same thing (but have been around rather longer).

Yes, it'll miss later changes, but those changes will be minor and
unimportant, assuming you don't actually do any real work while the
cloning is taking place.

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Use the BIG mirror service in the UK:
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On Mon, 19 Dec 2011 09:47:23 -0000, "Paul D Smith"
gently dipped his quill in the best Quink
that money could buy:

"Mike P the 1st" wrote in
message ...
I have a Dell 5000 and Dell's PC Doctor says that 2 tests failed on
the Hard Drive ... 1 .. Targeted read test .. Fail ... 2 Smart
Short Self Test ... Fail.

The advice was that my HD is soon to fail ... and to backup my files
and get a new HD.

How seriously should I take this advice ?

Mike P the 1st

Back up now while you still can. If possible, connect an external hard
drive or use a network attached device (or second PC) without turning off
the PC.

You are VERY lucky to get this warning because normally they silently appear
in a Windows log which nobody ever reads - probably the most stupid Windows
bits IMHO (and it's a big field to choose from!).

Back-up now, purchase a new HD, clone the old one, swap and relax. Or you
could ignore the warning, let the disk die, lose everything and spend weeks
reinstalling everything on a new hard drive.

BTW do you have all the required install disks in case you ever did need to
do this? Many manufacturers don't ship install disks and you are expected
to burn your own on receipt of the new PC.

Paul DS.

I have a few install discs .. drivers etc from when the machine was
new. No OS (XP) discs though.
Looking at all the good advice I am getting from here, I feel more
relaxed about it all and I will start immediately backing up and
getting geared up for the cloning process onto a bigger HD.


Mike P the 1st

Tim Watts wrote:

How much "real" data do you actually have.

I can back up all my real data onto a 4 gig pen drive - and do so every
night. It would still be a gigantic PITA to rebuild the system though.
That's the main reason I use RAID 1. I've had 3 disk failures on the systems
at home, and each time RAID has saved me a lot of work.

On Dec 18, 11:46*pm, Weatherlawyer wrote:
On Dec 18, 11:16*pm, Mike P the 1st

wrote:
On Sun, 18 Dec 2011 22:53:24 -0000, "Cash"

There is sooo much to backup *.. files .. programs I have downloaded
.. all this NG stuff and more .. pics .. 130Gb all told.

I had better do some research as I am sure you just cannot ghost a HD
onto anotherHD and expect it all to work. Dont even have XP disks from
Dell.

Dell one art fouquet.

Proprietary stuff you can't just load Ubuntu or whatever real
operating system on.

********. We do it all the time here on a range of Dell boxes.

MBQ

Do not power off the machine.
Copy the most important files first to three backup media, preferably
two different (eg, DVD-RAM or DVD and External USB hard drive).
Copy the next most important files and so on.

That way if you lose the drive part way you have the most critical
data.

An external hard drive such as a Transcend rubber wrapped 2.5" 250GB
or 320GB is £50 or so on Ebay. The rubber outer sock rolls off
revealing screws and a "void seal" so I suspect you can replace the
hard drive or access it if necessary.

Be very careful what optical media you choose.
There is and always has been a lot of rubbish out there. I still use
3.5" Magneto Optical 640MB for critical stuff, nothing is as reliable,
I was lucky in picking up several sealed drives for next to nothing
some time ago. Very slow media, only suitable for a dataset of 8GB or
so (which is a huge amount of business data).

Remember a single backup hard drive is a single point of failure. You
need two.

Brian Gaff wrote, on 19/12/2011 08:46:
I'd be very wary of any cloning solution that works with windows actually
running as windows will be updating the registry and other files as you are
moving them. The best solutions set up the basics in Windows, ie what you
are going to do what you need ie bootable tc and should it clone the low
level info identifying the drive, then you boot to either a cd and floppy or
ramstick which means you are running in a low level dos type environment and
no changeds should take place from what was present on the shut down of the
system.
Brian


I don't think you've understood how Clonezilla works. It cold-boots
into Linux and then uses a Linux application to clone the
manually-selected source disk as a ghost image on a manually-selected
destination hard disk (e.g. a USB connected HDD). If it doesn't
recognise the file system on the source disk, for example if it is
encrypted, it carries out a byte-by-byte clone of the whole disk.

Once that has been done, you can use the cloned image to restore either
onto the original hard disk or onto another replacement hard drive which
must be at least as large as the original drive from which the image was
taken.

The cloned image is a complete backup of *everything* on the source disk
including the Master Boot Record. It doesn't use Windows(tm) or
MSDOS(tm) in any way and that makes it trivially easy to generate and
restore a Windows(tm) disk image.

--
Dave N

On 18/12/2011 22:34, Mike P the 1st wrote:
I have a Dell 5000 and Dell's PC Doctor says that 2 tests failed on
the Hard Drive ... 1 .. Targeted read test .. Fail ... 2 Smart
Short Self Test ... Fail.

The advice was that my HD is soon to fail ... and to backup my files
and get a new HD.

How seriously should I take this advice ?

Mike P the 1st

24 hours have passed (well nearly). Did the backup complete?

Andy

On Mon, 19 Dec 2011 01:36:19 +0000, John Rumm
gently dipped his quill in the best
Quink that money could buy:

On 18/12/2011 23:16, Mike P the 1st wrote:
On Sun, 18 Dec 2011 22:53:24 -0000, "Cash"
gently dipped his quill in the
best Quink that money could buy:

Mike P the 1st wrote:
I have a Dell 5000 and Dell's PC Doctor says that 2 tests failed on
the Hard Drive ... 1 .. Targeted read test .. Fail ... 2 Smart
Short Self Test ... Fail.

The advice was that my HD is soon to fail ... and to backup my files
and get a new HD.

How seriously should I take this advice ?

Mike P the 1st

Seriously Mike.

At the very least, I would suggest that you backup any important files,
along with any programs and drivers that you don't have CD/DVD ROM disks
for.

As with many things, the hard drive could run for a long time in this
situation - or fail quite quickly. Better to be safe than sorry data wise.
Cash


There is sooo much to backup .. files .. programs I have downloaded
.. all this NG stuff and more .. pics .. 130Gb all told.

I had better do some research as I am sure you just cannot ghost a HD
onto anotherHD and expect it all to work. Dont even have XP disks from
Dell.
Gulp !

OK, hard drive clone and swap is no problem. However I would keep your
laptop off until you are ready to clone it - i.e. don't push your luck
with the current drive. It may last for ages, or it may fail imminently.

No need to panic.

Using another PC, search for Maxblast[2] and download it from the
Seagate web site. Install that, and then have it make a bootable CD.

Buy a new drive in an exteral box (handy because externals are not quite
as silly money as internals at the mo). If you fancy a performance
upgrade, then consider a SSD if you can get one large enough for your
needs at a sensible price.

Plug USB drive in, and boot from maxblast CD[1]. Have it clone internal
to external (make sure you get that one the right way around!) If the
new drive is larger it will adjust the partition sizes on the fly if you
want.

When done, put the new drive in, and retire the other to a shelf to act
as a backup. Windows etc probably won't even notice.

[1] Maxblast may whinge if one of the drives is not either a seagate or
a maxtor. Normally at this point it throws up a dialog saying "naff off"
and click ok to reboot. At this point do ALT+T, ALT+O and it will then
let you carry on ;-) (possibly in violation of the licensing terms, so
I will let that rest with your conscience)

[2] Basically a branded version of Acronis True image - a very good
imaging product.

Is the external drive to remain in its box when fixing into the PC for
good ?

Mike P the 1st

Mike P the 1st wrote:


Is the external drive to remain in its box when fixing into the PC for
good ?

No.

The idea is you plug it in, run the backup, remove and store safely.

If you store it in the house, at least an electrical fault on the PC cannot
blow it up.

If you want a high degree of backup security, store the drive outside the
house somewher - though you have to balance this with: will the
inconvenience make you not do backups often, which of course is worse than
the reasonable compromise of leaving it on your desk but unplugged.


Cheers

Tim
--
Tim Watts

Tim Watts wrote:
Mike P the 1st wrote:


Is the external drive to remain in its box when fixing into the PC
for good ?

No.

The idea is you plug it in, run the backup, remove and store safely.

If you store it in the house, at least an electrical fault on the PC
cannot blow it up.

If you want a high degree of backup security, store the drive outside
the house somewher - though you have to balance this with: will the
inconvenience make you not do backups often, which of course is worse
than the reasonable compromise of leaving it on your desk but
unplugged.


Cheers

Tim

Tim,

Whilst that is okay (and very sensible) for businesses - perhaps "cloud"
storage using sites like http://mozy.co.uk/ may be better for the 'home'
user with lots of photos, treasured documents, music files etc. using either
the free 2gig plan (or the 50 gig for £4.99 or 125 gig for £7.99 plans [both
payable per month]) and always accessible.

(BTW, I have no association with them other than a link that was supplied
with the paperwork on a 500gig external hard drive that I bought a few years
ago). Yes I did subscribe to the 'free plan' at that time, but never used
it, choosing instead to stay with my then ISPs free backup offering.

Now after giving up the business some years ago (and not now needing highly
secure storage), I simply back up only my very important files to memory
sticks and good quality DVDs and a 500 gig external hard drive [1] - all the
rest I can reinstall from scratch if need be (usually once a year using a
disk clone for my OS and drivers).

[1] Using the three different storage mediums gives me more than adequate
safe storage (along with two other computers if necessary [although SWMBO
usually objects when I start filling the hard drive up on the computer she
uses, with some rather large files before reformatting my computer]).

Cash

On 19/12/2011 21:52, Mike P the 1st wrote:
On Mon, 19 Dec 2011 01:36:19 +0000, John Rumm
gently dipped his quill in the best
Quink that money could buy:

On 18/12/2011 23:16, Mike P the 1st wrote:
On Sun, 18 Dec 2011 22:53:24 -0000, "Cash"
gently dipped his quill in the
best Quink that money could buy:

Mike P the 1st wrote:
I have a Dell 5000 and Dell's PC Doctor says that 2 tests failed on
the Hard Drive ... 1 .. Targeted read test .. Fail ... 2 Smart
Short Self Test ... Fail.

The advice was that my HD is soon to fail ... and to backup my files
and get a new HD.

How seriously should I take this advice ?

Mike P the 1st

Seriously Mike.

At the very least, I would suggest that you backup any important files,
along with any programs and drivers that you don't have CD/DVD ROM disks
for.

As with many things, the hard drive could run for a long time in this
situation - or fail quite quickly. Better to be safe than sorry data wise.
Cash


There is sooo much to backup .. files .. programs I have downloaded
.. all this NG stuff and more .. pics .. 130Gb all told.

I had better do some research as I am sure you just cannot ghost a HD
onto anotherHD and expect it all to work. Dont even have XP disks from
Dell.
Gulp !

OK, hard drive clone and swap is no problem. However I would keep your
laptop off until you are ready to clone it - i.e. don't push your luck
with the current drive. It may last for ages, or it may fail imminently.

No need to panic.

Using another PC, search for Maxblast[2] and download it from the
Seagate web site. Install that, and then have it make a bootable CD.

Buy a new drive in an exteral box (handy because externals are not quite
as silly money as internals at the mo). If you fancy a performance
upgrade, then consider a SSD if you can get one large enough for your
needs at a sensible price.

Plug USB drive in, and boot from maxblast CD[1]. Have it clone internal
to external (make sure you get that one the right way around!) If the
new drive is larger it will adjust the partition sizes on the fly if you
want.

When done, put the new drive in, and retire the other to a shelf to act
as a backup. Windows etc probably won't even notice.

[1] Maxblast may whinge if one of the drives is not either a seagate or
a maxtor. Normally at this point it throws up a dialog saying "naff off"
and click ok to reboot. At this point do ALT+T, ALT+O and it will then
let you carry on ;-) (possibly in violation of the licensing terms, so
I will let that rest with your conscience)

[2] Basically a branded version of Acronis True image - a very good
imaging product.

Is the external drive to remain in its box when fixing into the PC for
good ?

Nope - the box is just a way to plug in another hard drive to the laptop
since they don't usually have internal space for two drives. In fact it
does not even need to be a "box" as such, one of the USB to IDE/SATA
adaptor leads alone will do - I have a pile of those such that I can
plug random drives into a laptop to clone them etc.

The drive you take out ought not be trusted for regular use (even for
backup) however it will serve as a level of backup for a short time
while you are installing the new drive etc. For future use, getting a
second and third drive to keep as externals and use for regular backup
would be a sensible precaution.


--
Cheers,

John.

/================================================== ===============\
| Internode Ltd - http://www.internode.co.uk |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
| John Rumm - john(at)internode(dot)co(dot)uk |
\================================================= ================/

On 20/12/2011 00:24, Cash wrote:
Tim Watts wrote:
Mike P the 1st wrote:


Is the external drive to remain in its box when fixing into the PC
for good ?

No.

The idea is you plug it in, run the backup, remove and store safely.

If you store it in the house, at least an electrical fault on the PC
cannot blow it up.

If you want a high degree of backup security, store the drive outside
the house somewher - though you have to balance this with: will the
inconvenience make you not do backups often, which of course is worse
than the reasonable compromise of leaving it on your desk but
unplugged.


Cheers

Tim

Tim,

Whilst that is okay (and very sensible) for businesses - perhaps "cloud"
storage using sites like http://mozy.co.uk/ may be better for the 'home'
user with lots of photos, treasured documents, music files etc. using either
the free 2gig plan (or the 50 gig for £4.99 or 125 gig for £7.99 plans [both
payable per month]) and always accessible.

Cloud has its place, but it also has its limitations. Its currently
still a very poor solution for "disaster recovery" scenarios where you
want to restore a cloned image of a whole machine quickly and easily,
since you are typically limited in internet access speed to make lobbing
hundreds of gigs about the place a non trivial exercise. For daily
incremental backups of your working files however it can be quite good.

Its also easy to underestimate the time and effort required to rebuild a
machine if you have to reinstall from source disks. Each app can take
significant time, and that is before you get to reinstate all the
configuration tweaks that you did the first time (if you can remember them!)


--
Cheers,

John.

/================================================== ===============\
| Internode Ltd - http://www.internode.co.uk |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
| John Rumm - john(at)internode(dot)co(dot)uk |
\================================================= ================/

wrote:


Whilst that is okay (and very sensible) for businesses - perhaps "cloud"
storage using sites like http://mozy.co.uk/ may be better for the 'home'
user with lots of photos, treasured documents, music files etc. using
either the free 2gig plan (or the 50 gig for �4.99 or 125 gig for �7.99
plans [both payable per month]) and always accessible.

I don't trust "cloud" sites - unless they come with a backup regime with an
SLA (many don't). Better than nothing, but I wouldn't rely on one.

I do have some of my photos on Google Photos, but I still maintain backups
at home.

What I've said is equally sensible for any user that cares about their data,
not just businesses IMHO - especicially as so many people have digicams and
don't print many of their photos.

I've seen a student nearly in tears as their USB stick that they kept *all*
their work on, broke, physically. Despite the fact that we gave them each a
1GB home directory with triple backups (local disk2disk, dis2disk at other
end of campus, and tapes stored ina fire resistant safe).

They were lucky in that one of the technical guys managed to disassemble it,
solder the connector back on and it worked.

Computer science student too - not a woofty "meedja" one!

Cheers,

Tim

(BTW, I have no association with them other than a link that was supplied
with the paperwork on a 500gig external hard drive that I bought a few
years
ago). Yes I did subscribe to the 'free plan' at that time, but never used
it, choosing instead to stay with my then ISPs free backup offering.

Now after giving up the business some years ago (and not now needing
highly secure storage), I simply back up only my very important files to
memory sticks and good quality DVDs and a 500 gig external hard drive [1]
- all the rest I can reinstall from scratch if need be (usually once a
year using a disk clone for my OS and drivers).

[1] Using the three different storage mediums gives me more than
[adequate
safe storage (along with two other computers if necessary [although SWMBO
usually objects when I start filling the hard drive up on the computer she
uses, with some rather large files before reformatting my computer]).

Cash

--
Tim Watts

On Tue, 20 Dec 2011 02:09:47 +0000, Tim Watts wrote:

I've seen a student nearly in tears as their USB stick that they kept
*all* their work on, broke, physically. Despite the fact that we gave
them each a 1GB home directory with triple backups (local disk2disk,
dis2disk at other end of campus, and tapes stored ina fire resistant
safe).

They were lucky in that one of the technical guys managed to disassemble
it, solder the connector back on and it worked.

Computer science student too - not a woofty "meedja" one!

+1. I once had to recover a corrupted floppy with the *only* copy of
someone's Ph.D. thesis on it - they'd been using the same floppy for two
years, every day.

I give the first year students a large chunk of one of their Computer
Systems lectures on backup. Mostly mechanisms and strategies, but then
quite a bit about how it applies to THEM - with cautionary tales.



--
Use the BIG mirror service in the UK:
http://www.mirrorservice.org

*lightning protection* - a w_tom conductor