My Hard Drive crapped out; however,dodged a bullet, and have
recovered.

My Geek is located kitty cornered across the parking lot which is
about a
solid 7 iron.

Was on puter Saturday afternoon (12/27/14) when suddenly "BANG", a
mechanical groan and the monitor goes dark.

Windows XP attempts to restart but with no avail.

Unplug all cables from the case, throw case on my shoulder and start
walking
toward the geek.

Geek plugs cables into case and begins running chkdsk.

It's now about 6:00 PM and it is obvious these diagnostics are going
to take awhile, so geek says he will call me.

I'm in choke city since almost everything including the phones (Magic
Jack)
is handled on the puter.

I get a call from geek about 12:00 PM on Sunday (12/28/14) saying that
the hard drive needs to be replaced, the existing data needs to be
recovered then loaded into new drive.

He quotes a price and if I accept, he can be finished by 3:00 PM.

Such a deal, let me know when you are done and the case is ready
for pick up.

I had a bucket full of rabbit's feet this weekend and used them all
today
starting with the fact that the geek gave up his Saturday evening and
all
day Sunday to repair my puter.

Normally they close at 5:00 PM on Saturday and are closed all day
Sunday.

Now for the luck.

The geek was able to recover ALL my data including programs.

I had the same thing happen in 1994 when I left the puter on 24/7
since I was using puter as a FAX.

Was told that the failure in 1994 was due to running hard drive on a
continuous duty cycle and that technology had changed and when the
new puter would be in idle mode the hard drive would also be at idle.

Turns out that is not true.

When the puter is in idle mode, the hard drive is still spinning, so
plan
accordingly.

SFWIW, the drive that just died was placed in service in 05/08 and
died 12/14, or 6-1/2 years .

Not all that time was spent with puter on; however, 15-18 hours/day
would be more typical.

As this day closes, am back up and running and consider myself to
be very lucky.

Lew

On 12/28/2014 8:06 PM, Lew Hodgett wrote:
My Hard Drive crapped out; however,dodged a bullet, and have
recovered.

My Geek is located kitty cornered across the parking lot which is
about a
solid 7 iron.

Was on puter Saturday afternoon (12/27/14) when suddenly "BANG", a
mechanical groan and the monitor goes dark.

Windows XP attempts to restart but with no avail.

Unplug all cables from the case, throw case on my shoulder and start
walking
toward the geek.

Geek plugs cables into case and begins running chkdsk.

It's now about 6:00 PM and it is obvious these diagnostics are going
to take awhile, so geek says he will call me.

I'm in choke city since almost everything including the phones (Magic
Jack)
is handled on the puter.

I get a call from geek about 12:00 PM on Sunday (12/28/14) saying that
the hard drive needs to be replaced, the existing data needs to be
recovered then loaded into new drive.

He quotes a price and if I accept, he can be finished by 3:00 PM.

Such a deal, let me know when you are done and the case is ready
for pick up.

I had a bucket full of rabbit's feet this weekend and used them all
today
starting with the fact that the geek gave up his Saturday evening and
all
day Sunday to repair my puter.

Normally they close at 5:00 PM on Saturday and are closed all day
Sunday.

Now for the luck.

The geek was able to recover ALL my data including programs.

I had the same thing happen in 1994 when I left the puter on 24/7
since I was using puter as a FAX.

Was told that the failure in 1994 was due to running hard drive on a
continuous duty cycle and that technology had changed and when the
new puter would be in idle mode the hard drive would also be at idle.

Turns out that is not true.

When the puter is in idle mode, the hard drive is still spinning, so
plan
accordingly.

SFWIW, the drive that just died was placed in service in 05/08 and
died 12/14, or 6-1/2 years .

Not all that time was spent with puter on; however, 15-18 hours/day
would be more typical.

As this day closes, am back up and running and consider myself to
be very lucky.

Lew


Likely had recalled parts on the drive motherboard. Happens.
Industry is often driven into dangerous deals. Sale price of those
was so marginal due to other companies - fractions of a cent adds up.

I lost a powersupply to the computer with a cap that should not have
been used in a switcher. Quality of our computers is sliding down.
Sad to say. I would not doubt that some manufacturers plan on 5-6 year
life cycles to keep business going. Force us into 'cloud' crap and usb
disk drives at best.

Martin

On 12/28/2014 10:56 PM, Martin Eastburn wrote:
On 12/28/2014 8:06 PM, Lew Hodgett wrote:
My Hard Drive crapped out; however,dodged a bullet, and have
recovered.

My Geek is located kitty cornered across the parking lot which is
about a
solid 7 iron.

Was on puter Saturday afternoon (12/27/14) when suddenly "BANG", a
mechanical groan and the monitor goes dark.

Windows XP attempts to restart but with no avail.

Unplug all cables from the case, throw case on my shoulder and start
walking
toward the geek.

Geek plugs cables into case and begins running chkdsk.

It's now about 6:00 PM and it is obvious these diagnostics are going
to take awhile, so geek says he will call me.

I'm in choke city since almost everything including the phones (Magic
Jack)
is handled on the puter.

I get a call from geek about 12:00 PM on Sunday (12/28/14) saying that
the hard drive needs to be replaced, the existing data needs to be
recovered then loaded into new drive.

He quotes a price and if I accept, he can be finished by 3:00 PM.

Such a deal, let me know when you are done and the case is ready
for pick up.

I had a bucket full of rabbit's feet this weekend and used them all
today
starting with the fact that the geek gave up his Saturday evening and
all
day Sunday to repair my puter.

Normally they close at 5:00 PM on Saturday and are closed all day
Sunday.

Now for the luck.

The geek was able to recover ALL my data including programs.

I had the same thing happen in 1994 when I left the puter on 24/7
since I was using puter as a FAX.

Was told that the failure in 1994 was due to running hard drive on a
continuous duty cycle and that technology had changed and when the
new puter would be in idle mode the hard drive would also be at idle.

Turns out that is not true.

When the puter is in idle mode, the hard drive is still spinning, so
plan
accordingly.

SFWIW, the drive that just died was placed in service in 05/08 and
died 12/14, or 6-1/2 years .

Not all that time was spent with puter on; however, 15-18 hours/day
would be more typical.

As this day closes, am back up and running and consider myself to
be very lucky.

Lew


Likely had recalled parts on the drive motherboard. Happens.
Industry is often driven into dangerous deals. Sale price of those
was so marginal due to other companies - fractions of a cent adds up.

I lost a powersupply to the computer with a cap that should not have
been used in a switcher. Quality of our computers is sliding down.
Sad to say. I would not doubt that some manufacturers plan on 5-6 year
life cycles to keep business going. Force us into 'cloud' crap and usb
disk drives at best.

Martin

Backup backup backup...

With XP I used ghost.
Now with win7 I use MS backup.

And that works, but make sure you get all patches for it.

--
Jeff

Lew Hodgett wrote:
My Hard Drive crapped out; however,dodged a bullet, and have
recovered.

My Geek is located kitty cornered across the parking lot which is
about a
solid 7 iron.

Was on puter Saturday afternoon (12/27/14) when suddenly "BANG", a
mechanical groan and the monitor goes dark.

Windows XP attempts to restart but with no avail.

Unplug all cables from the case, throw case on my shoulder and start
walking
toward the geek.

Geek plugs cables into case and begins running chkdsk.

It's now about 6:00 PM and it is obvious these diagnostics are going
to take awhile, so geek says he will call me.

I'm in choke city since almost everything including the phones (Magic
Jack)
is handled on the puter.

I get a call from geek about 12:00 PM on Sunday (12/28/14) saying that
the hard drive needs to be replaced, the existing data needs to be
recovered then loaded into new drive.

He quotes a price and if I accept, he can be finished by 3:00 PM.

Such a deal, let me know when you are done and the case is ready
for pick up.

I had a bucket full of rabbit's feet this weekend and used them all
today
starting with the fact that the geek gave up his Saturday evening and
all
day Sunday to repair my puter.

Normally they close at 5:00 PM on Saturday and are closed all day
Sunday.

Now for the luck.

The geek was able to recover ALL my data including programs.

I had the same thing happen in 1994 when I left the puter on 24/7
since I was using puter as a FAX.

Was told that the failure in 1994 was due to running hard drive on a
continuous duty cycle and that technology had changed and when the
new puter would be in idle mode the hard drive would also be at idle.

Turns out that is not true.

When the puter is in idle mode, the hard drive is still spinning, so
plan
accordingly.

SFWIW, the drive that just died was placed in service in 05/08 and
died 12/14, or 6-1/2 years .

Not all that time was spent with puter on; however, 15-18 hours/day
would be more typical.

As this day closes, am back up and running and consider myself to
be very lucky.

Lew


It takes less than 2 minutes to backup everything to an external hard
drive ($70, these days?) once a week. Then you don't have to be lucky.
I know some people are using the cloud. I'm not sure whether they are
smarter than me or not. I know an Apple user who pays about $70/yr
for backup (and perhaps other services). I figure I'm ahead of him, at
least.

On 12/28/2014 10:18 PM, Bill wrote:
Lew Hodgett wrote:
My Hard Drive crapped out; however,dodged a bullet, and have
recovered.

My Geek is located kitty cornered across the parking lot which is
about a
solid 7 iron.

Was on puter Saturday afternoon (12/27/14) when suddenly "BANG", a
mechanical groan and the monitor goes dark.

Windows XP attempts to restart but with no avail.

Unplug all cables from the case, throw case on my shoulder and start
walking
toward the geek.

Geek plugs cables into case and begins running chkdsk.

It's now about 6:00 PM and it is obvious these diagnostics are going
to take awhile, so geek says he will call me.

I'm in choke city since almost everything including the phones (Magic
Jack)
is handled on the puter.

I get a call from geek about 12:00 PM on Sunday (12/28/14) saying that
the hard drive needs to be replaced, the existing data needs to be
recovered then loaded into new drive.

He quotes a price and if I accept, he can be finished by 3:00 PM.

Such a deal, let me know when you are done and the case is ready
for pick up.

I had a bucket full of rabbit's feet this weekend and used them all
today
starting with the fact that the geek gave up his Saturday evening and
all
day Sunday to repair my puter.

Normally they close at 5:00 PM on Saturday and are closed all day
Sunday.

Now for the luck.

The geek was able to recover ALL my data including programs.

I had the same thing happen in 1994 when I left the puter on 24/7
since I was using puter as a FAX.

Was told that the failure in 1994 was due to running hard drive on a
continuous duty cycle and that technology had changed and when the
new puter would be in idle mode the hard drive would also be at idle.

Turns out that is not true.

When the puter is in idle mode, the hard drive is still spinning, so
plan
accordingly.

SFWIW, the drive that just died was placed in service in 05/08 and
died 12/14, or 6-1/2 years .

Not all that time was spent with puter on; however, 15-18 hours/day
would be more typical.

As this day closes, am back up and running and consider myself to
be very lucky.

Lew


It takes less than 2 minutes to backup everything to an external hard
drive ($70, these days?) once a week. Then you don't have to be lucky.
I know some people are using the cloud. I'm not sure whether they are
smarter than me or not. I know an Apple user who pays about $70/yr
for backup (and perhaps other services). I figure I'm ahead of him, at
least.


I used to back up on an external, and then it began making my computer
crash and act weird when the drive began to fail.


If you back up to an external to save your data in the event you
computer crashes that works. In the event some one breaks in and steals
your computer or you house burns down, the cloud works better.

I pay about $30 a year for 1TB, when I signed up it was for 300Gig.
This cloud works similar to normal back ups, you can delete old data
selectively from the cloud and cut back on what you have used.

FWIW I use iDrive.

On 12/29/2014 9:39 AM, Leon wrote:
On 12/28/2014 10:18 PM, Bill wrote:
Lew Hodgett wrote:
My Hard Drive crapped out; however,dodged a bullet, and have
recovered.

My Geek is located kitty cornered across the parking lot which is
about a
solid 7 iron.

Was on puter Saturday afternoon (12/27/14) when suddenly "BANG", a
mechanical groan and the monitor goes dark.

Windows XP attempts to restart but with no avail.

Unplug all cables from the case, throw case on my shoulder and start
walking
toward the geek.

Geek plugs cables into case and begins running chkdsk.

It's now about 6:00 PM and it is obvious these diagnostics are going
to take awhile, so geek says he will call me.

I'm in choke city since almost everything including the phones (Magic
Jack)
is handled on the puter.

I get a call from geek about 12:00 PM on Sunday (12/28/14) saying that
the hard drive needs to be replaced, the existing data needs to be
recovered then loaded into new drive.

He quotes a price and if I accept, he can be finished by 3:00 PM.

Such a deal, let me know when you are done and the case is ready
for pick up.

I had a bucket full of rabbit's feet this weekend and used them all
today
starting with the fact that the geek gave up his Saturday evening and
all
day Sunday to repair my puter.

Normally they close at 5:00 PM on Saturday and are closed all day
Sunday.

Now for the luck.

The geek was able to recover ALL my data including programs.

I had the same thing happen in 1994 when I left the puter on 24/7
since I was using puter as a FAX.

Was told that the failure in 1994 was due to running hard drive on a
continuous duty cycle and that technology had changed and when the
new puter would be in idle mode the hard drive would also be at idle.

Turns out that is not true.

When the puter is in idle mode, the hard drive is still spinning, so
plan
accordingly.

SFWIW, the drive that just died was placed in service in 05/08 and
died 12/14, or 6-1/2 years .

Not all that time was spent with puter on; however, 15-18 hours/day
would be more typical.

As this day closes, am back up and running and consider myself to
be very lucky.

Lew


It takes less than 2 minutes to backup everything to an external hard
drive ($70, these days?) once a week. Then you don't have to be lucky.
I know some people are using the cloud. I'm not sure whether they are
smarter than me or not. I know an Apple user who pays about $70/yr
for backup (and perhaps other services). I figure I'm ahead of him, at
least.


I used to back up on an external, and then it began making my computer
crash and act weird when the drive began to fail.


If you back up to an external to save your data in the event you
computer crashes that works. In the event some one breaks in and steals
your computer or you house burns down, the cloud works better.

I pay about $30 a year for 1TB, when I signed up it was for 300Gig.
This cloud works similar to normal back ups, you can delete old data
selectively from the cloud and cut back on what you have used.

FWIW I use iDrive.
No one is getting my data. No cloud period.

Now for that service you need a fast upload speed. I have 400k up.
That's just never going to do it.


--
Jeff

On 12/29/2014 10:33 PM, woodchucker wrote:
On 12/29/2014 9:39 AM, Leon wrote:
On 12/28/2014 10:18 PM, Bill wrote:
Lew Hodgett wrote:
My Hard Drive crapped out; however,dodged a bullet, and have
recovered.

My Geek is located kitty cornered across the parking lot which is
about a
solid 7 iron.

Was on puter Saturday afternoon (12/27/14) when suddenly "BANG", a
mechanical groan and the monitor goes dark.

Windows XP attempts to restart but with no avail.

Unplug all cables from the case, throw case on my shoulder and start
walking
toward the geek.

Geek plugs cables into case and begins running chkdsk.

It's now about 6:00 PM and it is obvious these diagnostics are going
to take awhile, so geek says he will call me.

I'm in choke city since almost everything including the phones (Magic
Jack)
is handled on the puter.

I get a call from geek about 12:00 PM on Sunday (12/28/14) saying that
the hard drive needs to be replaced, the existing data needs to be
recovered then loaded into new drive.

He quotes a price and if I accept, he can be finished by 3:00 PM.

Such a deal, let me know when you are done and the case is ready
for pick up.

I had a bucket full of rabbit's feet this weekend and used them all
today
starting with the fact that the geek gave up his Saturday evening and
all
day Sunday to repair my puter.

Normally they close at 5:00 PM on Saturday and are closed all day
Sunday.

Now for the luck.

The geek was able to recover ALL my data including programs.

I had the same thing happen in 1994 when I left the puter on 24/7
since I was using puter as a FAX.

Was told that the failure in 1994 was due to running hard drive on a
continuous duty cycle and that technology had changed and when the
new puter would be in idle mode the hard drive would also be at idle.

Turns out that is not true.

When the puter is in idle mode, the hard drive is still spinning, so
plan
accordingly.

SFWIW, the drive that just died was placed in service in 05/08 and
died 12/14, or 6-1/2 years .

Not all that time was spent with puter on; however, 15-18 hours/day
would be more typical.

As this day closes, am back up and running and consider myself to
be very lucky.

Lew


It takes less than 2 minutes to backup everything to an external hard
drive ($70, these days?) once a week. Then you don't have to be lucky.
I know some people are using the cloud. I'm not sure whether they are
smarter than me or not. I know an Apple user who pays about $70/yr
for backup (and perhaps other services). I figure I'm ahead of him, at
least.


I used to back up on an external, and then it began making my computer
crash and act weird when the drive began to fail.


If you back up to an external to save your data in the event you
computer crashes that works. In the event some one breaks in and steals
your computer or you house burns down, the cloud works better.

I pay about $30 a year for 1TB, when I signed up it was for 300Gig.
This cloud works similar to normal back ups, you can delete old data
selectively from the cloud and cut back on what you have used.

FWIW I use iDrive.
No one is getting my data. No cloud period.

Now for that service you need a fast upload speed. I have 400k up.
That's just never going to do it.



FWIW IDrive will send you an externally HD for you to back up to and to
return to them. And visa versa should you need to restore every thing.
I chose to simply use the internet and 4 days of round the clock
backing up and I was done. Now anytime any file is created or changes
it is instantly backed up.

Leon wrote:
On 12/29/2014 10:33 PM, woodchucker wrote:
On 12/29/2014 9:39 AM, Leon wrote:
On 12/28/2014 10:18 PM, Bill wrote:
Lew Hodgett wrote:
My Hard Drive crapped out; however,dodged a bullet, and have
recovered.

My Geek is located kitty cornered across the parking lot which is
about a
solid 7 iron.

Was on puter Saturday afternoon (12/27/14) when suddenly "BANG", a
mechanical groan and the monitor goes dark.

Windows XP attempts to restart but with no avail.

Unplug all cables from the case, throw case on my shoulder and start
walking
toward the geek.

Geek plugs cables into case and begins running chkdsk.

It's now about 6:00 PM and it is obvious these diagnostics are going
to take awhile, so geek says he will call me.

I'm in choke city since almost everything including the phones (Magic
Jack)
is handled on the puter.

I get a call from geek about 12:00 PM on Sunday (12/28/14) saying
that
the hard drive needs to be replaced, the existing data needs to be
recovered then loaded into new drive.

He quotes a price and if I accept, he can be finished by 3:00 PM.

Such a deal, let me know when you are done and the case is ready
for pick up.

I had a bucket full of rabbit's feet this weekend and used them all
today
starting with the fact that the geek gave up his Saturday evening and
all
day Sunday to repair my puter.

Normally they close at 5:00 PM on Saturday and are closed all day
Sunday.

Now for the luck.

The geek was able to recover ALL my data including programs.

I had the same thing happen in 1994 when I left the puter on 24/7
since I was using puter as a FAX.

Was told that the failure in 1994 was due to running hard drive on a
continuous duty cycle and that technology had changed and when the
new puter would be in idle mode the hard drive would also be at idle.

Turns out that is not true.

When the puter is in idle mode, the hard drive is still spinning, so
plan
accordingly.

SFWIW, the drive that just died was placed in service in 05/08 and
died 12/14, or 6-1/2 years .

Not all that time was spent with puter on; however, 15-18 hours/day
would be more typical.

As this day closes, am back up and running and consider myself to
be very lucky.

Lew


It takes less than 2 minutes to backup everything to an external hard
drive ($70, these days?) once a week. Then you don't have to be lucky.
I know some people are using the cloud. I'm not sure whether they are
smarter than me or not. I know an Apple user who pays about $70/yr
for backup (and perhaps other services). I figure I'm ahead of him, at
least.


I used to back up on an external, and then it began making my computer
crash and act weird when the drive began to fail.


If you back up to an external to save your data in the event you
computer crashes that works. In the event some one breaks in and
steals
your computer or you house burns down, the cloud works better.

I pay about $30 a year for 1TB, when I signed up it was for 300Gig.
This cloud works similar to normal back ups, you can delete old data
selectively from the cloud and cut back on what you have used.

FWIW I use iDrive.
No one is getting my data. No cloud period.

Now for that service you need a fast upload speed. I have 400k up.
That's just never going to do it.



FWIW IDrive will send you an externally HD for you to back up to and
to return to them. And visa versa should you need to restore every
thing.

You could also put a couple of DVDs in your safety deposit box, or
anywhere else that is not in the same building -- like in a secret
hiding place in your desk at work.
That was part of the "security manual" of the 70's. Don't store your
backup in the same building!



I chose to simply use the internet and 4 days of round the clock
backing up and I was done. Now anytime any file is created or changes
it is instantly backed up.

On Mon, 29 Dec 2014 23:33:46 -0500, woodchucker
wrote:

On 12/29/2014 9:39 AM, Leon wrote:
On 12/28/2014 10:18 PM, Bill wrote:
Lew Hodgett wrote:
My Hard Drive crapped out; however,dodged a bullet, and have
recovered.

My Geek is located kitty cornered across the parking lot which is
about a
solid 7 iron.

Was on puter Saturday afternoon (12/27/14) when suddenly "BANG", a
mechanical groan and the monitor goes dark.

Windows XP attempts to restart but with no avail.

Unplug all cables from the case, throw case on my shoulder and start
walking
toward the geek.

Geek plugs cables into case and begins running chkdsk.

It's now about 6:00 PM and it is obvious these diagnostics are going
to take awhile, so geek says he will call me.

I'm in choke city since almost everything including the phones (Magic
Jack)
is handled on the puter.

I get a call from geek about 12:00 PM on Sunday (12/28/14) saying that
the hard drive needs to be replaced, the existing data needs to be
recovered then loaded into new drive.

He quotes a price and if I accept, he can be finished by 3:00 PM.

Such a deal, let me know when you are done and the case is ready
for pick up.

I had a bucket full of rabbit's feet this weekend and used them all
today
starting with the fact that the geek gave up his Saturday evening and
all
day Sunday to repair my puter.

Normally they close at 5:00 PM on Saturday and are closed all day
Sunday.

Now for the luck.

The geek was able to recover ALL my data including programs.

I had the same thing happen in 1994 when I left the puter on 24/7
since I was using puter as a FAX.

Was told that the failure in 1994 was due to running hard drive on a
continuous duty cycle and that technology had changed and when the
new puter would be in idle mode the hard drive would also be at idle.

Turns out that is not true.

When the puter is in idle mode, the hard drive is still spinning, so
plan
accordingly.

SFWIW, the drive that just died was placed in service in 05/08 and
died 12/14, or 6-1/2 years .

Not all that time was spent with puter on; however, 15-18 hours/day
would be more typical.

As this day closes, am back up and running and consider myself to
be very lucky.

Lew


It takes less than 2 minutes to backup everything to an external hard
drive ($70, these days?) once a week. Then you don't have to be lucky.
I know some people are using the cloud. I'm not sure whether they are
smarter than me or not. I know an Apple user who pays about $70/yr
for backup (and perhaps other services). I figure I'm ahead of him, at
least.


I used to back up on an external, and then it began making my computer
crash and act weird when the drive began to fail.


If you back up to an external to save your data in the event you
computer crashes that works. In the event some one breaks in and steals
your computer or you house burns down, the cloud works better.

I pay about $30 a year for 1TB, when I signed up it was for 300Gig.
This cloud works similar to normal back ups, you can delete old data
selectively from the cloud and cut back on what you have used.

FWIW I use iDrive.
No one is getting my data. No cloud period.

Now for that service you need a fast upload speed. I have 400k up.
That's just never going to do it.

Stop complaining. My upload is normally 80K (~1.5M down).

Bill wrote in news:m7qkvq02293
@news6.newsguy.com:

It takes less than 2 minutes to backup everything to an external hard
drive ($70, these days?) once a week. Then you don't have to be lucky.

What he said. You can get a terabyte drive for under $100, and
most of them come with backup software pre-installed.

In my case, I have two external drives - I keep all my data files
on one (the computer drive just has the OS and applications), and
I periodically just copy all the data files to the other.

I know some people are using the cloud. I'm not sure whether they are
smarter than me or not.

I do not trust the cloud for that purpose - too many pieces in
the line (servers, network, etc) which might fail at an inconvenient
time. To me the cloud is for collaboration - stuff I want other
people to have access to - not backup storage.

Plus in the case of Apple I would not trust them not to make
my data inaccessible to me if I haven't upgraded to the newest
version of their product/OS.

John

John McCoy wrote in
:

Bill wrote in news:m7qkvq02293
@news6.newsguy.com:

I know some people are using the cloud. I'm not sure whether they are
smarter than me or not.

I do not trust the cloud for that purpose - too many pieces in
the line (servers, network, etc) which might fail at an inconvenient
time. To me the cloud is for collaboration - stuff I want other
people to have access to - not backup storage.

Although that's an important reason for distrusting the cloud, IMHO there's an even more
important one: security. I certainly wouldn't store tax returns or banking records on the cloud.

Plus in the case of Apple I would not trust them not to make
my data inaccessible to me if I haven't upgraded to the newest
version of their product/OS.

Or, worse, make it accessible to someone else...

Doug Miller wrote:
John McCoy wrote in
:

Bill wrote in news:m7qkvq02293
@news6.newsguy.com:

I know some people are using the cloud. I'm not sure whether they
are smarter than me or not.

I do not trust the cloud for that purpose - too many pieces in
the line (servers, network, etc) which might fail at an inconvenient
time. To me the cloud is for collaboration - stuff I want other
people to have access to - not backup storage.

Although that's an important reason for distrusting the cloud, IMHO
there's an even more important one: security. I certainly wouldn't
store tax returns or banking records on the cloud.

That's my biggest reason for not using cloud based storage. Between the
ongoing issues with credit card fraud (in a system that is inherently more
secure than your typical hosted storage provider), and what we are already
seeing now with cloud storage being hacked, I'm not good at all with
trusting my information to a provider out there somewhere. Security is a
joke and people are becoming too trusing of providers who "assure" the
integrity of their security.

--

-Mike-

On 12/29/2014 11:33 AM, Mike Marlow wrote:
Doug Miller wrote:
John McCoy wrote in
:

Bill wrote in news:m7qkvq02293
@news6.newsguy.com:

I know some people are using the cloud. I'm not sure whether they
are smarter than me or not.

I do not trust the cloud for that purpose - too many pieces in
the line (servers, network, etc) which might fail at an inconvenient
time. To me the cloud is for collaboration - stuff I want other
people to have access to - not backup storage.

Although that's an important reason for distrusting the cloud, IMHO
there's an even more important one: security. I certainly wouldn't
store tax returns or banking records on the cloud.

That's my biggest reason for not using cloud based storage. Between the
ongoing issues with credit card fraud (in a system that is inherently more
secure than your typical hosted storage provider), and what we are already
seeing now with cloud storage being hacked, I'm not good at all with
trusting my information to a provider out there somewhere. Security is a
joke and people are becoming too trusing of providers who "assure" the
integrity of their security.



FWIW all of your personal and confidential information is stored on some
type of cloud whether you initiated it or not. If you want your
personal information to remain private do not ever put it on any
computer connected to the internet or use a credit card, or use a bank,
or.....you get the idea. Just because you don't use the cloud to store
you data does not mean that some institution does not store your
personal data there.

On 12/28/2014 11:18 PM, Bill wrote:
Lew Hodgett wrote:
My Hard Drive crapped out; however,dodged a bullet, and have
recovered.

My Geek is located kitty cornered across the parking lot which is
about a
solid 7 iron.

Was on puter Saturday afternoon (12/27/14) when suddenly "BANG", a
mechanical groan and the monitor goes dark.

Windows XP attempts to restart but with no avail.

Unplug all cables from the case, throw case on my shoulder and start
walking
toward the geek.

Geek plugs cables into case and begins running chkdsk.

It's now about 6:00 PM and it is obvious these diagnostics are going
to take awhile, so geek says he will call me.

I'm in choke city since almost everything including the phones (Magic
Jack)
is handled on the puter.

I get a call from geek about 12:00 PM on Sunday (12/28/14) saying that
the hard drive needs to be replaced, the existing data needs to be
recovered then loaded into new drive.

He quotes a price and if I accept, he can be finished by 3:00 PM.

Such a deal, let me know when you are done and the case is ready
for pick up.

I had a bucket full of rabbit's feet this weekend and used them all
today
starting with the fact that the geek gave up his Saturday evening and
all
day Sunday to repair my puter.

Normally they close at 5:00 PM on Saturday and are closed all day
Sunday.

Now for the luck.

The geek was able to recover ALL my data including programs.

I had the same thing happen in 1994 when I left the puter on 24/7
since I was using puter as a FAX.

Was told that the failure in 1994 was due to running hard drive on a
continuous duty cycle and that technology had changed and when the
new puter would be in idle mode the hard drive would also be at idle.

Turns out that is not true.

When the puter is in idle mode, the hard drive is still spinning, so
plan
accordingly.

SFWIW, the drive that just died was placed in service in 05/08 and
died 12/14, or 6-1/2 years .

Not all that time was spent with puter on; however, 15-18 hours/day
would be more typical.

As this day closes, am back up and running and consider myself to
be very lucky.

Lew


It takes less than 2 minutes to backup everything to an external hard
drive ($70, these days?) once a week. Then you don't have to be lucky.
I know some people are using the cloud. I'm not sure whether they are
smarter than me or not. I know an Apple user who pays about $70/yr
for backup (and perhaps other services). I figure I'm ahead of him, at
least.


2 minutes? Not in my book. It takes a from few minutes to a few hours to
get a delta. Never 2 minutes.



--
Jeff

woodchucker wrote:
On 12/28/2014 11:18 PM, Bill wrote:
Lew Hodgett wrote:
My Hard Drive crapped out; however,dodged a bullet, and have
recovered.

My Geek is located kitty cornered across the parking lot which is
about a
solid 7 iron.

Was on puter Saturday afternoon (12/27/14) when suddenly "BANG", a
mechanical groan and the monitor goes dark.

Windows XP attempts to restart but with no avail.

Unplug all cables from the case, throw case on my shoulder and start
walking
toward the geek.

Geek plugs cables into case and begins running chkdsk.

It's now about 6:00 PM and it is obvious these diagnostics are going
to take awhile, so geek says he will call me.

I'm in choke city since almost everything including the phones (Magic
Jack)
is handled on the puter.

I get a call from geek about 12:00 PM on Sunday (12/28/14) saying that
the hard drive needs to be replaced, the existing data needs to be
recovered then loaded into new drive.

He quotes a price and if I accept, he can be finished by 3:00 PM.

Such a deal, let me know when you are done and the case is ready
for pick up.

I had a bucket full of rabbit's feet this weekend and used them all
today
starting with the fact that the geek gave up his Saturday evening and
all
day Sunday to repair my puter.

Normally they close at 5:00 PM on Saturday and are closed all day
Sunday.

Now for the luck.

The geek was able to recover ALL my data including programs.

I had the same thing happen in 1994 when I left the puter on 24/7
since I was using puter as a FAX.

Was told that the failure in 1994 was due to running hard drive on a
continuous duty cycle and that technology had changed and when the
new puter would be in idle mode the hard drive would also be at idle.

Turns out that is not true.

When the puter is in idle mode, the hard drive is still spinning, so
plan
accordingly.

SFWIW, the drive that just died was placed in service in 05/08 and
died 12/14, or 6-1/2 years .

Not all that time was spent with puter on; however, 15-18 hours/day
would be more typical.

As this day closes, am back up and running and consider myself to
be very lucky.

Lew


It takes less than 2 minutes to backup everything to an external hard
drive ($70, these days?) once a week. Then you don't have to be lucky.
I know some people are using the cloud. I'm not sure whether they are
smarter than me or not. I know an Apple user who pays about $70/yr
for backup (and perhaps other services). I figure I'm ahead of him, at
least.


2 minutes? Not in my book. It takes a from few minutes to a few hours
to get a delta.

I've got two 80 GB SDD backing up to eSata external drive. It almost
always only does incremental changes. YMMV.

I bought an Intel (730) 500 GB SSD for $199 over the holidays, which
didn't seem so bad since the 1st 80 GB SSD was $229, which
was "cheap" for it at the time and I think the 2nd one i added was
$120. My wife will take them over. My PC from 1997 had a 6.4 GB
HDD, but I never used much more than about a half of it!

BTW, there is only one new motherboard I found that supports eSata still
(and it was "silly" high-end). So, I either will need to use the
external in USB 2.0 mode (never tried it), or upgrade the external drive
to USB 3.0--which I expert will give about the same level of performance
at the eSata.



Never 2 minutes.

woodchucker wrote:
On 12/28/2014 11:18 PM, Bill wrote:
Lew Hodgett wrote:
My Hard Drive crapped out; however,dodged a bullet, and have
recovered.

My Geek is located kitty cornered across the parking lot which is
about a
solid 7 iron.

Was on puter Saturday afternoon (12/27/14) when suddenly "BANG", a
mechanical groan and the monitor goes dark.

Windows XP attempts to restart but with no avail.

Unplug all cables from the case, throw case on my shoulder and start
walking
toward the geek.

Geek plugs cables into case and begins running chkdsk.

It's now about 6:00 PM and it is obvious these diagnostics are going
to take awhile, so geek says he will call me.

I'm in choke city since almost everything including the phones (Magic
Jack)
is handled on the puter.

I get a call from geek about 12:00 PM on Sunday (12/28/14) saying that
the hard drive needs to be replaced, the existing data needs to be
recovered then loaded into new drive.

He quotes a price and if I accept, he can be finished by 3:00 PM.

Such a deal, let me know when you are done and the case is ready
for pick up.

I had a bucket full of rabbit's feet this weekend and used them all
today
starting with the fact that the geek gave up his Saturday evening and
all
day Sunday to repair my puter.

Normally they close at 5:00 PM on Saturday and are closed all day
Sunday.

Now for the luck.

The geek was able to recover ALL my data including programs.

I had the same thing happen in 1994 when I left the puter on 24/7
since I was using puter as a FAX.

Was told that the failure in 1994 was due to running hard drive on a
continuous duty cycle and that technology had changed and when the
new puter would be in idle mode the hard drive would also be at idle.

Turns out that is not true.

When the puter is in idle mode, the hard drive is still spinning, so
plan
accordingly.

SFWIW, the drive that just died was placed in service in 05/08 and
died 12/14, or 6-1/2 years .

Not all that time was spent with puter on; however, 15-18 hours/day
would be more typical.

As this day closes, am back up and running and consider myself to
be very lucky.

Lew


It takes less than 2 minutes to backup everything to an external hard
drive ($70, these days?) once a week. Then you don't have to be lucky.
I know some people are using the cloud. I'm not sure whether they are
smarter than me or not. I know an Apple user who pays about $70/yr
for backup (and perhaps other services). I figure I'm ahead of him, at
least.


2 minutes? Not in my book. It takes a from few minutes to a few hours
to get a delta. Never 2 minutes.


Jeff, I added a lot of files this week (probably at least 9GB, far more
than usual), and I just did the backup and timed it for you: 6 min. 50 sec.
Not as good as I said above, but far from a few hours. It typically
takes just a few minutes, I think.

If you don't have tons of files (like videos), SSD is not such a bad
deal. And if you have tons of videos, then they may live just fine on a
separate conventional drive.
All SSDs are not created equal. I've had good luck with Intel. It's my
understanding that to get excellent performance out of the lastest
drives, one needs
a motherboard with one of the more modern chipsets (like z97, not
z87). I'm no hardware guru, I've learned most of what I know from
Tomshardware.com

If you want to put windows on a new hard drive, you probably would need
to buy a Windows (OEM) disk for $100-140 too. So, depending on the age
of your system, it may make sense to build it into your next one. I
have 3 more parts to order before I can build my next one. Not including
external stuff (like mice), my new computer will be made from 11 parts.
It could have been done with 9. But clearly its not as complicated as
making something like lassagya (which I don't know how to do....) I
should remedy that!

Cheers,
Bill

"Bill" wrote:

It takes less than 2 minutes to backup everything to an external
hard drive ($70, these days?) once a week. Then you don't have to be
lucky.
I know some people are using the cloud. I'm not sure whether they
are smarter than me or not. I know an Apple user who pays about
$70/yr
for backup (and perhaps other services). I figure I'm ahead of him,
at least.
-----------------------------------------------------
I've had a 1GB external HD collecting dust for at least a year waiting
for me to spring for the software I want to run it.

A little late, but better late than never is where I'm at now.

I still run a lot of DOS based programs and am able to insert an copy
command line in the file that copies everything in the directory to a
2GB flash drive plugged into front of case.

It's the important stuff but does not include e-mail files.

Lew

Lew Hodgett wrote:
"Bill" wrote:

It takes less than 2 minutes to backup everything to an external
hard drive ($70, these days?) once a week. Then you don't have to be
lucky.
I know some people are using the cloud. I'm not sure whether they
are smarter than me or not. I know an Apple user who pays about
$70/yr
for backup (and perhaps other services). I figure I'm ahead of him,
at least.
-----------------------------------------------------
I've had a 1GB external HD collecting dust for at least a year waiting
for me to spring for the software I want to run it.

I haven't looked, but you might check whether SourceForge.org has
some (free) software which would you may find usable.
It's my "most-trusted" source.


A little late, but better late than never is where I'm at now.

I still run a lot of DOS based programs and am able to insert an copy
command line in the file that copies everything in the directory to a
2GB flash drive plugged into front of case.

It's the important stuff but does not include e-mail files.

Lew

It takes less than 2 minutes to backup everything to an external hard
drive ($70, these days?) once a week. Then you don't have to be lucky.
I know some people are using the cloud. I'm not sure whether they are
smarter than me or not. I know an Apple user who pays about $70/yr
for backup (and perhaps other services). I figure I'm ahead of him, at
least.

We use two externals for backup. About a year ago we bought a Western Digital Passport that backs up data as you create or update it. It also gives you the option to save previous versions of a document and I currently have the software set to maintain the last five versions (Overkill, I know). But I write quite a bit and the current version isn't always my best thinking. We bought the drive at Sam's for around $65 and it seems like a great investment.

Second level of backup is in our safe deposit box a few blocks from here. It is an older Seagate unit; and we bring it home every 4-6 weeks and back up everything. That is our 'tornado/house burns down' protection.

RonB

On 1/1/2015 12:43 PM, RonB wrote:

It also gives you the option to save previous versions of a document and I currently have the software set to maintain the last five versions (Overkill, I know). But I write quite a bit and the current version isn't always my best thinking.

I like to do that myself, with both budget files for jobs (particularly
those shared on DropBox), and with various versions of drawings and
Sketchup Files as they evolve.

This thread made me think about picking another usb 1TB, as the old one
is going on 5 years old.

Going to look for a WD model that comes with that particular software.

Thanks for the heads-up ...

--
eWoodShop: www.eWoodShop.com
Wood Shop: www.e-WoodShop.net
https://www.google.com/+eWoodShop
https://plus.google.com/+KarlCaillouet/posts
http://www.custommade.com/by/ewoodshop/
KarlCaillouet@ (the obvious)

On Thursday, January 1, 2015 1:08:15 PM UTC-6, Swingman wrote:
On 1/1/2015 12:43 PM, RonB wrote:

It also gives you the option to save previous versions of a document and I currently have the software set to maintain the last five versions (Overkill, I know). But I write quite a bit and the current version isn't always my best thinking.

I like to do that myself, with both budget files for jobs (particularly
those shared on DropBox), and with various versions of drawings and
Sketchup Files as they evolve.

This thread made me think about picking another usb 1TB, as the old one
is going on 5 years old.

Going to look for a WD model that comes with that particular software.

Thanks for the heads-up ...

--
eWoodShop: www.eWoodShop.com
Wood Shop: www.e-WoodShop.net
https://www.google.com/+eWoodShop
https://plus.google.com/+KarlCaillouet/posts
http://www.custommade.com/by/ewoodshop/
KarlCaillouet@ (the obvious)

The drive here on my desktop is a Western Digital P/N WDBBEP0010BBK-01. As I think about it, we have had it a bit more than one year. Probably bought at Sam's Club in mid 2013. I checked reviews on it while we were in the store and folks who owned it seemed pleased.

RonB

On Sun, 28 Dec 2014 18:06:34 -0800, "Lew Hodgett"
wrote:

My Hard Drive crapped out; however,dodged a bullet, and have
recovered.

My Geek is located kitty cornered across the parking lot which is
about a
solid 7 iron.

Was on puter Saturday afternoon (12/27/14) when suddenly "BANG", a
mechanical groan and the monitor goes dark.

Windows XP attempts to restart but with no avail.

Unplug all cables from the case, throw case on my shoulder and start
walking
toward the geek.

Geek plugs cables into case and begins running chkdsk.

It's now about 6:00 PM and it is obvious these diagnostics are going
to take awhile, so geek says he will call me.

I'm in choke city since almost everything including the phones (Magic
Jack)
is handled on the puter.

I get a call from geek about 12:00 PM on Sunday (12/28/14) saying that
the hard drive needs to be replaced, the existing data needs to be
recovered then loaded into new drive.

He quotes a price and if I accept, he can be finished by 3:00 PM.

Such a deal, let me know when you are done and the case is ready
for pick up.

I had a bucket full of rabbit's feet this weekend and used them all
today
starting with the fact that the geek gave up his Saturday evening and
all
day Sunday to repair my puter.

Normally they close at 5:00 PM on Saturday and are closed all day
Sunday.

Now for the luck.

The geek was able to recover ALL my data including programs.

I had the same thing happen in 1994 when I left the puter on 24/7
since I was using puter as a FAX.

Was told that the failure in 1994 was due to running hard drive on a
continuous duty cycle and that technology had changed and when the
new puter would be in idle mode the hard drive would also be at idle.

Turns out that is not true.

When the puter is in idle mode, the hard drive is still spinning, so
plan
accordingly.

That depends how you have the power settings in windows set. You can
power the drive down after a set time of not being accessed, as well
as shutting off the monitor, and even powering down the processor, or
hibernate it.

SFWIW, the drive that just died was placed in service in 05/08 and
died 12/14, or 6-1/2 years .

Not all that time was spent with puter on; however, 15-18 hours/day
would be more typical.

My last computer ran 24/7 for almost 10 years without any drive
failure. That was Windows 98 upgraded to XP.
Just upgraded ton a brand new Win7 machine and it runs 24/7 as well
(but this one has WS Red hard drives - old one was IBM DTTA 351290
dated Dec 98 , made in Hungary, of all places!!!)
My experience has been running 24/7 can often last longer than being
shut down and restarted as the bearings don't flatspot and stick on
restart. That addresses the mechanical failures - but not the
electronic failures - where power surges from start-up can also
shorten the life of the drive. My computer is on a Powerware Prestige
dual conversion UPS so it gets perfectly clean power all the time.

As this day closes, am back up and running and consider myself to
be very lucky.

Lew

On 12/28/14, 10:45 PM, wrote:



My last computer ran 24/7 for almost 10 years without any drive
failure. That was Windows 98 upgraded to XP.
Just upgraded ton a brand new Win7 machine and it runs 24/7 as well
(but this one has WS Red hard drives - old one was IBM DTTA 351290
dated Dec 98 , made in Hungary, of all places!!!)
My experience has been running 24/7 can often last longer than being
shut down and restarted as the bearings don't flatspot and stick on
restart. That addresses the mechanical failures - but not the
electronic failures - where power surges from start-up can also
shorten the life of the drive. My computer is on a Powerware Prestige
dual conversion UPS so it gets perfectly clean power all the time.


At my work we deal with multiple petabytes (1000 terabytes) of HD
storage. I'm always probing the DM people about which drives they use
and the current 'go-to' drive seems to be the WD yellows. This does
change every few years as some other drive maker figures out a new trick
for longer life.

-BR


--- news://freenews.netfront.net/ - complaints: ---

On Mon, 29 Dec 2014 00:45:38 -0500, clare wrote:

My experience has been running 24/7 can often last longer than being
shut down and restarted as the bearings don't flatspot and stick on
restart.

You took the words right out of my mouth :-).

I regularly remove drives from my old computers before I junk them. It's
surprising how many people sell fairly new computers cheap. They take
out the drives to protect their data and assume nobody wants a computer
with no drives. I bought my last one for $10 and stuffed two of my old
drives in it.

But the industry has reached the point where IDE drives no longer work.
SO I'll have to junk my collection and start anew.

On 12/29/2014 11:06 AM, Larry Blanchard wrote:
On Mon, 29 Dec 2014 00:45:38 -0500, clare wrote:

My experience has been running 24/7 can often last longer than being
shut down and restarted as the bearings don't flatspot and stick on
restart.

You took the words right out of my mouth :-).

I regularly remove drives from my old computers before I junk them. It's
surprising how many people sell fairly new computers cheap. They take
out the drives to protect their data and assume nobody wants a computer
with no drives. I bought my last one for $10 and stuffed two of my old
drives in it.

But the industry has reached the point where IDE drives no longer work.
SO I'll have to junk my collection and start anew.


There are a couple of boxes here in my home office, way back in a
closet, that must contain 30+ hard drives from the past 25 years.

I have never disposed of a computer/server without keeping the hard
drive(s).


--
eWoodShop: www.eWoodShop.com
Wood Shop: www.e-WoodShop.net
https://www.google.com/+eWoodShop
https://plus.google.com/+KarlCaillouet/posts
http://www.custommade.com/by/ewoodshop/
KarlCaillouet@ (the obvious)

On Tue, 30 Dec 2014 12:04:04 -0600, Swingman wrote:

There are a couple of boxes here in my home office, way back in a
closet,
that must contain 30+ hard drives from the past 25 years.

I have never disposed of a computer/server without keeping the hard
drive(s).

Well, all the new computers are using SATA drives. So while our IDE and
EIDE drives aren't quite useless yet, it won't be long until they are :-)

I wrote:

When the puter is in idle mode, the hard drive is still spinning, so
plan
accordingly.
------------------------------------

wrote:

That depends how you have the power settings in windows set. You can
power the drive down after a set time of not being accessed, as
well
as shutting off the monitor, and even powering down the processor,
or
hibernate it.

------------------------------------------------
It's been so long I forgot how I had set it up but it is as follows:

Turn off monitor after 30 minutes.

Turn off hard drive after 30 minutes.

System Standby after 1 hour.

System hybernate after 2 hours.


Lew

On 12/28/2014 8:06 PM, Lew Hodgett wrote:
My Hard Drive crapped out; however,dodged a bullet, and have
recovered.

My Geek is located kitty cornered across the parking lot which is
about a
solid 7 iron.

Was on puter Saturday afternoon (12/27/14) when suddenly "BANG", a
mechanical groan and the monitor goes dark.

Windows XP attempts to restart but with no avail.

Unplug all cables from the case, throw case on my shoulder and start
walking
toward the geek.

Geek plugs cables into case and begins running chkdsk.

It's now about 6:00 PM and it is obvious these diagnostics are going
to take awhile, so geek says he will call me.

I'm in choke city since almost everything including the phones (Magic
Jack)
is handled on the puter.

I get a call from geek about 12:00 PM on Sunday (12/28/14) saying that
the hard drive needs to be replaced, the existing data needs to be
recovered then loaded into new drive.

He quotes a price and if I accept, he can be finished by 3:00 PM.

Such a deal, let me know when you are done and the case is ready
for pick up.

I had a bucket full of rabbit's feet this weekend and used them all
today
starting with the fact that the geek gave up his Saturday evening and
all
day Sunday to repair my puter.

Normally they close at 5:00 PM on Saturday and are closed all day
Sunday.

Now for the luck.

The geek was able to recover ALL my data including programs.

I had the same thing happen in 1994 when I left the puter on 24/7
since I was using puter as a FAX.

Was told that the failure in 1994 was due to running hard drive on a
continuous duty cycle and that technology had changed and when the
new puter would be in idle mode the hard drive would also be at idle.

Turns out that is not true.

When the puter is in idle mode, the hard drive is still spinning, so
plan
accordingly.

SFWIW, the drive that just died was placed in service in 05/08 and
died 12/14, or 6-1/2 years .

Not all that time was spent with puter on; however, 15-18 hours/day
would be more typical.

As this day closes, am back up and running and consider myself to
be very lucky.

Lew


I save my data on another internal HD and my OS is on a SSHD, Data on HD
backed up immediately to the cloud.

"Lew Hodgett" wrote in message
eb.com...

SFWIW, the drive that just died was placed in service in 05/08 and
died 12/14, or 6-1/2 years .

Lew, the solid-state stuff in a computer will usually last many years
without trouble, but the electro-mechanical parts have shorter life cycles.
There's a reason that hard drive manufacturers offer only one-year to
three-year warranties except for the most expensive enterprise-level drives.
I generally keep my computers on a three- to five-year replacement cycle
(three for my work computers, five for a household computer). If a household
computer is running quite trouble-free but getting old, I'll generally just
replace the hard drive after five years as a matter of course. Power
supplies I run until I either (1) start having trouble with them or (2) need
more power on account of a power-hungry replacement video card. Fans get
noisy when they get old but they're cheap and easy to replace.

And I maintain a rigorous automated backup schedule. My backup system is a
two-drive RAID 1 system on my network (RAID 1: two physical drives, with the
same contents on each in case one of them fails), and daily backups of all
document directories are done every night, keeping up to two weeks of daily
backups. Periodically I archive one each of those daily backups onto a large
external hard drive and keep them up to a year. When I had an office
downtown I kept off-site office backups at home, and off-site home backups
at the office. Now that I'm working from my home office I just keep the
off-site backups in a different building on the property. This all sounds
like a lot of work, but once it was all set up I don't even have to think
about it - it just happens, except for the occasional archival and off-site
copies. I'm a professional software developer, so this is important for me
and worth the trouble. Even if I weren't, we now have large libraries of
digital photographs online, going back many years, and it would be terrible
to somehow lose all that history.

For a friend whose computer I maintain, I just put a large-capacity USB
drive in a slot on the back of the machine and set up a daily backup of his
personal file directories to the USB drive. He doesn't even know it's
happening, but if I need to wipe and re-setup his machine because of malware
or something like that, I've magically got all his files sitting right there
to be restored.

You could do the same. Use Windows Backup and either attach an external
USB-connected hard drive or plug in a big USB memory card. Don't put
yourself in a position where you might have to (might fail to) dodge another
bullet like that someday at much greater cost to yourself. I've personally
had hard drives fail so that not only would they not boot but they were not
even readable. If I hadn't been maintaining backups I'd have been thoroughly
hosed.

Tom

On 12/29/2014 10:39 AM, tdacon wrote:


"Lew Hodgett" wrote in message
eb.com...

SFWIW, the drive that just died was placed in service in 05/08 and
died 12/14, or 6-1/2 years .

Lew, the solid-state stuff in a computer will usually last many years
without trouble, but the electro-mechanical parts have shorter life
cycles. There's a reason that hard drive manufacturers offer only
one-year to three-year warranties except for the most expensive
enterprise-level drives. I generally keep my computers on a three- to
five-year replacement cycle (three for my work computers, five for a
household computer). If a household computer is running quite
trouble-free but getting old, I'll generally just replace the hard drive
after five years as a matter of course. Power supplies I run until I
either (1) start having trouble with them or (2) need more power on
account of a power-hungry replacement video card. Fans get noisy when
they get old but they're cheap and easy to replace.

And I maintain a rigorous automated backup schedule. My backup system is
a two-drive RAID 1 system on my network (RAID 1: two physical drives,
with the same contents on each in case one of them fails), and daily
backups of all document directories are done every night, keeping up to
two weeks of daily backups. Periodically I archive one each of those
daily backups onto a large external hard drive and keep them up to a
year. When I had an office downtown I kept off-site office backups at
home, and off-site home backups at the office. Now that I'm working from
my home office I just keep the off-site backups in a different building
on the property. This all sounds like a lot of work, but once it was all
set up I don't even have to think about it - it just happens, except for
the occasional archival and off-site copies. I'm a professional software
developer, so this is important for me and worth the trouble. Even if I
weren't, we now have large libraries of digital photographs online,
going back many years, and it would be terrible to somehow lose all that
history.

For a friend whose computer I maintain, I just put a large-capacity USB
drive in a slot on the back of the machine and set up a daily backup of
his personal file directories to the USB drive. He doesn't even know
it's happening, but if I need to wipe and re-setup his machine because
of malware or something like that, I've magically got all his files
sitting right there to be restored.

You could do the same. Use Windows Backup and either attach an external
USB-connected hard drive or plug in a big USB memory card. Don't put
yourself in a position where you might have to (might fail to) dodge
another bullet like that someday at much greater cost to yourself. I've
personally had hard drives fail so that not only would they not boot but
they were not even readable. If I hadn't been maintaining backups I'd
have been thoroughly hosed.

Tom



....and most important, run through a restore cycle now and then to make
sure backed up something useful.


--
"Socialism is a philosophy of failure,the creed of ignorance, and the
gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery"
-Winston Churchill

On Mon, 29 Dec 2014 17:19:14 -0700, Doug Winterburn
wrote:

On 12/29/2014 10:39 AM, tdacon wrote:


"Lew Hodgett" wrote in message
eb.com...

SFWIW, the drive that just died was placed in service in 05/08 and
died 12/14, or 6-1/2 years .

Lew, the solid-state stuff in a computer will usually last many years
without trouble, but the electro-mechanical parts have shorter life
cycles. There's a reason that hard drive manufacturers offer only
one-year to three-year warranties except for the most expensive
enterprise-level drives. I generally keep my computers on a three- to
five-year replacement cycle (three for my work computers, five for a
household computer). If a household computer is running quite
trouble-free but getting old, I'll generally just replace the hard drive
after five years as a matter of course. Power supplies I run until I
either (1) start having trouble with them or (2) need more power on
account of a power-hungry replacement video card. Fans get noisy when
they get old but they're cheap and easy to replace.

And I maintain a rigorous automated backup schedule. My backup system is
a two-drive RAID 1 system on my network (RAID 1: two physical drives,
with the same contents on each in case one of them fails), and daily
backups of all document directories are done every night, keeping up to
two weeks of daily backups. Periodically I archive one each of those
daily backups onto a large external hard drive and keep them up to a
year. When I had an office downtown I kept off-site office backups at
home, and off-site home backups at the office. Now that I'm working from
my home office I just keep the off-site backups in a different building
on the property. This all sounds like a lot of work, but once it was all
set up I don't even have to think about it - it just happens, except for
the occasional archival and off-site copies. I'm a professional software
developer, so this is important for me and worth the trouble. Even if I
weren't, we now have large libraries of digital photographs online,
going back many years, and it would be terrible to somehow lose all that
history.

For a friend whose computer I maintain, I just put a large-capacity USB
drive in a slot on the back of the machine and set up a daily backup of
his personal file directories to the USB drive. He doesn't even know
it's happening, but if I need to wipe and re-setup his machine because
of malware or something like that, I've magically got all his files
sitting right there to be restored.

You could do the same. Use Windows Backup and either attach an external
USB-connected hard drive or plug in a big USB memory card. Don't put
yourself in a position where you might have to (might fail to) dodge
another bullet like that someday at much greater cost to yourself. I've
personally had hard drives fail so that not only would they not boot but
they were not even readable. If I hadn't been maintaining backups I'd
have been thoroughly hosed.

Tom



...and most important, run through a restore cycle now and then to make
sure backed up something useful.
There are only 2 kinds of computer users. Those who have lost data,
and those who will.

On Mon, 29 Dec 2014 19:39:18 -0500, wrote:

On Mon, 29 Dec 2014 17:19:14 -0700, Doug Winterburn
wrote:

On 12/29/2014 10:39 AM, tdacon wrote:


"Lew Hodgett" wrote in message
eb.com...

SFWIW, the drive that just died was placed in service in 05/08 and
died 12/14, or 6-1/2 years .

Lew, the solid-state stuff in a computer will usually last many years
without trouble, but the electro-mechanical parts have shorter life
cycles. There's a reason that hard drive manufacturers offer only
one-year to three-year warranties except for the most expensive
enterprise-level drives. I generally keep my computers on a three- to
five-year replacement cycle (three for my work computers, five for a
household computer). If a household computer is running quite
trouble-free but getting old, I'll generally just replace the hard drive
after five years as a matter of course. Power supplies I run until I
either (1) start having trouble with them or (2) need more power on
account of a power-hungry replacement video card. Fans get noisy when
they get old but they're cheap and easy to replace.

And I maintain a rigorous automated backup schedule. My backup system is
a two-drive RAID 1 system on my network (RAID 1: two physical drives,
with the same contents on each in case one of them fails), and daily
backups of all document directories are done every night, keeping up to
two weeks of daily backups. Periodically I archive one each of those
daily backups onto a large external hard drive and keep them up to a
year. When I had an office downtown I kept off-site office backups at
home, and off-site home backups at the office. Now that I'm working from
my home office I just keep the off-site backups in a different building
on the property. This all sounds like a lot of work, but once it was all
set up I don't even have to think about it - it just happens, except for
the occasional archival and off-site copies. I'm a professional software
developer, so this is important for me and worth the trouble. Even if I
weren't, we now have large libraries of digital photographs online,
going back many years, and it would be terrible to somehow lose all that
history.

For a friend whose computer I maintain, I just put a large-capacity USB
drive in a slot on the back of the machine and set up a daily backup of
his personal file directories to the USB drive. He doesn't even know
it's happening, but if I need to wipe and re-setup his machine because
of malware or something like that, I've magically got all his files
sitting right there to be restored.

You could do the same. Use Windows Backup and either attach an external
USB-connected hard drive or plug in a big USB memory card. Don't put
yourself in a position where you might have to (might fail to) dodge
another bullet like that someday at much greater cost to yourself. I've
personally had hard drives fail so that not only would they not boot but
they were not even readable. If I hadn't been maintaining backups I'd
have been thoroughly hosed.

Tom



...and most important, run through a restore cycle now and then to make
sure backed up something useful.
There are only 2 kinds of computer users. Those who have lost data,
and those who will.

The second group is the universe of computer users. Some (most) have.
All, including those who already have, will.

On 12/29/2014 6:39 PM, wrote:
On Mon, 29 Dec 2014 17:19:14 -0700, Doug Winterburn
wrote:

On 12/29/2014 10:39 AM, tdacon wrote:


"Lew Hodgett" wrote in message
eb.com...

SFWIW, the drive that just died was placed in service in 05/08 and
died 12/14, or 6-1/2 years .

Lew, the solid-state stuff in a computer will usually last many years
without trouble, but the electro-mechanical parts have shorter life
cycles. There's a reason that hard drive manufacturers offer only
one-year to three-year warranties except for the most expensive
enterprise-level drives. I generally keep my computers on a three- to
five-year replacement cycle (three for my work computers, five for a
household computer). If a household computer is running quite
trouble-free but getting old, I'll generally just replace the hard drive
after five years as a matter of course. Power supplies I run until I
either (1) start having trouble with them or (2) need more power on
account of a power-hungry replacement video card. Fans get noisy when
they get old but they're cheap and easy to replace.

And I maintain a rigorous automated backup schedule. My backup system is
a two-drive RAID 1 system on my network (RAID 1: two physical drives,
with the same contents on each in case one of them fails), and daily
backups of all document directories are done every night, keeping up to
two weeks of daily backups. Periodically I archive one each of those
daily backups onto a large external hard drive and keep them up to a
year. When I had an office downtown I kept off-site office backups at
home, and off-site home backups at the office. Now that I'm working from
my home office I just keep the off-site backups in a different building
on the property. This all sounds like a lot of work, but once it was all
set up I don't even have to think about it - it just happens, except for
the occasional archival and off-site copies. I'm a professional software
developer, so this is important for me and worth the trouble. Even if I
weren't, we now have large libraries of digital photographs online,
going back many years, and it would be terrible to somehow lose all that
history.

For a friend whose computer I maintain, I just put a large-capacity USB
drive in a slot on the back of the machine and set up a daily backup of
his personal file directories to the USB drive. He doesn't even know
it's happening, but if I need to wipe and re-setup his machine because
of malware or something like that, I've magically got all his files
sitting right there to be restored.

You could do the same. Use Windows Backup and either attach an external
USB-connected hard drive or plug in a big USB memory card. Don't put
yourself in a position where you might have to (might fail to) dodge
another bullet like that someday at much greater cost to yourself. I've
personally had hard drives fail so that not only would they not boot but
they were not even readable. If I hadn't been maintaining backups I'd
have been thoroughly hosed.

Tom



...and most important, run through a restore cycle now and then to make
sure backed up something useful.
There are only 2 kinds of computer users. Those who have lost data,
and those who will.

I would hope so, who has not deleted a file? ;~)

On 12/29/2014 06:12 PM, Leon wrote:
On 12/29/2014 6:39 PM, wrote:
On Mon, 29 Dec 2014 17:19:14 -0700, Doug Winterburn
wrote:

On 12/29/2014 10:39 AM, tdacon wrote:


"Lew Hodgett" wrote in message
eb.com...

SFWIW, the drive that just died was placed in service in 05/08 and
died 12/14, or 6-1/2 years .

Lew, the solid-state stuff in a computer will usually last many years
without trouble, but the electro-mechanical parts have shorter life
cycles. There's a reason that hard drive manufacturers offer only
one-year to three-year warranties except for the most expensive
enterprise-level drives. I generally keep my computers on a three- to
five-year replacement cycle (three for my work computers, five for a
household computer). If a household computer is running quite
trouble-free but getting old, I'll generally just replace the hard
drive
after five years as a matter of course. Power supplies I run until I
either (1) start having trouble with them or (2) need more power on
account of a power-hungry replacement video card. Fans get noisy when
they get old but they're cheap and easy to replace.

And I maintain a rigorous automated backup schedule. My backup
system is
a two-drive RAID 1 system on my network (RAID 1: two physical drives,
with the same contents on each in case one of them fails), and daily
backups of all document directories are done every night, keeping up to
two weeks of daily backups. Periodically I archive one each of those
daily backups onto a large external hard drive and keep them up to a
year. When I had an office downtown I kept off-site office backups at
home, and off-site home backups at the office. Now that I'm working
from
my home office I just keep the off-site backups in a different building
on the property. This all sounds like a lot of work, but once it was
all
set up I don't even have to think about it - it just happens, except
for
the occasional archival and off-site copies. I'm a professional
software
developer, so this is important for me and worth the trouble. Even if I
weren't, we now have large libraries of digital photographs online,
going back many years, and it would be terrible to somehow lose all
that
history.

For a friend whose computer I maintain, I just put a large-capacity USB
drive in a slot on the back of the machine and set up a daily backup of
his personal file directories to the USB drive. He doesn't even know
it's happening, but if I need to wipe and re-setup his machine because
of malware or something like that, I've magically got all his files
sitting right there to be restored.

You could do the same. Use Windows Backup and either attach an external
USB-connected hard drive or plug in a big USB memory card. Don't put
yourself in a position where you might have to (might fail to) dodge
another bullet like that someday at much greater cost to yourself. I've
personally had hard drives fail so that not only would they not boot
but
they were not even readable. If I hadn't been maintaining backups I'd
have been thoroughly hosed.

Tom



...and most important, run through a restore cycle now and then to make
sure backed up something useful.
There are only 2 kinds of computer users. Those who have lost data,
and those who will.

I would hope so, who has not deleted a file? ;~)

I have several times unintentionally deleted a file. Fortunately, I
have always been able to recover it from a backup.

I use backuppc: http://backuppc.sourceforge.net/

Runs automatically every night on a linux server running RAID1 on two
2TB drives.


--
"Socialism is a philosophy of failure,the creed of ignorance, and the
gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery"
-Winston Churchill

On Mon, 29 Dec 2014 19:12:09 -0600, Leon lcb11211@swbelldotnet
wrote:

On 12/29/2014 6:39 PM, wrote:
On Mon, 29 Dec 2014 17:19:14 -0700, Doug Winterburn
wrote:

On 12/29/2014 10:39 AM, tdacon wrote:


"Lew Hodgett" wrote in message
eb.com...

SFWIW, the drive that just died was placed in service in 05/08 and
died 12/14, or 6-1/2 years .

Lew, the solid-state stuff in a computer will usually last many years
without trouble, but the electro-mechanical parts have shorter life
cycles. There's a reason that hard drive manufacturers offer only
one-year to three-year warranties except for the most expensive
enterprise-level drives. I generally keep my computers on a three- to
five-year replacement cycle (three for my work computers, five for a
household computer). If a household computer is running quite
trouble-free but getting old, I'll generally just replace the hard drive
after five years as a matter of course. Power supplies I run until I
either (1) start having trouble with them or (2) need more power on
account of a power-hungry replacement video card. Fans get noisy when
they get old but they're cheap and easy to replace.

And I maintain a rigorous automated backup schedule. My backup system is
a two-drive RAID 1 system on my network (RAID 1: two physical drives,
with the same contents on each in case one of them fails), and daily
backups of all document directories are done every night, keeping up to
two weeks of daily backups. Periodically I archive one each of those
daily backups onto a large external hard drive and keep them up to a
year. When I had an office downtown I kept off-site office backups at
home, and off-site home backups at the office. Now that I'm working from
my home office I just keep the off-site backups in a different building
on the property. This all sounds like a lot of work, but once it was all
set up I don't even have to think about it - it just happens, except for
the occasional archival and off-site copies. I'm a professional software
developer, so this is important for me and worth the trouble. Even if I
weren't, we now have large libraries of digital photographs online,
going back many years, and it would be terrible to somehow lose all that
history.

For a friend whose computer I maintain, I just put a large-capacity USB
drive in a slot on the back of the machine and set up a daily backup of
his personal file directories to the USB drive. He doesn't even know
it's happening, but if I need to wipe and re-setup his machine because
of malware or something like that, I've magically got all his files
sitting right there to be restored.

You could do the same. Use Windows Backup and either attach an external
USB-connected hard drive or plug in a big USB memory card. Don't put
yourself in a position where you might have to (might fail to) dodge
another bullet like that someday at much greater cost to yourself. I've
personally had hard drives fail so that not only would they not boot but
they were not even readable. If I hadn't been maintaining backups I'd
have been thoroughly hosed.

Tom



...and most important, run through a restore cycle now and then to make
sure backed up something useful.
There are only 2 kinds of computer users. Those who have lost data,
and those who will.

I would hope so, who has not deleted a file? ;~)
I've recovered many a deleted file with nothing beyond the built-in
windows undelete function. When I say lose, I mean seriously loose,
through no action of your own.

On Sun, 28 Dec 2014 18:06:34 -0800, "Lew Hodgett"
wrote:

My Hard Drive crapped out; however,dodged a bullet, and have
recovered.

My Geek is located kitty cornered across the parking lot which is
about a
solid 7 iron.

Was on puter Saturday afternoon (12/27/14) when suddenly "BANG", a
mechanical groan and the monitor goes dark.

Windows XP attempts to restart but with no avail.

Unplug all cables from the case, throw case on my shoulder and start
walking
toward the geek.

Geek plugs cables into case and begins running chkdsk.

It's now about 6:00 PM and it is obvious these diagnostics are going
to take awhile, so geek says he will call me.

I'm in choke city since almost everything including the phones (Magic
Jack)
is handled on the puter.

I get a call from geek about 12:00 PM on Sunday (12/28/14) saying that
the hard drive needs to be replaced, the existing data needs to be
recovered then loaded into new drive.

He quotes a price and if I accept, he can be finished by 3:00 PM.

Such a deal, let me know when you are done and the case is ready
for pick up.

I had a bucket full of rabbit's feet this weekend and used them all
today
starting with the fact that the geek gave up his Saturday evening and
all
day Sunday to repair my puter.

Normally they close at 5:00 PM on Saturday and are closed all day
Sunday.

Now for the luck.

The geek was able to recover ALL my data including programs.

I had the same thing happen in 1994 when I left the puter on 24/7
since I was using puter as a FAX.

Was told that the failure in 1994 was due to running hard drive on a
continuous duty cycle and that technology had changed and when the
new puter would be in idle mode the hard drive would also be at idle.

Turns out that is not true.

When the puter is in idle mode, the hard drive is still spinning, so
plan
accordingly.

SFWIW, the drive that just died was placed in service in 05/08 and
died 12/14, or 6-1/2 years .

Not all that time was spent with puter on; however, 15-18 hours/day
would be more typical.

As this day closes, am back up and running and consider myself to
be very lucky.

Lew


The drives can shut down, but only if you've gone into the Power
configuration and told it to. Depending on what you use the
computerfor, the "no activity" timeouts can range from a couple of
minutes for the monitor and the hard drive(s) to whatever you need -
when I'm downloading new maps for the GPS, I set the drive timeout for
several hours because it's s-l-o-w.

I'm currently testing some solid state drives (SSD) for durability.
One is in a laptop that's on 24/7 (network monitor), so I'll get an
actual "in use" lifetime for it. Another will be the primary drive
foir a desktop that's also on most of the time. The biggest
improvement is in drive access - booting the laptop takes about half
as long as with the original drive.

On 12/28/2014 08:06 PM, Lew Hodgett wrote:
My Hard Drive crapped out; however,dodged a bullet, and have
recovered

SNIP

These two programs - one for Mac, one for PC - will save yer hide when used
with an external USB drive. They are free for home use (but you must buy
them if using them commercially):

For PC: Macrium Reflect Free Edition

http://www.macrium.com/reflectfree.aspx

Don't forget to create a recovery boot disk when you first install this product.

For Mac: SuperDuper

http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDup...scription.html

This will image your internal Mac drive to an external drive in one of
several ways. I prefer to clone the internal drive so that - if it borks -
I just plug in the external image and boot from that instead.


For Linux I do something more command-line-ish but it works rather well:

http://www.tundraware.com/TechnicalNotes/Baremetal/


Oh, and people who do not backup their stuff regularly should be charged
10x the normal shop rates for recovery ...


----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tim Daneliuk
PGP Key: http://www.tundraware.com/PGP/