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Hard Drive Crash – Not If But When
by
John Allen
Usually, it’s going to come at the most inopportune time. Of course, if
you work online, I can’t really think of a time it would be convenient.
So there you are blasting along all day, getting loads of things done,
and now it’s late, you’re tired, and it’s decision time. Really should
do a backup, but heck, I’m sure it’s fine, I’ll just do one tomorrow.
Then the next morning what happens when booting up? Oh gee, it’s a
friendly message saying the boot sector can’t be found. And so it
starts. Forget whatever you had planned for the day and probably the
next several, because it’s time to troubleshoot, repair and reload.
Don’t you just love technology?
If you’ve lived on a computer for any length of time, you’ve probably
been there. Actually I was fortunate this time, because for some reason,
I’d gone ahead and done the backup the night before. Don’t know why.
Hadn’t done one in a week, but for some reason felt compelled.
Sometimes, fate smiles a little before it kicks you.
Actually, couldn’t tell right away if it was hardware or software
causing the problem. Conflicting error messages didn’t exactly help, but
eventually narrowed it down to the drive. As lousy a predicament as this
was it’s still better than when the BIOS gave up the ghost on my last
machine. That combined with conflicts with the RAM itself or the slots,
sent that laptop to the graveyard. The cost of a new one just wasn’t all
that much more than repairing the old. Suppose I shouldn’t complain
since it did last several years.
I was fortunate also, in not only having done a backup of data files,
but also had access to another machine. At least mission critical
activities could go on. However, it’s just a pain to go through the
repair process. Having spent time diagnosing, you then have to order and
wait for parts to arrive. Then comes the rebuild.
If you use Windows, the initial reload isn’t that bad. But if your
install disk is a year or two old, like mine, you get the thrill of
utilizing the wonderful Windows Update process for several hours of
enjoyment. It can’t pull down the latest stuff all at once and install.
Oh no, first come the 40 to 60 patches for service pack 1a, then some
more updates, and finally you get to service pack 2 and all it’s layers.
All together, plan on literally several hours to get through it – and
that’s with a high-speed connection. If you’re still on dial-up, forget
it.
In fact reloading software and data is a snap compared to getting
Windows up and happy. Probably only 10% to 15% of the overall process.
Drivers and setting up other external devices and connections may take
another 20% to 25%. All the rest is Windows.
Any lessons to be learned – or re-affirmed? You bet. They can be summed
up in one word – redundancy! Backups go without saying. Having a second
drive would be good, but not near as much as another computer. Not many
of us living on laptops bother with docking stations to sync with
servers, but if you’ve got, use it. Likewise, if you generally work off
a server, you’re pretty well covered, as long as you update to that
server, and don’t leave the latest version solely on your local machine.
For the rest of us who’ve become self-contained and wedded to total
mobility, we need to stay self-reliant. You can do backups any number of
ways – the key is to do them. Some folks are fans of tape and other
media systems for doing full and incremental backups, and that works
pretty good as long as you don’t travel a lot and access to those
systems is convenient. I personally prefer CD’s, DVD’s or jump drives.
I don’t bother backing up anything but data. Not including everything
else makes the process much faster, and quite frankly if it can’t be
done quick, most of us won’t do it frequently enough. Make it easy by
keeping all the files you work with in your own set of folders instead
of letting Windows and other programs spread it all out according to
their own strange ideas of organization. Much easier to be sure you get
it all.
For the rest, keep all your original operating system, drivers, and
systems software CD’s handy, along with copies of all software you
normally use. Since we buy so much software online now, also make sure
you keep a record of any software unlock keys. One hint here – write
them down somewhere.
I hate writing things down – that’s why I have a computer. However, I
needed the unlock key to re-install Norton Anti-Virus before I got back
on the internet, and I had stored that stuff in an Excel spreadsheet.
Guess what? Can’t read excel without the software installed, so had to
stop and re-install MS Office so I could read the key.
Anyhow, things are up and running again, and nothing seems to have
suffered too much due to the distractions of the downtime. Plus it was
probably useful to have gotten yet another wake-up call reminder to not
slack off on doing back-ups. So if you’ve been ignoring some computer
housekeeping lately, watch out, you could be next – are you ready?
About the author:
John Allen writes on a wide variety of topics. Visit his blog at
http://www.downsizedlife.blogspot.com
to read more or obtain
feeds. He can also be reached through his website
http://www.j2trading.com which focuses on finding unique gifts.
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Management