Learn from my mistake!

Grendel

Grendel

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On Wednesday last week one of my Mac's at work wouldn't boot. It was fine the day before, turned it on on Wednesday morning and nothing - just a grey screen :bang: To cut a long story short, after going through various diagnostic procedures it turned out that the hard drive had failed :eek: 50 gig of data which was all live jobs we are working on (I'm in the printing trade) and I couldn't access any of it.

Now here's the bit where you all say "Grendel you idiot".....

Our back up device packed up a couple of months ago and I didn't replace it :cuckoo: so, you've guessed it, no backup of the data exists :bonk:

I sent the disk away to a data recovery company who charged me £498 to recover the data and put it onto a new hard drive. If I'd had a current back up all it would have cost me would have been £60 for a new HDD and a couple of hours to reinstall software etc. As it is I've been without the Mac for a week (I won't get it back till Tuesday), had a nightmare at work having to redo stuff that was on the drive and it's cost me upwards of £600 when you add in the other costs.

Moral of the story - Hard drives DO fail! Back up your files guys coz it's a bl**dy nightmare when the inevitable happens!
 
Unlucky there. Ironic that. This morning I spent three hours archiving most of my 06 stuff ready for 07. Serious amounts of images, data etc. Kept one small portfolio pic with my favourite work from 06 on the desk top and will do a complete refrag on my Xmas break.
 
Live and learn eh??

I "try" to keep DVD backups of stuff and have a copy on a USB 320G drive.

Suppose I could take it all into work and let IT there suffer... :D
 
Good headsup - cant remember how many times I have to tell people to backup, and alot of them have suffered in the past but it still doesnt always sink in :bonk:

Especially with external disks being so cheap these days, theres no real excuse if you value your data. :shake:

Good to hear you managed to recover your data though, and the price actually sounds reasonable for the capacity recovered - although of course its a cost that could have been avoided.
 
I'm very paranoid about loosing data, Always run 2 hard drives on my computer, second being a backup drive that synchronized with the first. I also backup to a 300GB external USB drive once a month. The external drive is the first thing I would grab in a house fire lol
 
Grendel said:
Moral of the story - Hard drives DO fail! Back up your files guys coz it's a bl**dy nightmare when the inevitable happens!
Click to expand...

Working in IT, I sympathise with you - I have seen too much data lost over the years. But why do I still fail to back up my images :bang:

Wheres those blank cd's?
 
Question for you IT bods...
I've just bought a 320 GB external HDD and used Ghost to copy my HDD to it. I thought that if the HDD in the PC failed I could swap in a new HDD and restore from the Ghost backup and all would be well, but someone told me that the (newly restored from Ghost) drive would'nt 'just work' like before cos of XP detecting the drive was different hardware and device settings being wrong etc. :thinking:

Is this so, and if it is, whats the best way to make a copy of my HDD so that if the HDD in the PC fails or the PC itself fails, I can just install a new HDD or buy a new PC (if necessary) and carry on without having to reinstall all the apps, register the stuff on the web etc.
:shrug:

Thanks
 
RickMezza said:
Question for you IT bods...
I've just bought a 320 GB external HDD and used Ghost to copy my HDD to it. I thought that if the HDD in the PC failed I could swap in a new HDD and restore from the Ghost backup and all would be well, but someone told me that the (newly restored from Ghost) drive would'nt 'just work' like before cos of XP detecting the drive was different hardware and device settings being wrong etc. :thinking:

Is this so, and if it is, whats the best way to make a copy of my HDD so that if the HDD in the PC fails or the PC itself fails, I can just install a new HDD or buy a new PC (if necessary) and carry on without having to reinstall all the apps, register the stuff on the web etc.
:shrug:

Thanks
Click to expand...


If and I mean IF your new PC is as replacement for the one that just departed the mortal coil is EXACTLY the same as the old one (which considering how the PC world moves is very unlikely) then you can just re-ghost the image and yr off :)

More likely is that things have changed... graphics cards, motherboard then forget it. :nono: The onlything you can recover is the data. The Windows install is never going to work.

Sometimes you can re-image, but then you spend the rest of your born days updating the drivers.... at which point you realise you should have just re-installed it all :shrug:
 
The motto of the story is... back up yr data (photos, docs, game saves...) then set asside a rainy weekend for when the inevitable happens.... Install-Reboot-Install-Reboot-Install-Reboot....... :bang:
 
I too am paranoid about backing up. I'm responsible for the works server (we're a design agency) and I've had a raid installed, do 2 x daily tape backups and archive every month or so onto DVD, which is stored in a firesafe along with the tapes. It's so worth keeping ontop of your backup, I get all sweaty if I miss a day.
 
Bit more techy stuff...

There are lots of type of Raid...

Raid 5: (wot I assume Mohain is using (or Raid7.. better yet)) uses multiple disks and keeps 1 as parity. So one can fail and the system will keep goin... (well thats the theory).
Raid 1: uses 2 disks and keeps the same info on both disks (one is just a copy of the other). So you "waste" one disk. Until one fails then you go :woot: :woot: and carry on..
Raid 0: again uses 2 disks but stripes the data across both disks so if one disk dies you lose the WHOLE lot. It's faster, but unless you are an extreme gamer dont go there. :nono:

Just in case you were interested
 
BTW just for the record - RAID is not a backup solution, it is classed as fault-tolerant. So if a disk fails you should not lose data, nor should you necessarily lose the use of your computer. However if a file is deleted/corrupted/virus infected, then the same will occur to the file on all other disks. Do not use RAID1 or RAID5 as a sole solution, make sure you have a dedicated true backup device aswell.

:thumbs:
 
How very true... :thumbs:
 
I feel for you mate, and thanks for sharing your tale with us.

I'm sure we can't have enough warnings about backing up. I know I personally say I always back up everything, but always let it lapse. I do eventually get round to it, but as your tale shows, bad things can happen at any time.

At least you got/are getting your data back (even if at a price), which is a small consolation I suppose.

Let this be a reminder people...backup backup backup :D
 
Marcel said:
At least you got/are getting your data back (even if at a price), which is a small consolation I suppose.
Click to expand...

But it IS a consolation! You have no idea of the inconvenience to my business if I had lost that data for ever :bang: It's been a BIG wake up call for me. It's really taught me not to think "it'll never happen to me". As you said Marcel - backup, backup, backup. You might not actually need it for years but the day you do you'll be SO glad you did. hindsight is a wonderful thing, as they say :cuckoo:
 
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