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 Replies: 10 / Views: 1,945 |
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Pillar of the Community
Australia
3831 Posts |
Hi everyone, I have not been active in the forum for a while. There is a good reason - my laptop of 5 years have decided to 'die' and that caused some grief. I suspect the erratic weather caused the motherboard to short circuit. I have less idea if the data on the laptop survived but hope that they did. So far I have been managing without a computer while saving up to get a decent computer. It has been inconvenient but I guess you can always get around. On the topic of data, there has been a lot of numismatic related files that was on my computer. Last I remembered from a few years ago, I had more than 30gb of data in it which put me off backing up on dvd. That included a fair amount of photos, articles, coin album designs, etc. Bad call! Thankfully, the majority of important personal files, photos etc are on an external drive. I know it isn't really numismatic related but when you have taken time and effort to record your personal collection - make sure you spare some time to back them up! Just a friendly reminder.  |
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Pillar of the Community
United States
4211 Posts |
Good advise for all of us! My computer is not backed up either. I will fix that! Thanks  |
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Pillar of the Community
United States
1156 Posts |
Welcome back, gxseries. Unless your laptop's hard drive was damaged, the data files on it should be retrievable, so don't discard it.
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Bedrock of the Community
United States
20753 Posts |
Been backing up stuff for a long, long time now. Once a long time ago, I got a virus. Computer tech had to erase everything to get rid of that. I did have most stuff backed up but lost a lot of photos. Now I back up everything before shutting down every night.
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Pillar of the Community
United States
6130 Posts |
The good news is, the data should be easy to get off of the hard drive. $15 on Amazon will get you a cable to hook your laptop's hard drive to a USB port. You could even boot from it, if you're feeling fancy. Assuming your laptop is from 2009ish, you should be good with a SATA to USB cable. Be sure to get one with a power adapter so you have enough juice to keep the platters going. |
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Bedrock of the Community
 United States
12815 Posts |
What kind of weather caused your mobo to short circuit? A monsoon in your office? A Fosters flood in the keyboard?
Just kidding, I realize motherboards do fry from time to time. And, as jgenn suggests, if the hard drive isn't damaged, your data is probably fine and you just need someone with a little know-how to help you retrieve it. That said, it's much more likely that a hard drive dies than a motherboard due to the fact that a hard drive (especially a 5-year-old one) likely has moving parts, where a motherboard does not. Again, a motherboard is not immune to the effects of a fine Australian lager dripping through the keys.
GOOD ADVICE, regardless. I have all my important data (including my coin and PM inventory) backed up nightly locally via robocopy to a backup internal disk and one external. I periodically burn to DVD and drop a copy off at the office. I'm very hesitant at this time to put anything sensitive in the Cloud, but I may eventually give up that foolishness... all my financial data, SSN, etc. is in the Cloud already.
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Moderator
 United States
56855 Posts |
 back. Sorry to hear about your computer. I think external drives of 1T don't cost all that much and it only takes a minute or two to back up. John1  |
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Moderator
United States
187862 Posts |
Having a backup solution is good.
Having multiple backup solutions is better.
Regularly testing you backup solution(s) is critical.
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Bedrock of the Community
United States
10034 Posts |
One of the things I liked years ago about Mac was what they call the Time Machine. Its a completely customizeable auto backup system. It allows retrieval of everything or specific things back to any date. It's nice b/c I don't have to remember to do anything Might be something like this for other OSs - its handy. How much squash could a Sasquatch squash if a Sasquatch would squash squash? Download and read: Grading the graders Costly TPG ineptitude and No FG Kennedy halveshttps://ln5.sync.com/dl/7ca91bdd0/w...i3b-rbj9fir2 |
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Pillar of the Community
United States
1158 Posts |
With the cost of large portable drives and cloud services, there is no excuse for not backing up anymore! Do it now if you are not already. If you have a small amount of personal data, Both Google and Microsoft offer free 15GB of storage online. If you have a lot of data, a portable Toshiba 1 TB drive is $50 on Amazon right now. ($80 for 2TB) Edited by tkbslc
08/19/2015 1:22 pm
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Moderator
United States
23522 Posts |
The appropriate way to rescue data which may or may not be damaged is, to carefully select the solution and only have to do it once. This is important; some data recovery software might write to the disk during recovery (only a few do this; most softwares try to create a duplicate copy of the fragmented stuff locally and do the fix on it instead of the "real" data). So if the first try doesn't work, the second try may not be able to undo what the first did whilst failing.
That was a deliberate attempt to scare you (and others reading who may end up in the same boat some day). This data could be as easily reached as hooking up the old hard drive, and your operating system will see it normally and you move on as if nothing happened.
And it's remotely possible to screw up an otherwise-good drive by running some esoteric recovery software on it which somebody recommended.
So, just like ascending the polarity scale when considering coin conservation methods, approach this with the cheapest and simplest solutions first. That will depend both on the operating system installed on the dead soldier, and the OS installed on the replacement system. Plan - as this is the most likely outcome - on your old hard drive being seen normally when you add it as a new piece of hardware. If that doesn't happen easily, then consider more complex software solutions.
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Replies: 10 / Views: 1,945 |
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Posted 08/18/2015 8:42 pm
