Good News and Not So Good News

[Tomcat]

Hi Folks,

Good News:
Cajon Subdivision is resting fine on an external HDD.

Not So Good News:
The laptop has been acting flakey the past few days and this morning I found out why the hard way. Many corrupt files prevented the laptop from booting to the OS, and this after I had just done a complete scan of everything that could be scanned yesterday afternoon. So, of course, after a clean bill of health it decides to throw a tantrum this morning.

Thankfully I had followed recommendations when I first purchased the laptop and made 2 sets of OS recovery DVD's which after an hour on the phone with tech support it was recommended I fall back to. That means that all data would be (and has been) wiped from the disk. The Cajon Subdivision that I have been posting about under '3 Track Cajon Project' in the Freeware WIP section was backed up to an external yesterday, as I do after every 2 or 3 hours of work. I did do some work after the backup but it amounts to maybe 40 minutes of time that I have lost - not a big deal by any means.

I am now in the process of restoring programs and data and that may take me the better part of a week to get all sorted out. As I type, Steam is installing the 2 games I had, TS2016 and Unreal Tournament 3 Black which will probably be an all day affair, could be less since I am getting a solid 2.7 MB/s download speed. After that comes poking around my external and restoring all the 3rd party add-ons.

You all know this I'm sure, whether you have done it is another story - recovery disks and backups make life much less stressful. Without them then a bottle of scotch in the cupboard and a box of tissues to wipe the tears away might be in order.

On a side note - wiping a disk and reinstalling stuff is a great way to improve performance. I don't recommend it, but there it is.

[Chacal]

You are now the poster child for backups!

Tip: this kind of problem, and several similar ones, can be prevented with a $40 tool named DeepFreeze by Faronics. It is the greatest invention since sliced bread. With this, you "freeze" your system disk, so that any change is reverted at the next reboot. This includes corrupted files, viruses and other malware.

I have been using it, both personally and professionally, for 20 years and it has saved my skin several times.

Also, in your case I would be worried avout the cause of this corruption. I would run diagnostic tests on the hard disk.

[ssbobz]

That was a close call, glad to hear you were prepared.

I just recently upgraded my mobo and ended up reinstalling all of my games even though about half still worked fine, I did a preliminary backup but I need to do another since I'm almost finished getting set up. I know what I'm doing tonight.

[dejoh]

Glad your still driving the proverbial spike on this fine route. Backup, backup. So looking forward to running any portion of this route.

[Tomcat]

Also, in your case I would be worried about the cause of this corruption. I would run diagnostic tests on the hard disk.

I will check out that software. I have a lead on the cause, my nephew interrupted a scheduled update 3 days ago, you know the ones that say 'Don't Turn Off Your Computer', well he did. It's been acting strange since then. I ran diagnostics and all appears well, but it did check out fine yesterday also.

In terms of TS2016, amazingly I am back in business. Downloaded 30 gigs in a bit over 2 hours. I lost 18 or so gigs in 3rd party freeware but I was thinking of getting rid of most of it anyway. Besides just the official DTG stuff I installed the 10 or so freeware packs for my route and took a quick look at it. I think I only missed one asset which will not be hard to acquire again and 40 minutes was about the right estimate for the work that was lost.

That was a close call, glad to hear you were prepared.

I just recently upgraded my mobo and ended up reinstalling all of my games even though about half still worked fine, I did a preliminary backup but I need to do another since I'm almost finished getting set up. I know what I'm doing tonight.

Yes, do those backups. Here I am 8 hours later and I'm in pretty good shape. Still lots of little programs to grab and things to tweak but overall this has turned out much better than I thought.

Glad your still driving the proverbial spike on this fine route. Backup, backup. So looking forward to running any portion of this route.

I think 'backup' is now my middle name. Next time I feel lazy about taking the few minutes to do a backup I'll just remind myself of this morning.

[Ericmopar]

Yep, a person can't back up too much when doing a large project.
I've even started periodic backups to the cloud at Google for large files.
It suddenly dawned on me one day... what if the house burned down with my PC, external drive etc?
Or a flooding, or, or, or...