Free Computer Consultant ………. Daily Insights

I have had a lot of views and follow up questions to some videos I have had on hard drive data recovery. On the one hand I’m thrilled that so many people find this information valuable to them; on the other hand I’m sad to see that so many people are in need of recovering data off of failed drives.

Computer backup is not difficult, expensive or even very time consuming anymore.

You can schedule Acronis True Image to automatically backup to an external USB hard drive on a regular basis. (I recommend a 7200rpm hard drive and a warranty longer than 1 year.)

Please don’t think your hard drive will last forever; even if it’s brand new it can fail at any time.

Every once in a while I will come across a computer that will not boot up but instead stops at a black screen of death (as opposed to a blue screen of death) that looks something like this:

This happens to show the system hive of the registry as being missing or corrupt, you might also see the same thing only with “software” replacing “system”.

Either one is bad news.

Microsoft’s answer is to boot with your XP CD and try a repair. What the repair process will hope to find is backups of these critical Windows registry files in %WINDIR%\Repair (Probably C:\Windows\Repair, but maybe C:\WINNT\Repair if XP was an upgrade from Windows 2000).

But as I show in the video down below, those files may not have been updated since Windows XP was installed - maybe a long time ago. If that is the case, you might as well plan on a complete Windows Reinstall, along with reinstalling all of your software programs and any special device drivers.

The solution is to be prepared with current, updated repair files. How, you ask?

Easy, watch this short video showing how you can make a system state backup that will update these repair files and even schedule that backup to occur automatically, say, once per week so that a repair can be quick and successful should this little tragedy ever befall your computer.

How and Why to Make a System State Backup

Having a recent Windows XP Restore Point can really save the day. Yesterday I showed how to create a Windows XP Restore Point.

I knew I needed to create a companion video and post showing how easy it is to roll back to a restore point, but didn’t have time at the moment.

Only two hours after creating the video I was at a client’s and used a restore point to undo what would otherwise have been a major project to fix.

Windows Restore Points are a great tool to have available, but they ARE NOT a substitute for good backups.

Here’s the companion video that shows how to restore to a Windows XP restore point:

How To Restore a Windows XP Restore Point

If your computer is running great right now, create a Windows XP system restore point to commemorate the occasion.

You never know what might happen to your system:

• Windows system fluke
• You install something you wish you hadn’t
• A program doesn’t properly install or uninstall
• Virus or malware corrupt something

The short video I have below shows how quick and easy it is to do this. Make yourself a reminder and do this often.

It’s usually a lot easier to go back to a system restore point than to trouble shoot and repair a problem the hard way.

Note: A system restore point is only one part of a good backup / recovery strategy, not a substitute for a good backup regimen.

How To Create A Windows XP Restore Point and Why

A friend of mine made me aware of a new online backup service call DropBox, his review is here.

A key difference with DropBox, currently in Beta, is that you can sign up multiple computers to the same account - then the computers will all sync to the data in the drop box.

You can undelete files or restore old versions, even invite friends or family (if you have any of either!) to a shared folder with rights you assign.

There is already a client for both Windows and Mac and soon Linux.

I normally aren’t too crazy about online backup solutions, but this one has promise. I’ll blog in the future about ways to overcome my one biggest objection - security.

’til then..

Acronis True Image Home is now in version 11. This venerated computer backup software was great in version 10, but they have bested that with the new version 11.

I have written often about how this easy to use, inexpensive software is a must have for anyone with data they hold dear.

Acronis makes it easy to backup your data and more importantly, easy to restore your data when necessary.

I simply love the ability to “mount” a backup image and explore it just like another drive on my computer. Makes individual file restore a cinch. I’ve even use this method to grab drivers for a video card or other device from an old C:\Windows\System32 directory from an out of data backup.

If you have an older version, I suggest upgrading to the new version 11 of Acronis True Image Home.

If you have never tried it I suggest the Free Trial Download of Acronis True Image Home 11.

Or heck, take my recommendation and Buy It Now!.

The important thing is this: PROTECT YOUR DATA!

Acronis True image makes it easy, fast, and inexpensive to be fully protected.

Here is a Video on YouTube showing me using Acronis True Image (workstation).

This is a screenshot of a Data Restore I did today. Big deal, right?

What if I told you the backup was done to tape 15 years ago? Ok, so I’m a pack rat. It bugged me that a number of years ago I deleted some source code because I knew I would never need it again. Only I decided I did want it after all.

And I wanted to know if I really could get it or if I had been storing tapes (and moving them several times) all for naught.

The PC is a 486DX with 8MB of RAM, 200MB hard drive (check those figures - megabyte NOT gigabyte) with a Colorado Memory Systems 250MB tape drive using DC2000 cartridges. Software used was Colorado Backup for Dos v4.05 (a particularly stable version).

The key to getting data from a tape that old begins when the backup is made:

• Make sure backup is good
  • Reboot first
  • Clean the tape drive
  • Use a decent tape
  • Verify the backup
• Label the tape
  • Date
  • Software used
  • Where the password can be found (you do password data backups, right?)
  • Tape drive used
• Store tape in climate controlled environment
• Make sure the hardware used to record the tape is available to read it
• When you go to retrieve the data, Pray (Seriously, I mean it!)

Simple, huh? Ok, not always. This PC needed a small kick to get everything working right, and no, it isn’t Y2K compliant.

But I got the data I wanted…

I had a Pentium 4 2.4 processor floating around that would only eBay for about $25. So I decided to see how little I could spend to turn it into a decent computer.

I found the Asus P4V8X-MX motherboard was feature packed and very inexpensive. 1 GB of memory from Crucial.com was less than $75. The SATA hard drive I had laying around had XP installed on it from an Asus P5B or P5L installation, not sure which, but surprised the heck out of me when it booted into windows with just a few drivers missing.

Since more and more of the problems I solve are regarding Windows Vista, I decided to see how Vista would fare on this board.

So I downloaded and ran the Windows Upgrade Advisor. After doing its thing, the advisor reported that it had encountered an error (thanks for all of that detail, Microsoft); and perhaps I should re-download the latest version (did it change in 15 minutes?) and try again.

Forget it. Install Vista anyway.

I booted with the Windows Vista Ultimate DVD (Dell OEM copy) and chose to install to a new partition. Wisely, I had only allocated about half of the 120GB disk to the Windows XP Pro installation.

With Vista, there really aren’t too many questions to answer during the install so I came back later to see how it was doing. I had to press the power button since it had gone to sleep waiting for me (fitting, as I have fallen asleep so many times waiting for Windows) but essentially it was all done.

The Asus P4V8X-MX board did not come with Vista drivers and I didn’t download any. Yet everything worked; no yellow exclamations in device manager; NIC, sound, and an old Asus GeForce MX 400 AGP video card all worked perfectly. The P4V8X-MX has video on the board making it a great value, but I figured AGP video with its own RAM would perform better - and the card was just gathering dust anyway.

So I guess my advice when Windows Vista Upgrade Advisor reports an error is to just go ahead anyway.

With one BIG caveat!:

I had backed up the PC first, even though I didn’t care about the XP install, with Acronis True Image software to a USB hard drive.

When I was done I now had a dual boot, Windows XP Pro, Windows Vista Ultimate, computer. Runs great on both.

Absolutely; sort of. If you own a Seagate or Maxtor hard drive.

What you get is a basic version of Acronis True Image Home with just the basic features.

But you CAN do a full image backup and restore. Not only that, it surprised the heck out of me to find out that you can mount an image as a drive letter, explore with Windows Explorer, and copy files from that image if you want to.

Acronis True Image Software and a USB hard drive is an awesome combination.

Here are the details and the links:

For Seagate Hard drives click here.

For Maxtor Hard drives click here.

When you decide you love the program so much you want the full version, please come back here to buy through a link on my website. Thanks.

I was at my Chiro today and he asked me about backing up data on his business computer. It’s not like I haven’t tried to talk him into Acronis True Image and a USB hard drive before; it’s just that he is, well, rather frugal. Ok, cheap.

The reason he brought up computer backup today, though, was because of friend of his is currently trying to recover from a computer disaster without benefit of a good backup of his data, programs, or anything else of value.

PLEASE, don’t wait for disaster to strike you before thinking seriously about computer backup. Grab a USB flash drive of some type then drag and drop some files to it - then take it home; or take it to the office if it’s your home data. Encrypt it first for security.

Just please take action now, while your data is still accessible. It’s a lot more fun to recover data from a quality backup than from a toasted hard drive.

You can find more info on computer backup here.