Got Lucky - hard disk about to go!
Ron Czapala
Posts: 2,418
I guess I got lucky yesterday. After my Windows XP computer was booted up for about 15 minutes, everything hung up.
I could move the mouse cursor but clicking anything was fruitless. I was about to kill the power when a bunch of windows appeared for things I clicked.
Seemed pretty strange so I opened the Event Viewer and found about a dozen events indicating disk read problems - not good.
I assume that bad sectors were reallocated with no apparent data loss. The drive was 5 years old.
I immediately backed up critical files (which I normally do daily) and then backed up the entire drive using Retrospect 6.5. (I usually do incremental backups monthly)
A quick trip to Best Buy for a 1TB Western Digital Caviar Black SATA drive. Installed the drive and unplugged my other internal drive.
Installed XP from the CD and reinstalled Retrospect. Restoring took less than an hour (I only had about 40GB on the drive).
I did have some strange issues though. The event viewer showed SQL Server file access problems so I just uninstalled Visual Studio Express 2010 for the time being.
Windows XP didn't bother to notify me other than logging the events. If I hadn't checked Event Viewer, a disk crash would probably have been a rude awakening!
I could move the mouse cursor but clicking anything was fruitless. I was about to kill the power when a bunch of windows appeared for things I clicked.
Seemed pretty strange so I opened the Event Viewer and found about a dozen events indicating disk read problems - not good.
I assume that bad sectors were reallocated with no apparent data loss. The drive was 5 years old.
I immediately backed up critical files (which I normally do daily) and then backed up the entire drive using Retrospect 6.5. (I usually do incremental backups monthly)
A quick trip to Best Buy for a 1TB Western Digital Caviar Black SATA drive. Installed the drive and unplugged my other internal drive.
Installed XP from the CD and reinstalled Retrospect. Restoring took less than an hour (I only had about 40GB on the drive).
I did have some strange issues though. The event viewer showed SQL Server file access problems so I just uninstalled Visual Studio Express 2010 for the time being.
Windows XP didn't bother to notify me other than logging the events. If I hadn't checked Event Viewer, a disk crash would probably have been a rude awakening!
Comments
I've had disks go bad a couple of times in the past and lost some irreplaceable stuff, so I now have nearly 6 TB of storage and most data is triple backed up, some only double, but basically it would take an act of God for me to lose anything now, and anything that could take out all my data would probably take me in the process, so no worries.
I use FreeFileSync to back up my data drives and WHS 2011 running on an HP Microserver takes care of the day-to-day stuff.
Agreed, because the issue is not IF your hard drive fails -- but WHEN your hard drive fails...
Well, the hard disks of today support a BIOS diagnosis feature called S.M.A.R.T, and this is not dependent on Windows, Apple or Linux.
But Linux does have a very good journalizing file system of its own that makes recovery from a failing hard disk very doable. It is called EXT3. By using EXT3 and S.M.A.R.T. you are pretty well set to not loose any data. Windows NTFS is supposed to do a similar job.
Years ago, my Windows XP did provide me with a S.M.A.R.T notice of a hard disk problem and I swapped out the hard disk without loss. But of course, Microsoft then jumped in and shut out the OS until I called Singapore and explained that I had to change hard disks. MS wants to assert the right to license Windows to only one hardware system. So changing a hard disk will eventually assert a 'blue screen of death' unless you are allowed to re-register with a new hard disk.
I checked the S.M.A.R.T. info right after the incident which helped me decide to replace the drive immediately.
After restoring XP I tried to activate it and it was already activated so I don't anticipate any issues.
I also ran Windows Update and I don't think it will work unless your copy of Windows is valid.
Loopy, if you had to re-install the OS then it's no surprise that reactivation was necessary. I've re-installed both Windows XP and Windows 7 many times over the last decade or so, I've never had a problem just using the automatic activation when only the HDD is different (if you have to switch motherboards a call is sometimes required, especially if the ethernet/MAC is integrated on the motherboard). Also, you should never rely on S.M.A.R.T. alone. External drives and flash drives are cheap. Make a proper back-up.
I don't know about Windows 8, but you can use Windows 7 for 30 days without activation at all. You can rearm it 3 times for 120 days total. I can re-install from scratch in well under 20 minutes, so on one computer I've been running un-activated for a long, long time (just for the fun of it). Of course, I use mostly portable apps and all my data is on a different drive, not the boot drive.
I realize you are not actually in the US, and things may be different over there.
Even some 'reputable' manufacturers do this, and on 'Pro' gear, too...
(Yeah, DELL, I'm looking at you and your Precision M6700 17" portable workstations)
Also, I think that since XP, Microsoft has pretty much regionalized licenses and may allow or disallow different levels of reinstallation in Asia from what the US buyer percieves.
And for a third factor, I purchased an English version of XP in Asia and registered out of Singapore. It seems that the English language version was subject to much tighter registration controls as Microsoft may have feared that a bootleg copy would migrate to the USA market.
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In sum, MS policies are not globally monolithic. It is much easier to get support for Ubuntu as it is globally monolithic. Regional support is in the regional market's dominant language, which can be different from your preferred language.
In the USA, support might be wonderful. But elsewhere depends on how much you pay, what language you choose, and whatever MS suddenly feels is the best way to shake the money tree.
S.M.A.R.T. may not resolve all problems. But it is a lot easier to deploy than RAID and is at least working with a safety net.