What to do if your backup crashes…mine did!

May 29, 2009

Do you backup your important files? I do. Where do you back them up? I backed mine up to a 250GB Maxtor One Touch™  external hard drive. Hey, I’m no fool. I know it’s good to backup. I preach it all the time. My friend, Harold, asked me once what I’d do if my backup crashed and I couldn’t answer him. Harold, I can answer you now!

About two weeks ago, I heard a funny clicking sound coming from my Maxtor when I was booting up one morning. That was my first warning. Did I heed it? Nope. All I did was check and make sure I could still access the drive (I could) and that the data stored on it was still accessible (it was). A sense of false comfort took over and I went about business as usual.

Last week, I heard some beeps coming from (you guessed it) my Maxtor. That was my second warning. Did I heed it? Nope. Once again, I checked to make sure I could still access the drive and the data. Once again, I could. Oh, yeah, did I mention that I not only used the Maxtor to backup files but also to store files that I ACCESS EVERY DAY??????

Well, you all know where this is leading. It leads to the morning late last week that I booted up my computer and lost contact with the Maxtor. Oh, I could still see it but Windows just couldn’t talk to it anymore. If  Windows can’t talk to your drives, then you can’t talk to your drives.

I must say, I didn’t panic. I was mildly annoyed and thought, “Maybe  I just need to reboot my computer.” I did and my mild annoyance turned to dismay when Windows STILL couldn’t talk to the Maxtor. It finally dawned on me that I’d been ignoring the signs of an impending disk crash and was, as they say in the tech world, SOL. Thus began my quest to see if I could recover my data. Before I take you on a guided tour of my trip to recovery land, I do want you to know that all I lost was time…a lot of time. I was able to recover my data and am in the process of transferring it to a new backup repository.

First of all, I right-clicked the Computer icon (remember, I use Vista and it ain’t My Computer anymore), chose Manage, gave Windows permission to open the Computer Management console (yep, I still have UAC enabled), and scrolled down to Disk Management in the console window. From there, I was able to see the status of all my disks. When I looked at the Maxtor, I saw that it was no longer formatted as NTFS but was now RAW.

After doing some searching, I downloaded the trial versions of Easeus Data Recovery Wizard and Easeus Partition Table Doctor from the Easeus website. My thinking was I’d find out if there was still data that I could recover first and if there was, I’d try to repair the partition first. The Partition Table Doctor has a feature called Fixboot that will try to fix the partition boot sector. I won’t get all tekkie on you but if you’re interested in finding out what a partition boot sector is and what it does, you can read what Easeus has to say about it. To make a long story short, there was data that was recoverable but unfortunately, the partition where it was located couldn’t be repaired with fixboot. Since the trial version of the Recovery Wizard only showed me what was available for recovery, I purchased the full version so I could actually recover it. The reason I did is because I was very impressed with how quick and easy the trial version was to use. Thanks, Easeus!

I downloaded the full version of the Data Recovery Wizard and started the process of recovering those files that I use on a daily basis.  Success! I had just enough capacity on my Iomega external hard drive (it’s my primary data storage drive) to store the recovered files. You would know it’d be my large capacity external hard drive that went all bonkers on me, wouldn’t you? I copied the restored files to the Iomega and took a break. By then, I needed one!

After my break, I set about looking for a replacement external hard drive and after some searching I found a great deal over at Newegg.com on a 640GB Hitachi external drive. It was such a great deal that they’ve since sold out! Besides the reduced priced of $59.99, I also found an additional 10% coupon over at Gadget Review that got me the whole shebang, including shipping, for only $54! Not bad, huh? On top of that, the coupon expired the very day I found out about it.

I got my new Hitachi yesterday and have already installed it. I have a heads up for you, though. It comes formatted as FAT32 instead of NTFS, so I had to reformat it before I started moving files to it. Since I didn’t have to worry about doing a sector scan, I just did a quick format and have started storing all my recovered files on it today.

One more thing, though. Back to Harold’s question about what I’d do if my backup crashed, I’ve decided not to take any chances. I’m going to continue using an external hard drive to back up my data but I’m also going to purchase online backup storage from Mozy. Right now, you can save 20% on Mozy Home with promo code UPLINE which means I can get unlimited online storage for two years for only $83.16. Is that cool, or what?

So, a word to the wise, backup your backup! Having it locally is convenient and you don’t even have to have an internet connection to access it, but if your local backup goes south on you, you’re back in business with an online backup!

Happy, Harold?

Posted in Annoyances, Hardware, Tech Tips, Vista