E-Musings Mon Immorata

Importance of Being (in) Earnest Near-catastrophic HDD failure results in new backup paranoia I usually hate dumping my woes on readers. Unless the problem can affect the greater majority. As may be the case with Seagate SATA-interface drives. If you have recently invested in one of these units (as I did) do remain alert for the possibility of complete (and catastrophic) failure. The units under the scanner should have been purchased in the between February 1-August 30, 2005. Off-the-record, I learnt that over 15 units had failed during the preceding 6 months. In most of failures customers reported knocking or banging noises emanating from within the drive or drives that refused to spool-up in the first instance. In most instances, the failure was traced to the on-drive controller card that had suffered s short. Unfortunately, none of the dealers polled were willing to speak on-the-record, fearing retaliatory action by the manufacturer. I'm not convinced the problem could have been partially caused by Windows' Hibernate. But in an unrelated observation, I've noticed that over time a hibernated system startups even slower than a cold boot! Unless in between you disable hibernation (which deletes the HIBERFIL.SYS file); a process that doesn't require you to reboot the computer. You then re-enable the feature to create a new file. And can again use Hibernation until it next begins to manifest slow-down symptoms. When you repeat the process ad infinitum. Anyway, on account of the drive burnout I lost about 3 GB of critical project-related data. And another 40 GB of non-mission critical content. I'm sure you're wondering why I don't restore the missing files from a backup. Well, truth is, I forgot to backup! An oversight I now deeply regret. And have now decided to backup data with a vengeance. I'm assisted by that backup essential: a CD-RW (ReWriter) drive. With the added advantage of direct access (using Windows Remote Desktop Connection) to a DVD+RW writer on another computer. The reason I chose CD over tape is ease of use. CD media also costs less than a Dollar a disk; even for name brands. And can be accessed using any CD-ROM drive. You don't need specialized hardware like a tape drive. Or the software to access archived catalogs and restore files. My second backup tool is a file compression software. Of all the various formats available I find that 7-Zip has excellent compression. And the software is free and supports common archive formats including ZIP, CAB, RAR, ARJ, GZIP, BZIP2, TAR, CPIO, RPM and DEB. I also find the .SIT format excellent for archiving. Unfortunately, only the Stuff-It Expander tool is free. You need to purchase a copy ($24.99) of Stuff-It Standard that creates archives. Or you can undertake some diligent searching of warez and their associated full-version download sites for either a serial, a crack, or a complete copy. Don't look for the latest version as an older one will do fine. And before you begin backing up, take time out to read this excellent article on Backup Basics by Anand R; develop of the free ZipIt Windows utility. The article also includes links to related content. My data backup process begins by creating a new backup folder. Preferably on a logical drive that can be limited to 650 MB. This way I can ensure that the content of my CD-R/RW will not exceed the most widely-supported storage format. I next use my archiving software to create separate archives, sorted by source content type. That way I generate separate archives for my Favorites (Internet Explorer, Opera, Firefox), for Application Data (software profiles), for mail (PST) files, documents, spreadsheets, presentations, etcetera. Each archive file uses a YYMMDD naming format. So I can later restore contents based on file type, date and content. Some readers may wonder why I don't use Windows XP's built-in Send to CD-Writer. Well, if I did use it I would only be able to restore my data on another Windows XP-powered computer. I prefer to give myself enough freedom to select any computer drive. And past experiences with the UDF format show that its not absolutely trouble free when migrating data across different CD writers with varying firmware. More information on free backup tools can be found here . Most of these utilities backup data locally to a folder. More resources for common hardware and software related programs can be found at Ask Leo!. I found the site while doing some research on the LSASS issue. And how it affected my computer. Leo is a real person leveraging on over 2 decades of computer troubleshooting experience. And you can also post an information request for free (limited support). And if you still haven't switched over to FireFox you really don't know what you are missing. Especially the PR 1.0 release that despite requiring updated extensions and themes, makes for a better browsing experience than earlier versions. However Firefox resource usage is still greedier than Maxthon's. And the plug-in to minimize the app to the System tray often crashes! A key advantage with Firefox is you aren't depending on the MSIE rendering engine (as you would with Maxthon) with all its inherent security flaws. I also using the companion Thunderbird software for email, RSS (news feeds) and news groups without needing to use any .Net-powered applications. Which may be a reversal of what I've expounded in previous columns. But my computer works so much faster. I have also gone back to use the Moox-enhanced builds. As I find these work better on Pentium 4 or equivalent systems. You can choose either the Moox branches. Or his version of the official Trunk releases. That's all there is this week. More next time. Stay Safe! Click Here to Email Me