A cautionary tale from a very tired bloke

[Grace'sDad]

Well I just finished what must have been a total of around 20 hours graft, recovering 2.5 years worth of email, contacts, diary, all my quotes and invoices, financials, etc etc etc, not to mention 4 years worth of photos and videos of my children.

My computer threw a major wibbler last Friday and refused to boot. I ended up having to fully reinstall windows xp (which was a real hoot). I'm ok though I thought, coz I have all my really important files backed up recently on my USB memory sticks (had loads of free 2gb ones left over from my last sales job.) - only gone and lost them though :mad2:.

I spent all Friday night searching and finally gave up about 2am Saturday.

After getting the PC up and running again I find 2 of the memory sticks, but the 3rd one with all my work stuff and kids photos on is still missing - AAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGHHHHH! My wife will D.I.V.O.R.C.E me if I've lost those photos!

I managed to "acquire" some brilliant file recovery software which found most of the deleted / lost files and ALL the photos! It only took 5 hours this evening to trawl through it all.

At least now I'm back in business.

I'll be out tomorrow to buy a second hard drive and will make sure I back up properly and regularly.

Definitely a case of putting things off thinking it will never happen to me :yes:

 

[GazTech]

The more complex your system ...the more you need to back up !...personally my pc is full of sh!t, won't miss a thing if it crashes.....Gaz

 

[devonmark]

you couldn't do a copy of the software could you, i put all my photos onto my daughters computer and it went t*ts up last night, windows had to be reinstalled and really need pics back...Mark.

 

[Fekin]

you couldn't do a copy of the software could you, i...Mark.

Funnily enough, it's Illegal :lol:

 

[grumpygrouter]

All my major data is backed up every night onto an internet storage system. Multiple copies at separate sites and super duper encrypted for safety.

£120 per year + vat for 2gb compressed storage.:yes:

Grumpy

 

[White Room]

Computers, your've lost me:whatchutalkingabout

 

[Rad2474]

What would we do without windows eh! And i mean the operating system before some smarta*** says something about curtains. 😛

 

[ryanbrown]

What you need to do is take out the hard drive and re-install a new one with windows etc and get your pc up and running.

Then what you do is buy a hard drive caddy for your removed hard drive
with all your stuff on it, which plugs into your usb drive.

Then install file recover software on your new hard drive and set it recovering data on the extra hard drive.

So that you can gradualluy piece together your data from the old hard drive onto your new drive.