About to Cry, USB Hard drive issues.

[Scrapper]

Be sure to read the fine print with cloud storage. Many providers have more rights to your data than you do. (MS is one with their ONE Drive).

[tamdle]

Originally Posted by Scrapper

tamdle, I thought DOS went out when Microsoft brought out Windows 10. But maybe I haven't been keeping up with the times. I haven't been doing much since it became cheaper to buy a system than to build my own. Right now I'm using a Asus ROG 752VW, 64GB ram, 1TB SSD + 1TB HDD, GeForce GTX960M 4GB. Works great.
Thuogh I would like a GTX1080 16GB.

Hello Scrapper, DOS is still the base of the Window system architecture. Windows is just a layer of the UI on top to help the user manage the architecture without having to understand about the logistic of the system.

That said, you still could create batch files as usual, and work the same way was it was in the back old day. You bring up the DOS window by open your "Command Prompt" from your Windows main menu. There is two mode of Command Prompt. If you want full control of the command prompt, open it with the system administrator right, you should be good to go.

[tamdle]

Also on Apple/MAC operating system is based on Unix, the current Apple operating system that you saw was only the user interface layer that allows the user to run the UNIX layer underneath.

For anyone who likes Unix, you could play with Unix on the MAC by open the Terminal application as well.

[Scrapper]

Unix => Linux => Ubuntu and any of the other different offshoots. The group that bought controlling rights of Linux has closed their open source rights to the software. What I have read is that it will come down to Unix, Linux and Ubuntu. All other flavors will be discontinued. This has come to being in the past year.

[Herk7769]

Originally Posted by Cowracer

Needless to say, I am thoroughly in a tizzy over this. Everyone always tells you to back up your data, but how in the hell do you back up a 2TB HD without having another 2TB HD?

Any of you seriously good IT type guys offer any advice?

Prevention is the cure for this unfortunately.

You will need to buy a second 2T USB drive for your backup. If your Router has a NAS port, just plug it in there and back up your PC's 2T to the NAS drive.

What I have found that kills USB hard drives is unplugging them without first "Ejecting" them from the operating system. You need to use the "Safely Remove Hardware and Eject Media" icon on the right hand of the menu bar.

I have 15T of hard drives on the main PC and another 15T on the NAS. Full backups take 2 days.

Norton has a recovery program that could help you.

https://support.norton.com/sp/en/us/...rProfile_en_us

[kamper00]

I use SyncToy, it is a free program from Microsoft. I have 2 hard drives, 1 that is my active and 1 that is my backup, I have SyncToy setup so when I sync, it doesn't do anything but ADD files to my backup that was created on my active. Very user friendly. I also went to SSD drives not to worry about them physically but that is another chapter...

[Herk7769]

I should have never switched my system drive to SSD. If I had known the limitations, I would never have done it. Turns out constant access (like pagefile.sys/Swap File) will destroy the SSD. Defragmenting an SSD frequently will also kill the drive. SSDs need to use a process called "Trimming" that should only be run infrequently.

[Cowracer]

Originally Posted by Herk7769

What I have found that kills USB hard drives is unplugging them without first "Ejecting" them from the operating system. You need to use the "Safely Remove Hardware and Eject Media" icon on the right hand of the menu bar.

I am religious, even fanatical about this. Unfortunately, I had gotten into the habit of just leaving my 2T HD plugged into the USB port. We leave our computers at work on so IT can push updates and whatnot to them at night.

I never stopped to think what would happen if we had a power failure that slam-stopped windows. Now I know. 1 INOP HDD.

Tim

[doc73]

Herk, you ever think of running a drobo or similar? You can have them use two drive (or more) and they duplicate each other so if one fails the other picks up.

I currently use Carbonite for my photography but switching to Crashplan. I also move files to an external HD that is supposed to stay in my gun safe and put the raw files on Amazon Prime cloud as well. I currently have 40,000 photos so I am getting to the point of a Drobo myself. I used to use a NAS from WD but I found that as time went on and the operating systems updated the NAS eventually would not work with the newer systems. No that COULD be different now. If it is this could also be a option for me.

I just used this: TestDisk Download - CGSecurity
to recover photos and movies from the DW's phone after she accidentally cleared the SD card. It works very well and is free.

[Scrapper]

Originally Posted by Herk7769

I should have never switched my system drive to SSD. If I had known the limitations, I would never have done it. Turns out constant access (like pagefile.sys/Swap File) will destroy the SSD. Defragmenting an SSD frequently will also kill the drive. SSDs need to use a process called "Trimming" that should only be run infrequently.

SSD's are great for OS and program installation. You should always have a HDD for pagefile.sys/swap files, and temporary (temp) files. Since SSD's are becoming the main drives with a HDD as a secondary, I don't understand why OS creators have not built into the installation automatic installation to a secondary drive.
When I bought my laptop it had a 128GB SSD primary + 1TB HDD secondary. I bought a 1TB SSD and swapped with the 128 GB SSD. While reinstalling Windows 10, I chose the option for the pagefile, swap files and temp folder to go on the secondary drive.
I bought the 1TB SSD just to see if it would work. I now have Ubuntu installed on the 128GB SSD so I can just swap the SSD's when I want to use it. Only takes about 10 minutes to swap.

[Herk7769]

Originally Posted by Cowracer

I am religious, even fanatical about this. Unfortunately, I had gotten into the habit of just leaving my 2T HD plugged into the USB port. We leave our computers at work on so IT can push updates and whatnot to them at night.

I never stopped to think what would happen if we had a power failure that slam-stopped windows. Now I know. 1 INOP HDD.

Tim

Tim, I would try that Norton program. At this point you have nothing to lose.

[Cowracer]

And then... The clouds parted, and the sun shined through.

Managed to recover all of my files. It took a long, convoluted path to get there, but I don't care. I'm just happy to have not lost anything. Testdisk7.0 could not restore the drive to where I could use it. Neither did EaseUS. Ubuntu would not mount the drive. Three strikes, your out. But in playing around with it, I found that Ubuntu would let me edit the type of file system for the disk. In spending an entire night throwing crap at the wall to see if anything sticks, I found out that the following procedure worked.

First off, I bought another WD 2TB drive. On sale at Office Depot for like $80.

Then I booted the computer to Ubuntu, and launched disk utility. I had to first edit partition to change it to FAT32 file type, and then, reboot and change it to MS Data as a filetype. For whatever reason, you cannot go direct from Raw type to MS Data. You gotta go to Fat32 first, and then to MS Data.

Simply changing to Fat32 did not let Testdisk do anything different than Raw type. But!!! I found out that if the file system is MS Data, Testdisk can access the file. I cannot do anything to save the failed hard drive, but it has a copy function that will extract the files and put them where ever you want.

So, back in Windows 7, with the failed drive attached and the new drive attached and mounted as H: drive, I had to go directory by directory and copy them over from the bad to the new. It was ponderously slow and aggravating. Testdisk is more or less DOS based, so you have to navigate by keyboard. And you have to create the directories on the new drive before you can copy over. It took me pretty much the entire weekend to get everything I wanted off the old drive. It wasn't all just sitting in front of the keyboard. I'd set it up to transfer a directory, set it to go, and I'd come back in an hour or so and if it was done, I'd do the next one. In the meantime, while this was going on, I managed to dismantle the top end of my truck motor as well.

At any rate, I am so FREAKING thrilled to get back everything I thought I had lost.

Thanks for all the suggestions!

Tim

[Herk7769]

Awesome. Now that is "Not giving up!"

[5picker]

Good on you.
I'm sure glad it worked out.