When it rains, it pours. But that's good, in a way, because when a bunch of problems crop up at one time, they can all be taken care of at one time, so smooth sailing can be anticipated (though never expected) for a while.

My wife's computer registered some disk errors the other day while I was looking at it. She has an older machine, running Windows 2000, and we were thinking (still are) about upgrading it to Windows XP. She was complaining about it running slowly (hmm - possibly a trend here?), and so I took a look at it, which was when I discovered the bad sector errors in the system log. Among a few other things I'm not even going to address just yet.

We finally exchanged the used 120GB drive that Fry's sold to us for a new drive that should have been in the box from the beginning, and I installed that into my main computer and backed up all my data. It is comforting to know that I now have a copy of all my stuff!

But now I have the system drive from my wife's computer in my main computer and it is being scanned as I write this (gotta do something to kill the time). So far, I have seen only one bad sector, so this is a very good sign. But I am going to run HDD Regenerator on it to fix any bad sectors I find (hopefully) and then perform an image backup of the drive, which will probably run most of the night while I am sleeping. Then, tomorrow, I plan on attempting an upgrade to Windows XP with a disk I found that came with another computer (I am not very hopeful that it will work, since it was for a Dell computer). If it doesn't work, then we'll just have to obtain a new copy of WinXP and try again later.

Regardless, we're going to pick up another new drive to replace her ailing system drive. One bad sector is one bad sector too many - the drive is more than five years old, and runs often for days on end, so it is due for replacement. But one way or another, we're going to get WinXP on her machine. Then, if it is still not running to her satisfaction, we're going to upgrade the hardware. But that remains to be seen. We're re-thinking our whole computer situation, anyway, as she is wanting to get back into music, and we need a machine set up somewhere where we can do audio and video stuff. We have this nice, killer dual G5 Mac machine that is sitting in my workshop, so we're trying to figure out how we can carve out a space in the apartment to set it up for central use. I also want to get my main computer out of my workshop and into the apartment (somewhere), since I am tired of walking back and forth between the workshop and the apartment. The problem is the television. I can't work at the computer in the same room with a television. UGH!

That was the whole reason I moved out to the workshop to begin with.

Anyway, two more bad sectors just showed up on the disk scan. It's a little more than 50% done now. I hope this won't take much longer, as I want to get to bed at a reasonable hour tonight. I have to start getting to bed earlier, since I may be starting my new job this week. I also have a theatre audition tomorrow night, so I want to be well rested.

Once this scan is complete, I will run HDD Regenerator to fix the bad sectors, then start the backup and go to bed. I can't wait to get all this mess straightened out! It has been a monkey on my back for a long time, and it's a good thing I'm in the middle of doing something about it, now, since things are beginning to fail. Better to catch them now and nip them in the bud than to wait any longer and find myself crying myself to sleep.

Backups, backups, backups!

How do computer illiterate people deal with this stuff? I have been fiddling with computers since I was in high school (before the days of the PC). Took my first computer class in the summer of 1978! The more I learn about computers, the more they appear to run on smoke and magic. Everyone knows that if you let the magic smoke out of them, they stop working. But, with as much as I know about them, I still have problems with them. Actually, I may have more problems with them than most people, because I'm always tinkering with them. But I have at least been able to recover from many of the most serious problems I have encountered. But I can't imagine what the average person has to go through when things go wrong. But then maybe it's not so bad, because they can just hand their headache over to someone else to deal with it, and get their data back in exchange for a few bucks.

I wish I could pay myself for all the computer work I have done for myself! Hmm, maybe I should start a personal data recovery operation on the side...

OK, well I just keep typing because the disk scan is still scanning. It's about 3/4 of the way done now. Maybe 4/5ths. And I am really tired tonight for some reason. Maybe it was the pizza. Well, I am out of words, so I'll wrap this up here. No sense in boring you any further.

So, I finally got around to setting up my systems with some backups. My wife picked up a couple new drives from Fry's for me that were on sale, one of which was a Western Digital 120GB drive. It wasn't until I went to install it that I noticed the drive had been re-packaged into the box it was in. It was shrink-wrapped and was taped up where the packaging had been previously opened. The drive inside had no anti-static bag around it, and the IDE cable was hanging out of a plastic bag that had been torn open. When I installed the drive into my computer, I noticed it was formatted and had an operating system installed on it!

Fry's sold me a used drive!

So, now I have to package it all back up and take it back to Fry's and make them exchange it for a new one. What a foible! I can't wait to see how much trouble we have getting the rebate check for the thing in the next few months.

Anyway, I now have the other drive hooked up (a 250GB drive) just so I can experiment with some data recovery software and procedures. I am creating an image copy of my system drive to see if I can just pull out the original system drive and plug in the backup drive and reboot successfully. Once I determine that that works, then I can go to Fry's and get the drive exchanged, then resume my efforts to get this backup stuff together. And I can also put the 250GB drive into the other computer that we are going to use as our central backup server. I have some backup software that I am going to install on all the computers on the LAN that will automatically back up our files over the network at night while we're sleeping. 250GB ought to last us a little while (I'm not going to put my video stuff on there).

If it's not one thing, it's another!