Connect with us

Hardware

Hard Drive Crash and a Rescue from my Peronsal PogoPlug Cloud

Published

on

hard_drive_crashSo, the hard drive on my Apple iMac decided to spin its last spin and head to the place where crashed hard drives go when they die. Fortunately, in the run up to Snow Leopard being released, I had made sure I had not only backed everything up, but done so with redundancy. I don’t take many chances when it comes to installing new operating systems. I also don’t take chances with my data as a general rule. Hard drives will crash.

I actually purchased a new 1TB HD external drive prior to the Snow Leopard upgrade just to make sure all was good, so as far as the majority of my data (I keep a lot of archives) I have it stored on two different external drives. If I wanted to, I could (and have) run the older Leopard OS from either of those backups. But there is no real need to do that.

I also backed up the files I’m currently working into my personal cloud using the PogoPlug. With that data there, I’m able to continue working on other devices around the office by grabbing those files whenever I need them and that has made this system crash certainly more bearable.

So, tomorrow I head off to Apple Store to have a new HD installed. After that adventure is over, I’ll restore from the backup and then pull any files out of my PogoPlug cloud I’ve been working with and I’ll be all back to normal.

You do backup up regularly don’t you?

4 Comments

4 Comments

  1. Xavier Lanier

    09/09/2009 at 2:07 pm

    Glad to here your data was safe. Unfortunately, the majority of computer users feel invincible and don’t have regular backups.

    I backup to hard drives, a Windows home server and the cloud.

  2. Mark (K0LO)

    09/09/2009 at 3:09 pm

    Xavier:

    I’ve been playing with Windows Home Server this summer and am really impressed. Now that the OS is sold separately, you can put an old machine to use as the server; the hardware requirements are quite modest. Windows Home Server is a great solution for a family or a house full of PCs. You don’t have to think about backing up since the server does it automatically every night by waking each PC and running a backup. Check out the free trial at:
    https://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/windowshomeserver/eval.mspx

  3. turn.self.off

    09/09/2009 at 3:13 pm

    i have some selective backups, but mostly its about me having all kinds of things on multiple partitions on multiple drives.

    but then my computer is more a entertainment box then a work box, so while it will be a “oh crap” moment if it where to happen, nothing vital would be lost (knock on wood).

  4. Nameless

    09/11/2009 at 1:24 pm

    I would, but I’m severely lacking in the hard drive space department. Here’s a quick rundown of the hard drives I have:

    -500 GB SATA (flagship desktop drive)
    -160 GB PATA (upgraded TC1100 drive)
    -60 GB PATA (family desktop drive)
    -40 GB PATA (old TC1100 drive)
    -10 GB PATA (old drive from an old desktop)
    -6 GB PATA (PowerBook G3 drive; I’m not using the old TC1100 drive because it breaks FireWire Target Disk Mode)
    -4 GB PATA (another old drive from an old desktop)

    All of them are internal, by the way.

    Yes, even the 500 GB drive is pretty cramped, mostly because I partitioned it up a bit. Multi-boot configurations + some backed-up data (but not a full OS image like I want) will eat into your space really quickly.

    I’m trying to save up for a 1 TB drive, but the one I want costs 100 US$ everywhere I look, and I can’t afford that. It’s even worse as far as external, BUS-POWERED drives go, because to start with, an enclosure that supports USB 2.0, FireWire 400, FireWire 800, AND eSATA can cost 80 US$ alone-WITHOUT a hard drive. And since it’ll be a 2.5″ drive, I’m already spending more for less storage.

    I don’t have Windows Home Server, but I do have Windows Server 2003 R2 and Windows Server 2008 courtesy of DreamSpark. But while I could stick one of them on one of my old desktops, there’s still the issue of adding a SATA drive controller card and then a bunch of hard drives at least 1 TB each.

    Assuming that none of that was an issue, though, I’d probably make clean, basic installs of Windows on all of my machines and then make lean drive images to save time recovering from any situation that requires a reformat (and, knowing Windows, it WILL happen), and then make one more image of each of them after I have all of the apps and tweaks I like installed already in case I don’t need to go that far back. And then my assorted files would be offloaded to the backup drive as well, giving my main drives far more breathing room to work with.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.

As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.