Well,
we had an experience last night that we don't want to relive ever again...sounds dramatic!? it was...
Bek's computer died.
Yes, I had arrived home with a new, working, case for my external hard-drive and had finished backing up most of my files from my laptop. We then had dinner and i mentioned to Bek that I would borrow her laptop that evening to back up her files and defrag it as it had been running slower than usual and playing up a bit.
Not long after I was heading to the study and Bek called out that she urgently needed my assistance at her laptop in the dining room, I jogged over and saw one of the most fatal Windows messages i'd ever seen...
"Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt: \windows\system32\config\system. <-- pretty much THE windows file.
You can attempt to repair this file by starting up using the original Setup CD-ROM."
"What does that mean?" Bek asked...
I thought carefully about my answer before speaking...
"ok," i said, "first of all, you still have all your files...other than that, you killed the computer."
A quick phone call to the amazing time-dontator of Rob and i was on my way round. :)
Thinking that we just had to retrieve her files and do a rebuild, i wasn't planning on being there long, until 2 versions of Linux couldn't find any of her files...
oh no.
I haven't felt my heart sink that low in a long time...I called Bek and she was in tears thinking that she'd just lost 4years of Uni work, as we couldn't recall the last time we'd backed stuff up.
Eventually we found a OS called Knoppix (based on Linux) that could see the files on her hard-drive! To say that i was relieved was an understatement.
It was then a very slow and sensitive process of using my 1gb memory stick to get small bits of info off it and onto Rob's. Eventually we got the priority stuff off and we were in a suitable place for me to head home and get the rest in the morning.
An enormous thanks to Rob and Nic for letting me invade their house for nearly 4hrs last night, and a big thanks to all computer and Linux geeks for being smarter than windows when it comes to file retrieval!!
I've now spent the whole morning on my computer, with all manner of things plugged into it to copy info, retrieve info, put it onto other things, then re-copy etc...check out the pic below to see the various things plugged in...most of the alphabet is there!
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Glad I could help Sim/Bek - and itś not over yet - I´ve still got to rebuild it for you! Are you sure you don´t want linux on there instead on XP?
The linux live-cd that found the hard drive 1st was called Kantonix (Based on Knoppix which is based on Debian if you care). I think the big issue was that the drive was actually having trouble ¨working¨ as both the Slax linux live-cd and PCLinuxOS live-cd also read the disk later in the night.
You may still need to buy/acquire another hard disk, if it proves to be ¨iffy¨.
Have a think about what applications Bek uses and we´ll see if there´s a linux flavour she likes and could use.
If you use one based on a live CD install, itś dead hard to kill, and rebuilds in 20mins!!! (You could use it LIVE in seconds!)
Anyway... I´m glad nothing was really lost.
Rob
Bummer. But why don't you back stuff up? You'd easily fit everything onto your iPod, or why not just back up to each other's laptops every fortnight?
Easy to say in hindsight, I suppose ...
always easy to say...:)
as it turned out i'd backed up beks stuff once we'd moved in this year, (end of january) so it would have been this years stuff lost.
I think i'd been distracting by my external drive not working, thinking that was all i could use. My laptop is 90% full so to fill it more will only slow it, and my iPod, well...i think i forgot about that...but thats half full anyway.
either way, we'll be backing-up more often now.
its a lesson learnt.
what's backup?? :-) mum