Back up your computer!

So, Windows10 does it's updates on my home PC Thursday night at 2 AM.

Friday morning I get up and go to read the news and .......

Nothing.. the clock screen is there just like normal when it reboots, but when I go to log in there is no password box to put the password in....

Try several things..nothing, so I reboot...

Message appears from the Bios:

"Please install a bootable device and press any key."

I'm like followed by which turns to .

After the panic dies down....... I reboot again just for shitsngiggles....

Windows attempts to boot, but locks up during boot. So I reset it again and the windows repair utility comes up.
So, I be like I'll just go back to the restore point prior to the update and I'll be good.
Click the option, select the restore point...and it starts and I'm all relieved..

And then Windows does a . It hangs at 7%. I'm worried about rebooting it in the middle of a rollback and I have a Dr's appt anyway, so I just leave it. Hoping it will unhang and finish.
I'm gone about 4 hours. Still at 7% when I get back.

I didn't have anywhere near a recent backup of the drive. ( 4 year old WD 2TB Blue, 7500 RPM, 256 mb cache) and I can't find my W7 disk .

So it acts like there is something wrong with the drive. I download a live version of Fedora so I can check the smart data of the drive. Sure enough, 14k+ bad sectors and 1.5mio write errors and a bunch of positioning errors, so the drive is failing. I figure windows wrote the update files to a bad sector, which hosed it.
Ordered a new 500GB SSD and a new W10 disk and loaded Ubuntu on a spare drive until the stuff got here. (BTW, I really like Ubuntu after using it for a few days it's a lot more polished than Fedora.)
Now I've spent the last 14 hours installing the drive and windows and trying to salvage important stuff off the drive that is failing. I've got most of it saved and am now re-installing all of my software... hoping the other drive stays alive long enough for me to get any missing licenses I have forgot about off of it.
I've installed Marcrium Reflect (free) which is a backup/cloning software and ordered another 2TB external drive that I will set up for scheduled drive image backups with the Marcrium software. I'll do a direct clone to begin with.

It will take me days to get everything back to snuff on this PC.

I highly recommend purchasing an external hard drive and backing up your PC. They are relatively inexpensive. Have them scheduled so you don't forget!.

So I'm out about $250 just to fix it and then another $80 for a back-up drive.

Anyway..... just a warning and now I'm going back to attempting to copy over files and loading software.

I run 2, well, 3 computers, one of which(cad/cam) pretty much never see the net. W7 on all, anything important backed on a few usb sticks.
Now my oldest computer(for the net/emails) had a few issues in the past(and another brewing), dead hard drive once and couple other things, I take it to the computer doctor, $50-60 labour, + hard drive/parts that one time, and none of my time or patience wasted.

Doing it now, thanks. All of my business is on one hard drive. I back it up every couple of weeks... I'm just not sure how many couple of weeks ago I did it last. Let's just say, when I read your post it made my hands sweat a little bit.

This will offer no comfort to you, but what a well written, entertaining post. (About a really crappy headache, no doubt.) You get some points for that one.


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Also, I'm 31, but I'm constantly impressed by the computer/electronics skills of people my father's age. Despite us being labeled as the "technology" generation, I fee; like we're pretty clueless about the "business" end of computers...


Perhaps I'll heed you warning, and backup my computer tonight...

G00 Proto said:

Doing it now, thanks. All of my business is on one hard drive. I back it up every couple of weeks... I'm just not sure how many couple of weeks ago I did it last. Let's just say, when I read your post it made my hands sweat a little bit.

Click to expand...

There's a really prominent woodworking writer who I follow, that is now co-owner of a publishing company, that also does direct-retail sales. He wrote this summer how his main computer died, and if it had not been for cloud-backups (to two separate services) that his small company would be out of business... Scary indeed.

Hello Tonytn36
Join the club! I just spent $303.00 at the fix-it shop on mine. 'Puter blue screened as I was using it. Diagnostic showed a corrupt Windows 10. They did a backup, wiped it & then reinstall Windows 10. The last 2 times it was the hard drive. Seems that it averages out to me spending $100.00/year on repairs & maintenance. Technology, ... great when it works, ... sucks when it doesn't.

Tonytn36's advice is so important!

I'll add.....

Back up your CNC control parameters. NOW!

Get all your control data.

CNC parameters
PMC/PLC parameters and data
Settings
pitch comp data

Do it at least once a year or any time something has been changed.

I save the backup info in 3 places.

PCMCIA card (machine has a card reader).
Laptop.
thumb drive stored in CNC cabinet.

I figure with the separate locations and devices there should be no reason that at least one of those backups would survive pretty much any incident.

Some might think I'm being paranoid about this, but after working CNC field service for many years and doing at least one dead battery, no backup, parameter recovery a month, I think it is prudent.

Vancbiker said:

Some might think I'm being paranoid about this, but after working CNC field service for many years and doing at least one dead battery, no backup, parameter recovery a month, I think it is prudent.

Click to expand...

Mylar tapes don't need batteries

That’s a bummer, man! I couldn’t figure out why I was shaking all the time until I got a good backup protocol in place. :^) Nowadays I keep everything on Dropbox (cloud) and sleep well. It can be set to only read from the cloud or download a copy of whatever you’re viewing on a local drive so technically my stuff is 1) on my computer and 2) backed up on Dropbox’s servers.

Automatic update win 10 trashed my laptop last week while on vacation. Called Dell and after an hour was told all is lost and call back when in the states, full re install needed. And had a week left in Barbados! OK, nobody feeling sorry. After hitting different keys during boot I got a choice to start in Safe Mode, so I did. No internet, but could see and access the files I had worked on. All were in a WIP directory I made and easy to back up onto a stick. I was able to use a 2D CAD program but Solidworks was a no go. Thanks Bill G.

SeaMoss said:

Mylar tapes don't need batteries

Click to expand...

Neither do core memory and bubble memory and they're just as obsolete.

I think I've got most of the stuff off of it. I'm about to shut down and disconnect that drive because I have the side of the case off and every so often I hear the "click of death" coming from it. Never noticed it before but it may have been doing this for a while but with the case closed up, not really noticeable. That way if I'm missing anything, hopefully I can hook it back up and get it off of it before it completely dies.

Talked to my son after I made the original post. His laptop got hosed by the same update. He has a Dell and he had to reload it from the original install recovery partition and lost everything. Sounds like this wasn't an isolated event event though I have extenuating circumstances (failing drive).

^ Its constant issues like this that made me completely move away from Microsoft. These days its Linux here either Ubuntu or Debian, but i will never ever support Microsoft again, for there size just way too many bugs make it out of there company!

Updates..I learned that lesson the hard way during the XP service pack ll debacle.
Now I have about 5-6 Windows 7 that I started new and then let it do updates for a week or so. Then no more internet for any reason. It is a pain at times but much safer.

I have a widows 10 laptop for intweb cursing with absolutely no files or programs. It updates its little heart out. I have been wondering what would happen if you yanked the antenna out so it could not update? I bet it has a program that would make it shut down.."for some reason"
Gary

Running chkdsk on my other drives in this computer today to see if there are other issues. I didn't see very many smart errors in the 350GB storage drive but we will let chkdisk fix anything there.

And there is an error in my original post. After I unhooked the drive, turns out it was a Seagate Barracuda instead of a WD Blue. The 350GB storage drive is the WD Blue but about 8 months older.

I am also going to let it check the WD I put in here out of the old computer to install Ubuntu on. It was half of a striped RAID array where the other drive failed in the old computer. (Never run striped unless you have nothing of importance on the computer or have a daily backup plan.) Was great for speed - still not as good as a new SSD - but for the time (2003) with those 7500 RPM 256 mb cache hdd's it was fast.

The half of the pair failed after I built this computer so I already had everything off of it of any importance. I just hadn't gotten around to fixing it. I think I will take that computer (still a good comp - hardware wise) and make it an Ubuntu machine to play with.

It's a cold, rainy day here anyway.

I found that my operating system hard drive failed



the "backups" made with the computer backup utility could not be restored to a different computer.

For simplicity sake, copy paste to an external hard drive so you can access the stuff later.

Vancbiker said:

Neither do core memory and bubble memory and they're just as obsolete.

Click to expand...

Lost all the parameters and pitch error comp on an old 6MB. Tape reader wouldn't read the mylar backup tapes; who knows why.

But the ancient bubble board last used in 1991 happily had all of the data saved and control was able to be restored.

This was done by installing the bubble board, PHOTOGRAPHING the parameters and reloading them page by page while reading the photos from an ipad.

I first encountered data loss when a bunch of photos on an external drive were lost when that drive failed. Since that event, I back everything up onto at least two external drives and have had no further problems.I often wonder if cloud data can be corrupted so have avoided that route so far.

I use a service called Backblaze, and I can't recommend it enough. It backs up my entire laptop continuously. If I need to do a restore, I can download the files from the web, or for larger quantities of data they'll mail me a backup drive. I have had to use the restore process when some files got corrupted and it's painless. Backblaze is the best $55 a year my company spends.

I second Backblaze. I have it on a couple of machines, and it just works. Easy file recovery through the browser as well. But....
If you are not on a fast internet service, the first backup will take forever. I was on 3MBdown DSL an it took SIX WEEKS to upload the original backup. The recent one on cable was quite fast.

If you have a drive that's failing or unreadable, I've had good luck recovering files by freezing the drive for a few hours. It sounds nuts, but I have done it twice and been able to recover everything when the drive at room temperature would not work. Don't ask me to explain it. Put the drive in a ziplock bag, freeze, then plug the cables in while the drive is still in the bag and seal as much as possible to prevent condensation.

706jim said:

.....But the ancient bubble board last used in 1991 happily had all of the data saved and control was able to be restored.

Click to expand...

The longevity of the bubble memory is astounding. I've seen several instances where using an old bubble board was a quick and painless way to recover a 6, 11, and 12 series control with an aftermarket expanded memory board that failed or the battery died.

IIRC, it was explained to me that reading and writing to bubble was too slow even back then for routine use. The control read the contents of the bubble into RAM at bootup and that's what the control worked with. The RAM contents would get written back to bubble in the background. There was up to a 300mS delay at power off to allow the control to finish a write cycle.