Recovering from a hard disk crash…
My laptop had a catastrophic crash a couple of days back. As a consequence (and in spite of my best efforts), I have lost my entire emails for the last three weeks (that’s when I had my last backup).
I had received quite a few emails from the readers of this blog in the past week, but now I have lost those. So if you happened to have written to me in the last week (or so) and you haven’t got a reply back from my side as yet, your email is probably lost in the crash.
Can I request you to reforward the mail once again to me. Thanks for helping me out!
11 comments
Amit,
Hang in there buddy. I know how terrible it is to lose all your data like that. I had a ThinkPad motherboard and most of the data and a Dell desktop disk drive fail all in the same week. At least you have some fairly recent backups.
Best,
Pankaj
Thanks Pankaj,
Your words are very comforting.
I have been scratching my head and kicking myself for allowing this to happen. But you realize that computers are simply machines, they too will fail the way all machines do.
I lost data/mails/media files etc, but the loss could have been much worse.
amit
Amit,
hope you come out of the time machine soon!
Hey in case of machines there are back-ups but what about humans :))
best
Amit,
I’ve gotta get the DVD burner this time for backups though! 
On August 14th, Lenovo should be announcing that the ThinkPad T60p will be coming preloaded with Suse Linux Enterprise Desktop 10. i’m thinking about picking one up for myself and trying to get OS X running on it and dual booting with Suse
Pankaj
Pankaj,
You seen to be one of the hardcore linux kinds. In fact , you must be, for thats what your blog title suggests.
Just to prick your thinking about backups, I try to keep my comp free of clutter, so as to reduce backup volumes. There are three options that I have tried out- burning CDS, using a flash drive or using Norton GOBACK. Somehow burning CDs doesn’t seem to always work with my CD writer, so I try to dump the file son the falsh drive whenever I can. I have GOBACK on my machine but that never never gives me the confidence of using it by itself. An external backup media is always needed.
amit
Amit,
I am a Linux and Mac OS X fan. I haven’t used Windows on any computer in about 6-7 years now.
Backups are tough on any OS. I was backing up some Quicken and other data onto a USB flash drive which I lost. I am very worried about that falling into the wrong hands. I’m not going to be doing that any more.
I haven’t bothered with CD or DVD backups. I’ve found they’re expensive unless you’re using DVD rewriteables. Labeling and indexing is a pain as well, I’ve found.
1) My desktops backup to a 250GB secondary hard drive in a Dell Poweredge server. 2) I put anything that’s of any value into a CVS server on the Internet accessible through ssh so that I can check it out on any computer anywhere. This CVS repository is also backed up to the 250GB drive.
My Mac Mini and my MacBook, I also backup to the 250GB drive using some Mac backup software. However, I always use my laptop as a secondary machine. Hence, anything on the laptop is treated as if it was a computer that I won’t have access to the next day. Imprtant documents are always checked into CVS when they’re changed and for email, well, I’ve started using IMAP for some some accounts. IMAP is great!! For my POP3 mailboxes, 2GB on Gmail means I can leave the email there for backup purposes. So I’ve more or less switched to Google for a lot of personal email and they’re hosting my manusya.org email.
What I need to address is physical backups now. In the event of a flood (which my basement just went through) or other disaster, I have all my valuable data backed up offsite somewhere. Backing up 250GB online would be tough so I’m going to have to look into a service that would store tapes or DVDs.
I haven’t ever used GoBack so I can’t say anythign about it. Sorry.
Pankaj
aargh amit - thats bad
I understand. Atleast I would just have a IMAP or gmail kind pop3 a/c !! Anyway - you have the blog for people to get back …. hope you are live and kicking now.
Sorry to hear you had the crash. I had the same thing happen to me. When I updated my hard drive I signed up for a free service that backs up my hard drive remotely.
Before I used to forget to back up now I use mozy which gives me 2GB free with no credit card signup.
http://www.mozy.com
Amit and everyone else,
Any type of crash is hard. When your drive crashes or your mother’s prized glass set. Well, we can all learn from this, prepare for a rainy day. And if you’re like me, have multiple ways to do something. I make 3 backups of my files. Ya never know!
OSes that can boot from a CD or bootable floppies would save one a lot of trouble after our crash.
I also faced the same problem. But i donot use any other backup utility. I have a address of the HDRC in Nehru Place. Here i came and ask about the problem in my harad drive. They gave me some time for the recovery. When i check my data the data was as usally condition. That why i advice to you just there and recoverd your data. Address: HDRC 602 6th Floor Deepali Building 92, Nehru Place. No:26414447, 26294447 & 9910041896.
What you can do is to firstly ask to yourself how important are your data. If these are personal data you don’t care about and just trying to get it back, try a data recovery software, in other case, contact a data recovery company like the one I work for. It’s better for you.
http://www.unirecovery.co.uk
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