I'm going OT here, but for anyone who has experienced a corrupted operating
system and not a physical failure to their hard drives but still been unable
to retrieve their files, there's boot disk software on the internet free to
download called The Ultimate Boot CD. You can boot to this little gem and
it will create a "virtual drive" (ram drive) and load a version of XP from
which you can access your sick hard drive and copy files to where ever you
wish.
I had cause to use it at the weekend when a friend's computer stopped
reponding after her grand daughter had been at the wheel and I was able to
save her files and photos (no she didn't have any backups, folk just don't
learn).
Wendy [AU]
----- Original Message -----
From: "Gary Templeman" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Friday, March 21, 2008 1:03 AM
Subject: Re: [LegacyUG] Backing Up Legacy Files
When Windows became corrupted, it was probably not necessary to lose any
data even though it was on the same drive partition. Mechanical failure of
a hard drive can (and usually does) affect all partitions. Physical
failure of some sectors or clusters on a drive will affect what is stored
in that area, and that could be on any partition. Bad clusters can be a
sign of an impending total failure. Software corruption only affects the
files or program that got corrupted.
So assuming your Windows corruption was not mechanical or physical or did
not target the specific data files, simply plugging that drive into
another computer (or yours after it was repaired using a new HD) as a
slave would probably have allowed all of the non-corrupted data (from
genealogy to Internet favorites to saved emails) to be recovered. Too many
people blindly follow the Windows procedure to fix a Windows installation
by using the restore disk or formatting the drive, which wipes out
everything including their data. If there are no backups, get the data off
of the drive first and then fix Windows.
Using a separate partition for data DOES have an advantage in terms of
ease of backing up. Rather than having to decide which of multiple folders
to copy or to store online, just designate the entire partition.
Gary Templeman
----- Original Message -----
From: "Steve Ayres" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Legacy User Group" <[email protected]>
Sent: Wednesday, March 19, 2008 11:49 PM
Subject: [LegacyUG] Backing Up Legacy Files
I notice from the discussions that a number of people back up their Legacy
Family file to "C" drive, I found out the hard way that this is not a good
idea. I made a separate drive partion and called it "Back Up" and now I
always make my backups to the folder on the Back Up drive called "Legacy
Back Up". Windows became corrupted on my PC a couple of years back and I
lost everything that had been saved into "C" drive and a friend suggested
making a separate drive for backups and it has saved me a lot of work on
two occasions as I also back up other programs into their own folders on
the drive. I reinstalled XP recently and all my software including Legacy,
then just clicked on "Restore Family File" and away I went. I also back
up my family files after every change, just in case. Regards Steve
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