My Win 7 is Dying!

[Steve Paxton]

We had a vicious storm last week and lost power several times. Unfortunately, my computer was on when we lost power at one point - now the system is completely messed up! I can barely get the thing to boot up. Bummer...! I am reloading Windows tonight from an image I created. Hopefully it won't take too long (and I won't lose anything important)!

[Chris-T-Photography]

Yeah totally bummer!!!!! Good Luck to you and hopefully you can save everything.

[jrome]

I had to do a backup of my computer when I had a hard drive fail, good thing I had the backup! It was honestly a breeze to go through, mine booted up and acted just like it had before the hard drive died. I was pleasantly surprised!

[JohnB]

I should do an image. I've been having some computer troubles lately... With my PSU going bad, my computer shutdown several times. Thankfully, nothing seems to have been too terribly messed up.

I wish we could get Adobe products for Linux! :)

[jrome]

I've honestly not had any problems by just turning the computer off, it's never caused anything to go wrong.

John - You really should get that PSU taken care of! If you think about it, it's the lifeblood of your computer! If it were to ever surge you could fry everything! That's one thing I did somewhat splurge on and I bought a modular Ultra X3 power supply.

[JohnB]

John - You really should get that PSU taken care of! If you think about it, it's the lifeblood of your computer! If it were to ever surge you could fry everything! That's one thing I did somewhat splurge on and I bought a modular Ultra X3 power supply.

I already took care of it. I've had enough PSUs take out too many computers. Unfortunately, the PSU I had was the most expensive I've ever bought and I only had it a year and a half. I'm a bit disappointed in it. Hopefully Rosewill will repair or replace it for me.

[jrome]

To be honest I haven't had good luck with Rosewill. I've had a few of their accessories and they didn't hold up for even 4 months. When I contacted them about returning it, there was no response. I sent emails all over the place and it's almost like they just ignored me.

[JohnB]

To be honest I haven't had good luck with Rosewill. I've had a few of their accessories and they didn't hold up for even 4 months. When I contacted them about returning it, there was no response. I sent emails all over the place and it's almost like they just ignored me.

That was my first and, likely, last experience with Rosewill. One would expect a power supply like that to last a lot longer. I bought an Antec this time. It's a True Power 750 watt PSU.

[Steve Paxton]

-
I imaged my Windows 7 system with the free version of Macrium Reflect (http://www.macrium.com/reflectfree.asp) shortly after building my new computer in January. For whatever reason, I was not able to restore the system from the image. Their Linux recovery boot disc won't allow me to write over the system drive, and of course, the only other option is to buy the full version. It has been a giant pain and very frustrating. So much so that I would never consider buying/upgrading to the full version of the program. It's almost as if they lead you on by giving you a free version just to make you pay to restore your system.

The long and short of it is that I had to reload Windows and all my programs from scratch - basically killing my Saturday. I have used Norton Ghost since 2003; however it apparently no longer works properly (http://community.norton.com/t5/Other-Norton-Products/Norton-Ghost-2003-with-Vista-and-Windows-7/m-p/162216) for the 64-bit version of Windows 7, which is why I decided to give Macrium Reflect a try.

Does anyone have any suggestions for an imaging tool? I am ready to purchase a new imaging tool, but the latest version of Ghost (http://www.symantec.com/norton/ghost) doesn't seem to get a lot of good reviews. I have read some positive things about Acronis (http://www.acronis.com/). Any thoughts? Any suggestions for where to get into a reliable imaging program for dirt cheap?

[jrome]

I'd have to say I give Acronis 2 thumbs up, I've used them before and they are great. The best part about them is that you can backup a system to a drive size other than what the image was made with. Say you have an 80gb drive that you use for your OS and then you backup with Windows or some of the other programs out there require you to replace that drive if it fails with another 80gb drive.

[Chris-T-Photography]

I am not sure if this will be any help or if this is something that can be used to make an image of a computer for backup but this is what I use to read/write image files. http://www.magiciso.com/ There is a paid version but I have never had to buy it and it always works fine for me. Just might be something to research.

[jrome]

MagicISO is a decent program, it's not really tailored to data backup like Acronis is. One of the things I also really liked about Acronis is that you can have it update the files you have for your image backup. Instead of having to remake an entire image of your computer, you can use it to update files within.

Steve - I thought I had read somewhere that you're using an online backup service too like Carbonite. If it were me I'd also backup my "image" to them as well. Just something I had thought of.

[Steve Paxton]

Thanks for the ideas! Just to be clear, I am pretty sure my image was fine. It was Macrium Reflect refusing to restore it. I guess that's what I get for trying to use "free" software for something so important.

I still have a subcription to Carbonite. The problem with backing your stuff up online is that it takes forever. Even with a 4 megabit connection (up) I still don't even have 1Tb uploaded yet! Carbonite can't keep up with the amount of data I save each month - especially in the summer. External hard drives are dirt cheap and much faster.

[JohnB]

Thanks for the ideas! Just to be clear, I am pretty sure my image was fine. It was Macrium Reflect refusing to restore it. I guess that's what I get for trying to use "free" software for something so important.

I still have a subcription to Carbonite. The problem with backing your stuff up online is that it takes forever. Even with a 4 megabit connection (up) I still don't even have 1Tb uploaded yet! Carbonite can't keep up with the amount of data I save each month - especially in the summer. External hard drives are dirt cheap and much faster.

For that stuff, I'd rather have a couple of externals that I back up to than backing up online. What happens if you back up all your stuff online and the company goes out of business? You're left with a lot of time invested and no backups.

[Steve Paxton]

I generally agree; however having a backup in the "cloud" can be helpful because it's a totally off site solution. If you house burns down or a tornado spins through (like that will happen in Seattle!), you have something saved off site. The cost is pretty minimal ($50) per year.

The problem really is that it just isn't very practical. Even though quite a few of the online backup solutions offer "unlimited" storage, you will never be able to take advantage of that. There is only so much data you can send up the pipe each day. Along with that, I don't like having my computer constantly uploading data all day long, day in and day out forever.

[JohnB]

I think sending DVDs or hard drives to a dry storage area would be more efficient and practical, depending on price. My guess is, chances are by the time the DVD goes bad, your clients will have long forgotten about them.

[Steve Paxton]

I think sending DVDs or hard drives to a dry storage area would be more efficient and practical, depending on price. My guess is, chances are by the time the DVD goes bad, your clients will have long forgotten about them.

I agree...

[jrome]

I think saving to DVD's for archiving would be a decent choice - especially since I wouldn't be using them a lot and would be in a safe offsite place (security box or something of the sort). Or maybe.. save to BluRay?

[Steve Paxton]

My current workflow includes backing my images up to external hard drives and DVD (at least three copies). I had been using Carbonite in addition to this...but the upload rate makes it virtually useless. Even though i still have a subscription to Carbonite, i stopped using a while back.

[JohnB]

This is all just another reminder in the pile of reminders I need to get a good workflow going that includes a robust backup system of some sort. I like the idea of having my RAW images on a hard drive and on at least one DVD. I need to do something now before it's too late! Too late is never off in the distance. It's always right around the corner! (That's Biblical too!)