Large Scale Central

Computer Problems? A bit of advice

Other Hobbies
#1

Many system crashes can be traced to hard drive readability issues. Sometimes, even with full backups, something goes wrong and the only solution is to send the drive to a data recovery company which can result in costs in excess of a live steam mikado.

If you want to keep your drive healthy, or you have already crashed and you want to try getting your data back yourself, then you need to investigate SpinRite.

Created by Steve Gibson of the Gibson Research Corporation (GRC), SpinRite not only reads the drive data, it also exercises the drive to ensure that the built-in error correction system can realize that there is a problem.

As a 20+ year computer user, I realize hard drive failures are one of the most dangerous. They can appear without warning, and lose every picture you have stored.

In addition to SpinRite, GRC has a host of freeware security applications, and Steve was the first to sound the alarm over spyware. But it is the SpinRite application which keeps the company going. To see what I’m talking about, check out the videos on the GRC site: http://www.grc.com/sr/themovie.htm

Also, Steve works with Leo Laparte to produce a TWiT (This Week in Tech) podcast called Security NOW! which keeps you up to date on how to live online safe.

Just a plug for a really useful utility.

Keep the trains rolling and the drives spinning.

-J.D.

#2

I agree about Steve Gibson. Back in the W98 days Steve was plugging holes in Windows, for free, years before MS fixed them.

Steve has a bunch of little programs available for free. All written in the very simplest of code requiring almost zero HDD space and very little CPU power or memory.

Ralph

#3

I’ve use Gibson’s free Shields Up test routine to check for open ports (security holes) hardening of all my remote sites at work plus home. Good stuff.

#4

I really have to say the best service Steve & GRC offers is their participation in Security Now.

I found out about SN after listening to Nick Francesco, Dave Enright & Steve Rea of “SoundBytes” for the last couple years. I decided to start with Security Now #1 from their archives, and I’m up to Nov. 2008 so far. Not only do they make computer security advice understandable but their conversations often tangent into fun topics which aren’t on topic, but related & fun.

Security NOW: http://www.grc.com/sn

SoundBytes: http://www.soundbytes.org/archives

I’m NOT getting anything for these recommendations… at least not directly. I figure the more people who find & like the podcasts, the more likely the shows I like are to remain in production :slight_smile:

#5

At the mention of losing all your pictures, I regularly move mine to a thumb drive. That is the only important stuff, right?

#6

There isn’t a thumb drive made (yet) big enough to back up my pictures. I save everything; even the crappy ones and been taking digital since February 2003. In that time I’ve amassed over 63,000 pictures or 140 GB. I started backing up to DVD, but that was way too much work. Picked up a used DAT Tape backup; but it was DOA. I recently added a second PC with a 500GB of HD storage for backup of pictures & financial data. Now a 3rd PC has joined my network in the shop and it servers as a second financial data backup as well as backup for the gigabytes of digital music I’ve collected.

Those who are shooting digital video will laugh at my storage capacities. A couple of 1080P feature length films would about fill what I have :]

#7

you can get terabyte drives for $90, just add another drive to the computer?

I’ve used spinrite since it was developed, just upgraded to version 6 the other day, but it’s getting harder to use on really large drives, you need your bios in IDE compatibility mode to use it and this is getting rarer in the new bios’

Greg

#8

Steve is gonna have to upgrade soon. They mentioned it back at the tailend of 2007 (I’m going through the SN podcasts now) With the use of UEFI to replace BIOS, spinrite will no longer function because it uses BIOS calls.

With the surge in UEFI for Wintel systems, he’ll have to byte teh bullet eventually.

In the interim, I’m planning to build a new server that will use a legacy motherboard because it will double as a spinrite workstation if/when needed.

#9

Yeah, I’m seeing UEFI more and more on consumer stuff… all my servers are UEFI… but he also depends on the legacy ide mode for sata drives… and that’s an issue also.

I’ll have to keep an old machine around for just this…

Greg

#10

Lou Luczu said:

At the mention of losing all your pictures, I regularly move mine to a thumb drive. That is the only important stuff, right?

I have no wish to be scary, but I had a thumb drive that got Alzheimer’s or something, scrambled everything I had on it, couldn’t remember a thing. Other people maybe have better luck with them… Dunno…

But as a result of my own experience, I don’t trust the things any more. I keep a thumbdrive in my wallet and use it to deliver or pick up the odd file from friends occasionally, but I’ll move any file off my thumbdrive PDQ, as now I’m more than a little cagey.

For backups I installed a second hard drive on my main confuser, move new stuff over every week or two.

#11

Backup, man, backup!

#12

Right, Tom. FYI everything on my thumbdrive was backed up ok. Just sayin’ about these drives… Those files were headed to a professional printer. When we tried to open them from the thumbdrive, nothing but alphabet soup…

Once as a rank amateur I did have a hard drive blow its brains out on me… Darn near lost a drive full of unbacked-up work, silly me… Fortunately my best friend is a geek, has been since 1970, got all the files off it somehow, saved my blue Anglo-French butt, taught me a lesson bigtime. :wink:

#13

He probably use spinrite too, lol :-p

I am running twin 1terabyte drives in a full mirrored array. Even if one drive dies completely with a click of death, I still have a full backup copy.

#14

J.D. Gallaway said:

I am running twin 1terabyte drives in a full mirrored array. Even if one drive dies completely with a click of death, I still have a full backup copy.

JD, I run the same. But you still need to back up your data. Prefferably to a HDD you don’t leave plugged into the system.

I once had a lightning strike take out 3 out of 4 HDD’s.

The only thing I was able to salvage from the entire system were the two Opteron CPU’s :frowning:

The two surge protectors…also toast :wink:

Ralph

#15

Ralph that concern has been discussed here as well, though thankfully so far we haven’t experienced it.

As soon as our new dining room floor is done (ripping out the old particleboard, foam underlayment and carpet and replacing with new plywood, luann and self-adhesive vinyl tiles) I’m planning on teh construction of a new server which will provide backup for our home network, will automattically backup to a web service, will have built in hot-swap drives for a complete 3-drive mirrored array. By swapping out one of the drives each week, we’ll never lose more than a week’s worth of data.

Further, the new server will also function as a full serve Compu-MedBay running DBAN, SpinRite and full Antivirus so suspect drives can be scanned outside their own system.