The reason for the title of this weeks post is that we had several things fall apart on us. We were to be away and I planned a part 2 of “Organizing and Storing in our Tiny RV”. We decided not to go away - luckily before I made up the bed in rather hot weather - hotter in the RV. This turned out to be even luckier because of what happened. The piece will be written and run at a later date.
In addition to backing up my data, mentioned in a prior post (Organizing Computer Files, June 22, 2016) I also back up my computer. I do this on a monthly basis. I back up the computer, using a software program, to an external hard drive. Currently I am using a newer, larger hard drive I bought for this purpose (monthly backups). I have been making a new back up of the computer quarterly, with incremental backups for the following two months - by this I mean I make a new backup in January, then add to that backup in February and March and then make a new backup in April, etc. I also back up to the older external drive quarterly - in January, April, July, and October - each time a complete new backup - just in case the drive with the backups ever failed. I hate loading software when I get a new computer and did not want to deal with doing so for lack of backing up my computer or loose anything in case of a problem with the computer’s hard drive.
So last Friday I backed up my computer to a new monthly backup on what I will call (external hard) Drive N - for new - with no problem. At the same time I back up my computer which is a desktop, I also backup each of my two laptops on the same schedule. I backed up my smaller, newer laptop before backing up the desktop computer to both hard drives with no problem. I then attempted to make the quarterly backup of my desktop to the other drive - (external hard) Drive O (for old) and the same software just used for the monthly backup, but could not make up a backup due to bad sectors. I tried twice and then decided that instead of panicking I would wait and try it again another day. My older laptop is very s l o w and I set it up to run the backup overnight. I did the monthly back of it to Drive N overnight that night - no problem.
Saturday night, over night, I set my laptop up and did a quarterly backup onto Drive O - again no problem. So now I was pretty sure that there was no problem with Drive O. I then tried to backup my desktop to Drive O - again, it could not as I had bad sector problems. On Sunday evening, just to be sure that the problem was the hard drive of my desktop, I attempted a new, complete backup of my desktop to Drive N - to which it had backed up on Friday with no problem - it also could not make a backup due to bad sectors on my desktop’s hard drive. So, I told husband and asked him what to do. He told me that I needed to get a new hard drive in my desktop. It would not be much of a problem as we had backups and they are relatively inexpensive. (Can you see where this is going?)
So he did some research on hard drives (he builds our desktop computers these days) and figured out which one we should get and we went and bought it. At this time we were still thinking about going on a trip this week. Luckily we decided not to go on the trip just as we were starting the restoration of the computer to the new hard drive.
We brought the new drive home and disconnected the computer from all its wires. He had the good idea to have me take photos with my cell phone of each of the connections on the back of the computer to aid in putting them all back where they came from. It is filthy with dust - I dusted it and after we open it, we vacuumed it and dusted the parts that did not vacuum inside and out.
He disconnected and removed the old hard drive and we set it aside. Relatively easily he wires in the new hard drive and it snaps into place. We have trouble putting the sides back on the computer (it is a tower) and then remember it has to be done with the case lying down. The sides go back on. We are aided in all of this as I have the instruction books from the computer case and the computer chip from when he first assembled the computer, set aside in a folder for my computer (there is a folder for each computer he assembled - 3 to date).
By now the office is a bit disorganized - large manila envelope with computer instruction folders, parts, wires, box to new hard drive, old hard drive, work I had planned to work on... all out and about on the floor and what was before clear space on desks and printers.
We put the wires back on the computer. We turn it on. I use a touch pad instead of a mouse for the computer - it does not work. We then spend 15 minutes looking for a USB plug in mouse, including a trip by husband to the RV in case it was there - he finds it on his desk attached to a Raspberry Pi project (very small computer and coding). (We have since bought a second such mouse to keep around for when we need one in a situation such as this.)
We hook up Drive N (remember both N and O are external drives), we put the recovery disk into the computer’s DVD drive and start the computer. It finds the internal hard drive, it finds the DVD drive, then it keeps spinning. Finally we give up. We shut down the computer . We then hook up Drive O, restart the computer, and it appears on the screen. He runs the restore software. We go to reboot the computer and see that it has been restored - the computer will not boot. Of course, we try turning it off and on several times before being sure that there is some problem.
He looks up on the Internet what to do if the boot manager is missing. Oh, so easy, just run Windows repair. Well, I have the disk, but - it is in the closet in the office, which has all sorts of items from our earlier efforts of installing the hard drive and the project I hoped to work on spread around the room and blocking the closet door. So all of this must be moved elsewhere (in a crowded bedroom being used as a library and an office for 2 people). The Windows disk is put in the computer. He follows the directions on the Internet - I sit at his computer and read him the command line. We turn off the computer - then turn it on - it does not boot.
One instruction we find online says to reinstall Windows. We do so - which wipes out the restoration of the hard drive - computer now boots - yea! We reinstall the backup - it does not boot. We repeat this several times (we worked on this from around 3 pm to after 8pm- Chinese food for dinner as no time to cook).
As he has been doing the research for this online he finds out something important - the backup program, a popular (paid program, not freeware) has a reputation for not working. He had a problem when he tried to restore once before, but found that there was a problem if the backup or restore was done using USB 3 connections - so we had been using USB 2 connections. He reads that a newer version of the program does not recognize drives bigger than 5 TB, maybe it did not work at all with Drive N as this is an older version of the software and the drive is 4 TB, while Drive O is only 1 TB?
We finally give up. He reloads Windows and now I must find and reinstall all my software. Luckily the data, which was on a USB flash drive is intact as are the backups of it as they were on same and were done with different software so my data is all intact. I realize as I start to install software that much of my software is freeware and the downloads are on the old hard drive which was replaced. I did not anticipate needing to replace any of it by hand and so I also did not anticipate needing to get it off the drive before we took it out of the computer. While the programs could be downloaded again, many of them are older versions of the programs because I did not like the updated versions (and in many cases neither did husband), so I really need access to the old internal hard drive we took out). I asked husband if they could both be in the computer (extra empty drive bays in the computer anyway) - he said they could not as they are both drives which boot the computer and it would confuse the computer.
Today we went out and bought a case to convert an internal hard drive to an external one - so I can access the files on the old hard drive for whatever I need and is on parts of the drive which is still good. I then loaded more programs onto the computer with more to come.
I sat and checked my email and did other things on my smaller laptop while we were doing all of this installing and reinstalling the backups and Windows. I went to check my main email account. I changed the password a few months back - I know what it should be but that does not work, so I couldn’t check my main account - even worse, I had to hope that I checked that account with my bigger, older laptop - luckily I did and tonight - after not being able to check email yesterday or today on this account (I don’t check on the weekend) I was able to check email on this account. I still have to send an email to a friend for her birthday - which ended a little over an hour ago - as I did not have her email address other than in that email account.
I use very old software as a calendar/address book/todo list - an organizer program. I also use my old cell phone, a Palm Centro, as a PDA around the house as it syncs with this software (my current cell phone does not work with the todos section and I tend to only use same for home chores, so I sync both cell phones to the organizer software. When I start using it again, since it is being reinstalled on the computer I will have to overwrite the Centro - so I cannot make any entries or changes to same until they are synced again or I will lose any changes made on the Centro.
I cannot wait for all the software to be back, changed to how I like it to be (and you may know by now that I am picky and don’t like change) and it all to working as it used to be again.
I have learned that, unfortunately, one does not know that one’s backup software will not work until it is too late. We will trying another program which seems to be better liked and seems to work from now on.
While we were installing Windows and the backup Monday I also managed to start sorting through computer program and printer manuals back to I don’t know when. I pulled 3 large books (from when software came with large manuals) and some smaller ones. The 3 large ones I am going to donate as they are for programs not all that old and might still be used, the others have gone in for recycling. There were others I would have pulled out to toss, but they are for games that husband bought and I will have to go through them with him - I never toss or donate anything of his without his permission. I do now have the books to the printers on top of the others (they are lying down on the shelves) so they can be easily reached as they are still used when something goes wrong or needs to be reset.
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