Recovering From A Hard Drive Crash

If you have been “online” for any length of time, then you have at one time or other experienced a computer crash. If you haven’t — please knock on wood right now!

Most of you know what I am talking about though. The dreaded grind, the whirring noises that fire off when nothing is happening — at least nothing that YOU are doing. (That sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach) Hackers and Spammers, Trogen horses, viruses and worms — it’s enough to frighten off the faint at heart.

But we of the Internet generation plow ahead. We load firewalls, anti-virus programs, spyware removal programs and applications that monitor our “ad saturation”. We protect our small business assets with a vengeance.

For those of us online more than most, (you small business bloggers out there!) or just responsible for client data, source files, documents, etc… there is an additional step of protection we take.

Backup.

You are taking the steps necessary to protect yourselves… right?

Recovering When The Worst Happens

I am a programmer and web designer in my “day job”. This means I have a lot of data/source files on my computer that the client would be upset if I lost. I have taken extreme measures to ensure those files are safe and sound and tucked into bed each night. I have programs running that backup the critical files every 2 hours, regardless of what I am doing. I have a second backup that runs once each night to another hard drive.

Redundant copies of the files across multiple hard drives. Safe. Right?

Well, most were. I got a little complacent with editing the backup jobs as I added new drives, new programs, or new data directories. So, even though my machine *backs up* every 2 hours, I was missing some files (lesson learned). I wasn’t backing up my bookmarks for example. I surf a lot of sites every day. I mean a lot!

Many I bookmark because of the marketing lessons I want to study further. Some are sites that contain video’s I am reviewing to learn how to do something. Some are, well… you get the idea. I probably add 100 new sites a month.

Enter Complacency.

I hadn’t exported my bookmarks in some time.

I have backup jobs running. I am protecting my data. With Heatsoft Automatic Synchronizer, it’s a “set and forget” kinda thing. (And the good news is you don’t have to be a geek to load and use it.)

Whoops. A recent crash took out my hard drive and forced me to “reload” my operating system and tools. I have something like 74 tools and applications that I use and it takes a while to reload everything. Not with Acronis however… Acronis is an “imaging” software application that “burns” an image of your hard drive (or individual partitions) that you can later restore. I have images of both my C: and D: drives (where I load the operating system and tools).

Crash and Burn. Reload my system from images. Whole thing took about 4 hours. That’s when I discovered it wasn’t software related (as many hard drive *crashes* are), it was hardware. My poor little overworked hard drive was … in official geeky terms … whacked.

Off I went to the *valley* (Phoenix, about 110 miles away) to purchase a new hard drive since my little town doesn’t carry those type of thing on the shelves. (The downside to working from home and living anywhere you want I guess. It’s the only downside I have found to owning my own business, working in my pajama’s and living in a small town. No computer store.)

As long as I was out, I decided to increase the size of my harddrive from 100 Gig to 250 Gig. Hey, the prices are crazy low, who could resist? But, that did mean one thing to me and my *restore process* that I want to mention here so you are prepared.

Because I bought a different type of drive, the images I had burned won’t work. See, harddrives have a *geometry* to them. Changing the drive meant the geometry used to build the images was different.

So, I still had to reload my machine from scratch (a daunting process), but I was at least prepared with backups and copies of pretty much everything I needed.

Once I got my machine reloaded on the new hard drive, I used Acronis and burned another image. I just set it before going to bed, and by morning, I have another “complete installation” already setup with my programs, settings, bookmarks… the works. All ready to be “restored” in the event of the unthinkable.

From crash to restore, less than 4 hours (provided you don’t replace the hard drive with a different type).

Let me ask you this… If you lost your hard drive tomorrow, would you be able to “recover” from the loss?

Is your financial data secure? Email contacts? Bookmarks and Favorites? Please ask yourself these questions now, before it is too late.

Over the last 20 years, I am come to depend on my computer more and more. I have been on an active hunt to protect myself and the contents of my computer. I am listing info on the products I use to protect myself and my clients.

• Acronis Disk Imaging Software: Allows me to burn a complete image of my computer and all software and data that is installed. Once I have an “image” burned, I can “restore” it any time I want. I recommend a new image after each major software installation. If you don’t install program often, then just get your machine exactly where you like it (installed programs, settings, fonts, drivers, etc) and then burn your image. You can copy to CD’s or DVD’s and keep in a safe place (offsite is preferred). Please remember this just puts everything back the way it was at the time of the “backup”. If you have changed files, source documents, financial data, recent email’s, etc., you will need to take the next step shown below.

• Heatsoft Automatic Synchronizer: Allows me to copy all “changed” files since the last backup to another hard drive. The preferred method is to have a secondary hard drive connected to your computer. I use a 100 gig laptop hard drive in a “external case” (about $75 to setup) attached via a USB port. For my nightly backup’s, I also have a 300 gig external hard drive (desktop computer hard drive) connected via USB. The little drive goes with me when I travel, the big drive stays at home.

About The Author

Cenay Nailor is an Internet, Affiliate and Networking Marketing success coach with mad technical skills she loves sharing. Visit her blog and sign up for a weekly injection of Tech-Based Marketing help, sent right to your inbox. http://www.CenayNailor.com

About The Author

Dali Burgado, also known as "The Dali Blogger" teaches creative entrepreneurs how to carve a web presence that connects with their Inner Guru and their target audience. Her first online marketing love is SEO. She's an avid connector on Facebook, Twitter, and Google+. When she's not coaching or teaching, she's tweaking sites for Search Engine Visibility, working on her PHP and Javascript coding skills, Singing Opera, or learning about gardening. Circle Dali on Google+