_I know this isn't Falcon related but I had a lot of pics both from this forum as well as other places saved in my laptop. But the hard drive crashed and the computer wouldn't even boot up.

_I thought the drive and the computer was a goner. But thanks to a program called 'chkdsk.exe' I was able to save the drive and everything that was on it. Took a long time to run but it recovered everything and the drive works once again. You have to run the prog in 'elevated' mode which means you have to have 'Administrator' level authority. Had to do some research to find out what to do. But found what I needed to know. Thank goodness for the internet. I would have been lost without it.

_I am not an expert on computers but probably know just enough to dangerous. I know there are some who may say that's no big deal but that's where their expertise comes in. What a great feeling knowing I haven't lost all those pics and data from years of collecting.

_Thought some might be interested if this should ever happen to them.

R n

Backup, Backup, Backup.

There are reasonably priced USB storage units that contain 2 drives. Data written to the unit gets recorded on both drives.

Copy the your disk once a week or more if the system is very active. "Robocopy" is free and is capable of only coping files that have changed since the last copy or do not exist on the destination drive.

The USB units are small and can be stored in the safe when not in use.

There is software for encrypting data for protection from prying eyes if the drive falls into the wrong hands. 'TRUECRYPT' is such a program.

Ron,

That is interesting. That exact same problem is what just happened to my son this morning. His laptop has been troublesome lately, and he took in to the computer shop. Worked good for a week now, but failed to boot up this morning. The shop told him he needs a hard drive. So I had him use the other desktop Computer I use for cad programs and occasionally Netflix. So at least he has a computer to use. I will let him know of your solution.

Terry L. Rahn

Terry,
_Ended up buying a new laptop. Picked up an adapter cable to connect the hard drive into the USB port on the new computer. It couldn't read anything on the drive. Said it needed formatted. Info I found said to use 'chkdsk' to recover the files. Once I learned the steps ran the prog. Took a long time like about 6 or 7 hours. When it was done everything had been saved.

_I can see everything that was on the drive is still there. Haven't tried booting the old pc from it yet. That would be the ultimate test.

_What a relief just to get the files back. Had all the Falcon pics, pics of parts and anything pertaining to cars was on there. I guess this teaches me to do a backup once in awhile.

_Any questions will be glad to outline the steps involved. It's not intuitive but the answers are out there. Had to do some research on what to do.

R n

Ron,

I will pass this on to my son. He does not have any method to obtain the funds needed for a new laptop. So repair if possible is the only solution, or use the desktop until the situation improves. Selling used parts, only gets him gas money and some groceries, computer replacements are not in the immediate future.

Terry L. Rahn

Ron, glad to hear you were able to recover. Yes, this should be a lesson to backup!!! People think I am paranoid because I go to great extremes to not only do regular backups, but in multiple ways and storing them in multiple locations. I have 15 years of genealogy research, thousands of pictures, all of my finances, etc., etc. on my computer. I cannot afford to lose that! So I do a backup at least once a month to DVD.... then I alternate between where I store the DVD's: one will be stored in my safe, and the next in my safe deposit box at the bank. I also backup my most critical files to a secure server.

Many moons ago, I had a job doing telephone technical support for Gateway computers. One night I had a girl call in balling her head off.... her computer wouldn't boot. Why was she crying? She had her entire thesis for her Masters degree she was working on stored on that computer and had no backup! It turned out she had a virus and by using the boot disk that came with her computer, I was able to backup her thesis. Needless to say, she was in a much better mood after that! The last thing I asked her before she hung up was "what have you learned tonite?". Her response was "always do a backup"!

Dewey,

_Well it was only a partial success. I was able to restore most of the files. Which is the most important thing. But the computer still wouldn't boot as some of the key windows files were still corrupt or missing. Tried reinstalling windows from the original start disk but for some reason it wouldn't copy many of the files needed by windows. Don't know why but have given up trying to resurrect the laptop. Still have the files on the still usable hard drive. With an adapter cable it just plugs into any computer with a USB port. Have since replaced the computer and it will be left to rest. It has other problems and is old enough is not worth fooling with anymore. The new one is so much faster and and better in many ways. And the newer wi-fi cards are so much better and more sensitive, the difference is incredible. But not happy about some of the things I can't do that i could before. They took away some of the features in Windows7 that I liked. Like the Classic View is no more. Also is no Winfile like before.

_I'm sure over time i will find some work arounds to get back to what I'm used to. I do do backups just not often enough. I guess that needs to become a weekly routine.

_Well I guess you made her day.

R n

In addition to the great suggestions already given, I'd like to suggest having both onsite and offsite backups of your system IF you feel the info on your system is valuable to you.

In the past few years, companies have made the process so easy and cheap that it's worth it.

A good backup that I suggest to people:
Onsite Daily or constant sync to an external
Offsite constant sync to company of choice (Carbonite, Mozy, whatever)

It's cheap for consumers now.

To give you an idea of how nice they have made the process, Carbonite charges ~$50 a year for encrypted online backup with no size limit. So, at home, I have roughly 3.5TB that I have constantly backed up and accessible from anywhere for $50.

Compare that to Enterprise level solutions and it's a bargain! That same 3TB sent from my office at UC Riverside to San Diego Super Computer Center costs a little over $5,000 a year. $50 sounds pretty reasonable, now doesn't it?!

The idea behind offsite is you never, ever, ever know what might happen to your onsite backups. Best to have a cheap and reliable backup offsite that takes care of it's own backups daily

I use my external HHD for storage and backup and it quit working, Seagate 1.5 TB. When I tried to assess the drive it said it needs formatted. Does anyone know how I can save this data without reformatting?

Jeff,
_As I was saying when I started this post I had the same thing happen. I ran 'chkdsk'exe' which recovered much of my data files. did not want to format the drive untill I at least tried to recover the data. And it didn't get them all. And took almost 8 hours to finish. The most important was all the pictures that I have collected. Mostly car related. But have not been able to reinstall Windows so the laptop still won't boot from it. Thought about getting another drive, format it and try reinstalling windows to that. but the laptop is old, slow and has other problems so other than satifying a curiosity I probably will just let it die in piece. I can still access the drive via an adapter cable.

_The main problem now is getting all the stuff I had to work with Windows 7. Being a 64 bit system a lot of things especially software aren't compatible.

_Try 'chkdsk' just make sure you use 'Run as administrator' to do it. I ran it from a Command window. Good luck.

Ron

Chkdsk reads/repairs C:/ how can I make it read and fix F:/ ? What parameters?
F:/ has only data...no programs or operating system.

_Use the command prompt. Switch it to the drive you are trying to recover in your case the 'F' drive.

_Jeff PM me and I will detail the instructions in greater detail. Shouldn't be tying up the forum with this topic as it's only relation was the fact I saved my auto pictures this way. Glad to help out.

Ron

Open a command prompt. Type "chkdsk F: /R" (without the quotes) and press Enter. If you get a message that says the disc is locked and must be checked at next reboot, press Y to accept that and then reboot whenever you don't need to use the computer because it will take awhile.

chkdsk did not work. Notice the drive properties that I now hav a RAW file system. The drive was about 63% Used Space

Jeff,

My external hard drive and the partition are FAT32. The hard drive is NTFS. The RAW file is a picture format is my memory serves me correctly.

Is it possible to error check or defrag the drive? That is under the tools tab. I am a simpleton with software, but that is something I have used as well as the regedit in run.

Terry L. Rahn