Grrrrr. I'll say that again: Grrrrrr

[SuffolkPunch]

Warning to all comp users - BACK UP YOUR WORK.

I had what I think those IT boffins call a "complete and utter effing meltdown" on my laptop yesterday and lost everything on it: stories, work in progress, pictures, accounts, 40,000+ poker hands in my Poker Office, all email contacts/messages, etc etc.

All because I couldn't be bothered to back up my work properly. So I would urge all of you not to be complacent like me and tempt fate.

Question to technical gurus: what is the best way of backing up a laptop - should I get an external drive/storage management and copy everything over every week or so?

Rant over. Peace to the world (except Bill Gates).

[Colchester Kev]

ouch !!!  thats bad luck ... if you want to restock the porn, give Ironside a shout, he got an email the other day which read ..

"You have reached the end of internet porn, please return to page 1"

[tikay]

Don't despair Simon - we have a few pretty neat computer boffins on blonde, & they may yet be able to recover some of your data.

[Gryff]

If the motherboard or monitor or ram etc have died then you still have all the data on the hard drive and can get it back.

If you reformatted or the hard drive has given up then your effed.

[Bongo]

If you reformatted or the hard drive has given up then your effed.

It may still be possible to get the data back even if this has happened, it's not quite as simple as in other instances though.

What has actually happened?

[SuffolkPunch]

If you reformatted or the hard drive has given up then your effed.

It may still be possible to get the data back even if this has happened, it's not quite as simple as in other instances though.

What has actually happened?

I think I got a virus, but whatever I had won of those hal.dll corrupted messages that stopped me booting up. I had no Windows XP disk to try and repair it, and did not have time or inclination to take it to the store for repair (I'm on deadline on various things and need the lappie).

I therefore took the brave (and probably stupid) decision to reformat the hard drive. It works lovely now, albeit without any of my stuff on it!

[lazaroonie]

if only you had posted here before reformatting. For future reference, if this happens again, you can remove the hard drive from the machine and make the drive a slave on another machine, then you can copy off all your stuff.

I have seen stuff recovered before from a formatted drive (did you use the quick format util on windows install ?), but I dont have the utilities to do it. Bongo ?

[SuffolkPunch]

if only you had posted here before reformatting. For future reference, if this happens again, you can remove the hard drive from the machine and make the drive a slave on another machine, then you can copy off all your stuff.

I have seen stuff recovered before from a formatted drive (did you use the quick format util on windows install ?), but I dont have the utilities to do it. Bongo ?

Unfortunately I am a bit of a mug with these things (and many others), and what you have just said makes no sense to me whatsoever! I'm afraid things were time critical and I had to get access to my working machine asap, hence my rather drastic action.

What is important is now getting the hang of backing all my stuff up - what should I do for that?

[ifm]

You can back up to a removeable drive (external hard disk) or to CD's or another machine on a network, also online.
I know some people who backup to their ipod too.
There is a backup wizard on your 'puter in system tools.

[lazaroonie]

well, like all computer related answers, it depends.

It depends on how much stuff you have on your machine, and what the nature of this stuff is.

For a permanent and stable backup I would recommend a USB hard drive - 300GB can be had for as little as £70, and this will be sufficient to store all your data. This would most likely stay in your office/home office all the time, and you can connect in the evening/once a week, and use some software to sync what has changed, or is new on your laptop.

I would also invest in a "usb key" which will enable you to have a decent backup of things on your laptop whilst you are on the move. These often fit on a keyring, and will mean if the terrible thing happened that your laptop got nicked, then between your hard-drive backup , and your usb-key, you would be able to recreate all your data.

[lazaroonie]

You can back up to a removeable drive (external hard disk) or to CD's or another machine on a network, also online.
I know some people who backup to their ipod too.
There is a backup wizard on your 'puter in system tools.

I would always advise caution about backing up to CD/DVD. Generally I find that the data on them is less permanent than you think.

It is better than nothing,true,  but I would think the external hard-drive is the way to go these days.

[Graham C]

Some idiot I stupidly paid to fix my pc a while back formatted my hard drive for some reason but I managed to get most of the information back by using http://www.recovermyfiles.com/

It's a nifty bit of kit, and it's surprising what it will recover!  Large files such as mp3's and videos take ages to get back but text files, photos etc are pretty quick so if you have both to do, I'd recommend getting the smaller files first, then doing the larger ones seperate - you can filter what you want to recover.

You can get a free version that will show you what will recover I think, but you have to pay for the proper recovery tool, but it's well worth the money believe me.

It also can recover of memory cards and things like that.

[SuffolkPunch]

That's great advice. Thanks everyone. Trip to PC World for me and I'll also try that site recommended by Silo. Thanks again and I hope my misfortune can save some others a good deal of pain!!!!

[lazaroonie]

That's great advice. Thanks everyone. Trip to PC World for me and I'll also try that site recommended by Silo. Thanks again and I hope my misfortune can save some others a good deal of pain!!!!

If you go onto the pcworld website, you can "click and order" thei seagate 250GB external hard-drive, for 73 quid - if you buy it in store it will cost 99 quid. the best bit, is that you can collect it from the shop, after ordering on the website, and still make the saving.

Its not a huge saving, but 26 quid is 26 quid

[RED-DOG]

Its not a huge saving, but 26 quid is 26 quid

Sigh...... I remember when 26 quid was 150 quid.