Thanks!!! LOL well - I know I have an assortment of burned cd's that I've no idea what I've saved to them! Well - that's not entirely true. I did screenshots of what is on them in Windows Explorer - so I have that all printed out - it's just that the cd's are all sort of in a hodge podge!! I guess if I crashed - things I would want backed up are my favorites - I always think I want my e-mail backed up, but I never do, and when I do take some from OE to my folder on my other drive, I never end up looking at it again and can never find what I wanted - I really need an organizer - or a way to organize - or the time and ambition to sit here and do it! so - another stupid question - if you do these ghost things - what are you ghosting them to? a cd? Where does your WinBackup back up the information to? I just keep thinking I am on borrowed time. I've never had a computer last this long!! crisS ----- Original Message ----- From: ~OoO~ To: pctechtalk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Sent: Tuesday, September 09, 2003 12:39 PM Subject: -=PCTechTalk=- Re: HD Companies :VSMail mx2 That's pretty much it, you back up the important files. Some guys go further by making a full image on occassion, using something like GHOST or DRIVEIMAGE. Problem with the images is that it might be overkill if you just have files here and there. And, problem with individual backups is you have to go looking all over for all the files you need, plus favorites, settings, emails, etc, that you want to save. You could, of course, as I do, use a program like WinBackup and set it up to automatically make backups at set intervals of specific files and folders. ---Troth ----- Original Message ----- From: cris To: pctechtalk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Sent: Tuesday, September 09, 2003 12:34 PM Subject: -=PCTechTalk=- Re: HD Companies :VSMail mx2 May sound like a silly question - but I really don't know. How do you panic back up everything before it crashes? or what is the important part(s) to back up, and how is that done? I always just try to keep up (which I haven't been doing) with my files by burning them. but I don't do anything with my operating system or program files. what should I be doing? (winXP home) crisS ----- Original Message ----- From: James LaBorde To: 'pctechtalk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx' Sent: Tuesday, September 09, 2003 11:42 AM Subject: -=PCTechTalk=- Re: HD Companies :VSMail mx2 Troth, I have actually had a lot of experience with this both at home and at work. Its odd but I have found that certain manufacturer's have terrible failure rates on certain sized drives. My first complete hard drive failure (no recoverable data) was a 4.3 GB Western Digital Drive. The drive was about 15 months old at the time. After that I had unbelievably good luck both at home and work for quite some time. Once we started using 40 GB drives the trouble began. I won't touch a 30 - 40 GB drive if you give it to me. We had four machines with the 30 GB drives, all four had the drives fail within the first month of use. All were replaced by IBM, 2 died within 3 months, a third took 5 months and the fourth lasted about 14 months. Since they had told us it was merely a bad batch the first time, they replaced them with 40 GB drives the next round. Within 1 year, all four had failed again. IBM failure rate 12/12 100% In our last batch of machines we purchased Seagate drives. In about of year of use only one has failed. Seagate failure rate 1/70 <2% We have also had some bad luck with the Western Digital 30 and 40 GB drives. One nice thing about the WD failures is that they tended to make an odd screeching noise shortly before failing. Giving us time to back up the data on the drives. Oddly enough, we have never had any of the Maxtors we have purchased fail. I have seen about 20 of these drives used and no failures at all. I have only had one drive have a partial failure that you seem to have experienced. That was a 20 GB WD. I lost about 4 GB to bad sectors. This is going to be an interesting thread to follow. James -----Original Message----- From: ~OoO~ [mailto:SirTroth@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx] Sent: Monday, September 08, 2003 8:50 PM To: PCTechTalk Subject: -=PCTechTalk=- HD Companies :VSMail mx2 Let's talk about hard drive manufacturers. Just today... the 4th time I've had a hard drive go bad. My first and second drives were Maxtors, my 3rd was an IBM (oem), and my 4th, today, was a Maxtor. Today's however, came up with the most damage... a wopping 6GB bad sectors. Luckily, it was in an unused area of the drive, so I lost no info, but it has taken up a considerable amount of my time, cause Windows scan disk didn't want to work... just kept freezing up at around 95%. Norton Disk Doctor was freezing up too, but after reformatting the drive from scratch, Norton was able to secure the bad sectors. So... question... what sort of luck has everyone been having with hard drives? Any streaks on drives going bad? What brands? Next question... anyone know how I can go back and see specific data on my drive? It seems that after you do either Scan Disk or Disk Doctor, it tells you at the end report that you have so-and-so sectors bad, but after the report is gone, there's no way to pull up the info to see how much is bad and how much is good? Any way to do it in Windows? Or, maybe another program I can buy? ---Troth To unsub or change your email settings: //www.freelists.org/webpage/pctechtalk To access our Archives: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/PCTechTalk/messages/ //www.freelists.org/archives/pctechtalk/ For more info: //www.freelists.org/cgi-bin/list?list_id=pctechtalk To unsub or change your email settings: //www.freelists.org/webpage/pctechtalk To access our Archives: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/PCTechTalk/messages/ //www.freelists.org/archives/pctechtalk/ For more info: //www.freelists.org/cgi-bin/list?list_id=pctechtalk To unsub or change your email settings: //www.freelists.org/webpage/pctechtalk To access our Archives: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/PCTechTalk/messages/ //www.freelists.org/archives/pctechtalk/ For more info: //www.freelists.org/cgi-bin/list?list_id=pctechtalk To unsub or change your email settings: //www.freelists.org/webpage/pctechtalk To access our Archives: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/PCTechTalk/messages/ //www.freelists.org/archives/pctechtalk/ For more info: //www.freelists.org/cgi-bin/list?list_id=pctechtalk To unsub or change your email settings: //www.freelists.org/webpage/pctechtalk To access our Archives: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/PCTechTalk/messages/ //www.freelists.org/archives/pctechtalk/ For more info: //www.freelists.org/cgi-bin/list?list_id=pctechtalk