WWWWWOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!

[Lembach]

So, not a bad Valentine's Day, all in all.

Laurie came home with a gift bag:

Spoiler

Wtf. Anti-itch cream, Purell, and a pregnancy test?

[goflyblind]

So, not a bad Valentine's Day, all in all.

Laurie came home with a gift bag:

Spoiler

Wtf. Anti-itch cream, Purell, and a pregnancy test?

valentine's day is weird.

[Johnny Unusual]

A lot of people came to my last movie night in Ulsan, where we watched Dr. Horrible and Scott Pilgrim.

[gbeenie]

So, not a bad Valentine's Day, all in all.

Laurie came home with a gift bag:

Spoiler

Wtf. Anti-itch cream, Purell, and a pregnancy test?

Well, we've been together 20 years; as many of you may know, that's the "Trust, But Verify" anniversary.

[LucasM]

[NOTE continues from this discussion/post.]

I am currently posting from my 'cloned drive' computer.

First things first: I updated Microsoft Security Essentials - no way was I going to do anything else (especially online) until it was updated (the last update on this clone was from Jan 27 of 2013).

Then its on to potentially hours of Windows updating and rebooting itself.

Then I try and see if I can recover from the defunct drive the roughly 2 hours from Tuesday day, and 3-4 hours of 'computer shit' I did Monday night and didn't get backed up.  [Since it could access something on that drive, I'm actually kinda' hopeful here... last dead drive wouldn't even spin up.  So with using it as a 'dead storage' drive, I may be able to get stuff off of it.]

But it works again!

Thank you, MartyS and d00hickey! 

[MartyS (Gromit)]

Great!  Hope you can recover stuff off the old drive.

Once plugged in try to get stuff off, then if there are files that it says are corrupt try doing a surface scan to repair bad sectors.  Fairly low chance of it helping but I have gotten a few extra files off dying drives that way.

[LucasM]

Thanks I'll keep an eye out.

So far it is reading OK as dead storage.  At least the stuff that is mine (the D partition) seems unaffected.  I've got that whole drive sync-ing now [during the day or so preceding the crash I'd done some structural changes to my directory tree to make it easier to find more-used stuff].  Then I'll sync things like Windows Live Mail for differences.

I was also (thankfully) able to simply drop into the Firefox folder my current version of Firefox (v19, the last that worked with one of my 'external' programs for downloading flash-type media when 'Flash Video Downloader' wouldn't [some YouTube 1080p wouldn't show up in FVD that would in this thing]).  [I saved the original Firefox that was on the clone (v18) in a 'TEMP' folder just in case there might be a conflict with something the update does to the Registry on updating.  If it still works fine in a few days I'll delete that.]


Then once I have everything off of it I need, and have it thoroughly wiped of personal data, I, of course, have to go to Best Buy and trade the defective hard drive for one that I can clone the new updated installation to as soon as I'm back up to speed.  But at least now there's nowhere near the urgency there had been.  [Plus: taking in and trading a defective drive is FAR easier than unattaching a mini-tower and hauling it in.]


EDIT:
Just thought of an EASY way for me to figure out which programs I'd updated since the drive was cloned (cloned on Jan 27, 2013): just do a search of the 'Program Files' and 'Program Files (x86)' and 'User/Owner' directories for anything after that date!  If it is newer than that date, the program was modified since the cloning.   [I could also do 'compare directories' with the date set and see what turns up, just not actually sync them, since it'd ignore any registry changes with updates.]  This won't even be as hard as I was still thinking for 'what was left to do'.

And this time, I'll let Acronis do incremental changes [though if it was a 'gradual corruption' of Windows, the Acronis backup would have those same defects that way].  Maybe, with the stresses this stuff causes me any more, just splurge (not splooge) and get a second backup drive: one would be a 'just installed and updated everything' exact clone for this date, and the other would be an exact clone, but with incremental change backups of everything (including program data).  Hell: an additional hard drive is only a few bucks more than I was willing to pay Geek Squad just to show up at my house - seems it'd be the better investment.

[Nobody]

Acronis?  Ator's girlfriend's dad? 

[d00hickey]

Thanks I'll keep an eye out.

So far it is reading OK as dead storage.  At least the stuff that is mine (the D partition) seems unaffected.  I've got that whole drive sync-ing now [during the day or so preceding the crash I'd done some structural changes to my directory tree to make it easier to find more-used stuff].  Then I'll sync things like Windows Live Mail for differences.

I was also (thankfully) able to simply drop into the Firefox folder my current version of Firefox (v19, the last that worked with one of my 'external' programs for downloading flash-type media when 'Flash Video Downloader' wouldn't [some YouTube 1080p wouldn't show up in FVD that would in this thing]).  [I saved the original Firefox that was on the clone (v18) in a 'TEMP' folder just in case there might be a conflict with something the update does to the Registry on updating.  If it still works fine in a few days I'll delete that.]


Then once I have everything off of it I need, and have it thoroughly wiped of personal data, I, of course, have to go to Best Buy and trade the defective hard drive for one that I can clone the new updated installation to as soon as I'm back up to speed.  But at least now there's nowhere near the urgency there had been.  [Plus: taking in and trading a defective drive is FAR easier than unattaching a mini-tower and hauling it in.]


EDIT:
Just thought of an EASY way for me to figure out which programs I'd updated since the drive was cloned (cloned on Jan 27, 2013): just do a search of the 'Program Files' and 'Program Files (x86)' and 'User/Owner' directories for anything after that date!  If it is newer than that date, the program was modified since the cloning.   [I could also do 'compare directories' with the date set and see what turns up, just not actually sync them, since it'd ignore any registry changes with updates.]  This won't even be as hard as I was still thinking for 'what was left to do'.

And this time, I'll let Acronis do incremental changes [though if it was a 'gradual corruption' of Windows, the Acronis backup would have those same defects that way].  Maybe, with the stresses this stuff causes me any more, just splurge (not splooge) and get a second backup drive: one would be a 'just installed and updated everything' exact clone for this date, and the other would be an exact clone, but with incremental change backups of everything (including program data).  Hell: an additional hard drive is only a few bucks more than I was willing to pay Geek Squad just to show up at my house - seems it'd be the better investment.

I knew you could do it. If you want to splurge with the money you saved you can get an SSD for you boot/OS drive and enjoy a much faster computing experience. 

[LucasM]

I knew you could do it. If you want to splurge with the money you saved you can get an SSD for you boot/OS drive and enjoy a much faster computing experience.

Thanks.

In the last couple weeks I've spent all I had to spare (and a bit more) on hard drives (esp one rather large one just to keep video files on in the home theater room).  So I'll have to keep that in mind for my next available cash.  Particularly since I now know two things for sure: first, the cloned drive I can make will work without a hitch; and second, installing a hard drive in this case is the simplest of any case I've worked with (besides the computer I built from parts back in '96, I've added to/modified the contents of a total of five computers, this - by far - being the simplest to deal with hard drives (and the most difficult for optical)).

I'll have to pay more attention in the Computer thread for which SSDs would be the best choice when that time comes.  My boot partition is, thankfully, only 250GB (with about 100GB free), so I'd only need a 250GB SSD (I did a quick check on prices after reading what you said, and noticed the price jump from 250-500GB was substantial).  It would be nice to have the pagefile memory about as quick as the real memory.

[MartyS (Gromit)]

I'll have to pay more attention in the Computer thread for which SSDs would be the best choice when that time comes.  My boot partition is, thankfully, only 250GB (with about 100GB free), so I'd only need a 250GB SSD (I did a quick check on prices after reading what you said, and noticed the price jump from 250-500GB was substantial).  It would be nice to have the pagefile memory about as quick as the real memory.

Yeah, the jump in price from 120GB to 250GB isn't bad, but going to 500 is way too expensive right now.

As for the page file, when I was reading up on if an SSD should ever be defragged, there were some people saying not to put your pagefile on the SSD because all the writing will lower the lifespan of the drive.  I've got enough ram now that I have the pagefile set really small, so haven't moved it to a hard disk.

[Bob]

Well now.....my 80 year old mom is now on Facebook........

The comets will hit earth shortly.

[LucasM]

[moved further computer discussion to The Computer Thread]

[Lembach]

Speaking of moved. Begone tedious religious and tiresome political threads!

[RVR II]

Speaking of moved. Begone tedious religious and tiresome political threads!

Drop on in sometime