2GN.ORG

Yes, but since I reformatted the drive and threw the bits of file back on top of the old stuff (reloaded the files I had onto the drive) it's a good possibility that the files aren't there anymore.

Plus there is a tool to reformat a drive back to it's original state with no information on it... I jut don't have that one.

Well, I found a program that will zero out the drive and have used that. Takes FOREVER but it's pretty awesome.

I just looked through the files I've recovered and are playable and my movies folder is so small!

I used to have 236 movies. Now, I have 79, so I lost 157! Now, there's a bunch of these I hadn't even watched and probably never would, so there's a good probability I won't have a movie collection that large again.

In the meantime, I've been testing out Windows Backup and Restore feature built into Win7. Has anybody used this? It seems like it takes quite a while, but I am creating a disk image of a 1TB drive.

Any thoughts on windows backup?

I use the Win 7 backup to my external 1TB drive (which is where my media is backed up to). I didn't watch the progress on the back up, so I cant say that I noticed how long it took. I just kept on going while it did it's thing.

I actually did sit there and watch it at work the other day. (thank God for remote desktop when I'm bored at work) and the initial backup took like 7 hours. Each backup after that only seems to take about 2 hours or so, which isn't too bad I suppose. Just wasn't sure if that was too long of a time or if it was pretty average.

I have it set to do a complete backup of my system, including a system image. That way (if recovering my laptop for fun is any indication) if I lose my 1TB drive, I simply pop the new one in, pop in a restore disk and in a little while, I have a perfectly restored version of my computer. I have my computer back up every morning at 3 AM so at most I lose one day of downloads and gaming progress.

How large is your main drive, John? I'm backing up a 1TB drive onto my 2TB backup.

I have 2 active drives in my computer now. The 500 gig drive was the one that started to die, but I got the data off it before it died completly.

I'm running a 1500 rpm Raptor 80 gig as my OS drive, and a 320 gig for my programs.

So you use windows backup to back up an 80 gig and a 320 gig drive to a 1TB backup drive?

Yep. Any new downloads go to the back up as well.

Interesting. I decided to keep everything on my primary 1TB drive since I'm creating an image, but that's an interesting way of doing it as well.

How is your backup drive set up? USB, eSATA, internal, etc?

It's a HP My Book Elite connected via USB 2.0

That's pretty spiffy... I'm just going to have my 2TB Seagate Barricuda tossed in a generic USB 2.0 case that i may paint or customize somehow.

I'm terrified of the day when I go over 2TB worth of space though. I really don't want multiple externals plugged into my machine, haha.

Eh, once you fill it, just set it aside and run the next one

I'm looking to build a HTPC very soon, so all my media will be moved to that (while keeping a copy on the back up of course).

I seriously considered building a NAS box, but don't want to deal with RAID so I may just go with a drobo or something.

I don't know anything about what you just said

A HTPC is really simple though. No raid needed. Same principle as a PC, but built to focus on media storage and playback.

TheRandom1 wrote:I seriously considered building a NAS box, but don't want to deal with RAID so I may just go with a drobo or something.

NAS=Network Accessible Storage

RAID= Redundant Array of Independent Disks Basically it backs up files across several disks so if one fails you don't lose anything.

I know what RAID is, just not NAS or Drobo.

Hell, my PC is NAS now. I have access to it through all the devices on my network, including my PS3...even though Sony didn't think it was importaint to install all but the most common codex

A NAS box typically has a very simple OS. The one I was considering had a tiny little OS that fit on a flash drive. Basically, you'd do all configurations and whatnot across the LAN and it'd do a RAID system itself but without the drives having to match.

Drobo is a very sweet deal. Basically it's a file server that does its own backups and redundancy and the drives are all hot swappable and don't need to match.

Josh has one that he's considering upgrading from... so I'm considering buying his if I end up needing it around the same time he's ready to upgrade.