Did I do the right thing? (PC HDD failure)

[RGuk]

My HDD died on Xmas eve and I took the laptop into the specialist PC co. I bought it from.
Normally, I'm happy to reformat and re-install an OS but from a dead HDD I wasn't so sure what to do.
On HP laptops there is a recovery partition on the actual HD.
I'd considered this a good idea (for hopeless folk) but if the drive fails, well, that's things a bit "base over apex"!!

So, I was quoted for a replacement 2.5" SATA £40 and some labour....seemed ok....

EXCEPT, the labour charge was more than buying a fresh version of Vista (or XP, or whatever) so now I have the laptop back (working fine, as new etc.) but should the new drive fail I'm back to square one.

I wondering if I should have simply ordered a new HDD and Vista and started from scratch.....surely if you have the disks for an OS you can replace the hard drive whenever without the worry of getting experts to re-install from their OS disks.....I mean, how hard can it be? Or is not the same a booting from the bios to the CD drive and installing windows from there???

I feel a bit stupid.....or did I do the sensible thing?

I backed up the laptop (using Vistas in-built "complete pc back-up") but I'm not entirely sure if this can be utilised from an external usb portable drive from the BIOS.

Any thoughts???

Yours, £150 worse off!

 

[Smiffy]

I haven't got a bloody clue about computers so can't say whether you did right or wrong...

My hard drive died last year, I had made the five recovery discs which Compaq suggested I do when everything was running fine and the PC was nearly new.
Did they load up onto the new hard drive?
Did they buggery.
Mate of mine had to "knife and fork" XP in for me, but the bloody machine has never run as well ever since.
I keep thinking of buying a new PC but all the time mine is clanking and whirring it will do
Rob

 

[Cernunnos]

If the professional help saved some of your files& passwords etc it probably was the right thing to do...other wise...well.....

 

[RGuk]

My hard drive died last year, I had made the five recovery discs which Compaq suggested I do when everything was running fine and the PC was nearly new.
Did they load up onto the new hard drive?
Did they buggery.

Yes! this was exactly what I was afraid of. My compaq/hp offered me the chance to back up to DVDs today....which I tried until it told me it didn't like the DVDs!! Arghhh

At least if you have the real original disks, you've got a chance!

 

[RGuk]

Um.....no....I asked them to do a "factory install"....

I only run office and anti-virus, any/all of my documents are double backed up on two devices.

I like to start from scratch and t.b.h. they didn't try to read the old drive....it went straight in the bin....

 

[Cernunnos]

PC's are great until they go wrong & then they don't seem to be worth the heartache they give you.

The PC base stations I have laying about you wouldn't believe Some of which in working order too.

 

[brendy]

First of all, bin the complete pc backup err backup. A colleague brought his sons laptop to me today with exactly the same problem, his hdd died and got a replacement under warranty, The backup isnt bootable so you cant just put the dvd in and expect it to work.
I installed vista and tried to restore from the dvd, I used the option "restore from another pc" as it wont recognise any backups because its a fresh install its database is empty. Then it asks you to select the location of the backup, It only showed the cdrom/dvdrom drive, fine I thought, its on there anyway but nope. cannot find backup files.
Ive verified that they are there but frankly its not worth a toss.
Buy a copy of Acronis True Image. Its around £30-£35 and does what it says on the tin.
You install it onto your pc, run the bootable acronis image cd maker and create a cd that boots your pc into a mini windows system where you can back everything up onto removable storage.
I implemented the server editions for a few of our customers and its working 100%. There is even a universal restore add on which allows you to backup a one pc and restore it onto any other machine regardless of hardware. An example, a colleague has a 5 year old fujitsu pc, he obtains a newer 3.0ghz pc and didnt want to have to reinstall a lot of our postage and inhouse systems, I created the disc with universal restore on top and was able to move his entire install onto a totally new pc and it worked a charm, All I had to do was install the drivers for the sound card and network card. It really is fantastic compared to other software suites.

 

[RGuk]

PC's are great until they go wrong & then they don't seem to be worth the heartache they give you.

Yup....too right....

My Missus bought me a mini-laptop (known as a netbook? sub notebook anyway) for Xmas. The thought was my girls could use the big 'un in the evenings and I could use the netbook for forum/email/shopping etc.

I have a fabulous Acer Aspire One with Linpus Linux. It's neat and fast and cute.....but the wi-fi is next to hopeless?? You know, these companies sell stuff that "might" work with some other hardware and expect us to suck it and see. In a way it's a pity I have managed to get it to wi-fi. If I had failed FULL STOP I'd have taken it back for a refund. If they'd refused to swap it, I'd have thrown all my toys out of the pram.

Come on!! I have the UK's #1 broadband router (netgear DG series) and this little laptop will only connect if you reset the router and get "lucky" with the moment you activate the wi-fi on the PC.......

ARGHHH

 

[RGuk]

Very interesting brendy...so basicaly, a back-up for the whole thing is more or less a waste of time....I suspected as much.

So....should I have gone with buying a new copy of windows or did I do the right thing getting my guys to do it all knowing I have no vista disk should the same thing occur?

 

[brendy]

If you buy acronis it wont matter whether you have a vista disc or not, plus you do have a serial number for vista on the base of the laptop yea? You can always request the cd/dvd from the manufacturer.

 

[RGuk]

you do have a serial number for vista on the base of the laptop yea? You can always request the cd/dvd from the manufacturer.

Is it possible I could ask Microsoft for the disk?

I will look into the acronis.....thanks....you are very good to help.

 

[brendy]

They might do for a fee but Id ask the manufacturer of your laptop as they may have a disc with windows and all of the drivers for your laptop. Installing windows is only half of the job, you need to install all of the device drivers (graphics card, usb, chipset, modem, network card drivers etc) then get it fully up to date with updates from the manufacturer and microsoft. These include security patches and driver updates which may help with the performance of your machine. Vista is pretty good at downloading the correct drivers in the first place as soon as you have internet access.
DONT FORGET ANTIVIRUS.
http://www.avg.com/filedir/inst/avg_free_stf_en_8_176a1400.exe
I signed our company up to become AVG antivirus partners (currently silver partners) and dont think there is anything better, even the free edition which only lacks minor details of the main product.

 

[RGuk]

They might do for a fee but Id ask the manufacturer of your laptop as they may have a disc with windows and all of the drivers for your laptop. Installing windows is only half of the job, you need to install all of the device drivers (graphics card, usb, chipset, modem, network card drivers etc) then get it fully up to date with updates from the manufacturer and microsoft. These include security patches and driver updates which may help with the performance of your machine. Vista is pretty good at downloading the correct drivers in the first place as soon as you have internet access.
DONT FORGET ANTIVIRUS.
http://www.avg.com/filedir/inst/avg_free_stf_en_8_176a1400.exe
I signed our company up to become AVG antivirus partners (currently silver partners) and dont think there is anything better, even the free edition which only lacks minor details of the main product.

OK, I've found true image home 2009 for £28 or true image 10 for £22. I'm guessing both will work.
I've been an AVG user for years! Very impressed, ALWAYS.

I like the sound of the acronis software.....bootable CD that copies the lot (rather like ghost, only better, it would seem!!).....

I think as a first step, I'll try to get the disk(s) for Vista.

I'm presuming there would be a way to copy my new HD to another fresh out-the-box HD if I wanted to make doubly sure. I'm pretty happy to install drivers and all the rest, I've not had most of the disks for my XP desktop for years.....I just use the internet......far better.....most of the drivers are out of date anyway.

Better find the credit card again.....for the acronis....

 

[brendy]

You could buy one of Here, they are pretty much universal for ide and sata drives. plug new blank drive on to it and boot the acronis cd, itll show in acronis and you can clone the drives or a full backup into a TIM archive file.

 

[theeaglehunter]

can you put the full acronis system back up onto an external hard drive and just back up when required and leave it there should disaster strike? Or is this a bad idea/ have I got the wrong end of the stick? I have an HP Vista laptop with a lot of very important irreplaceable documents on so am definitely going to buy the acronis software after reading this and was wondering if an External hd would be sufficient or would I need to use cd/dvd? At the moment I backup using the norton anti virus backup function and the vista one which appears to be crap!

 

[RGuk]

You could buy one of Here, they are pretty much universal for ide and sata drives. plug new blank drive on to it and boot the acronis cd, itll show in acronis and you can clone the drives or a full backup into a TIM archive file.

Now that IS a gadget!!

Am I right in thinking that IF I was to set up a full back-up using Acronis, power down my laptop, put a NEW SATA HD in, I could effectively clone another drive anyway?
Surely the answer is yes, because to all intents and purposes, this would be the same as restoring the complete image as if I'd crashed another HDD?

I'm still wondering what happened to my existing seagate on my compaq? I now have a fujitsu, if this lasts twice as long as the last (apparently, they can sometimes not work from new??) it'll be time for a new laptop anyway.

Never had this sort of issue on 15 years of PC use. I've lost a few RAM sticks in my time and 1 power supply, but I had no idea Hard Drives were so temperamental.

 

[brendy]

With acronis you can backup nightly, that way you have a full image for as many days historically as our drive will hold or you can back up whenever you want. You can do files or partitions , its up to you.
An example, a customer has the server edition (not much different from std) he backs up between two removeable hard drives nightly, swapping the external drive every few days. He also backs up his databases (our software) using memory sticks, if anything goes wrong, there is nothing to stop us getting him right back up to date, our log backups via usb memory stick every 20 mins as a lot of prescriptions can be input in that time.
Hopefully you get the idea, you can backup as much or as little as you want.
Microsoft have a free utility called sync toys 2.0, you can syncronise your documents/pics/videos/other between two locations, again you can schedule these or do them manually, just another toy to play with. You can create as many jobs and pairings as you want.

Personally Id feel safe backing up weekly onto the hard drive, disconnect it when you arnt using it and use sync toys after any amount of serious document editting so you can copy changes to a memory stick that way you have the originals on the pc and the copies on the stick, the hard drive will come in handy sooner or later too even if just for a rebuild if the machine is getting a little slow. You can make one master copy with just windows and drivers and apps installed, then a weekly backup over writing the oldest as and when space starts to become an issue.

 

[RGuk]

eagle.....I store everything on a Lacie external drive

http://www.lacie.com/products/product.htm?pid=10995

This pocket sized beauty holds ALL the work from 2 home pcs, 1 office pc and one music studio pc. This is then double-copied to the work server. To think, there must be over 1,000 hours of music projects, all in my pocket.

The reason for this is that I ruin desktop PCs quite regularly with complicated music hardware and software, so I like to be able to fry the thing without any qualms.

I took an image using vista to this ex-HD and t.b.h. even the folks that fixed my laptop didn't fancy using this...then again, why would they, they have the windows vista disk for the hundreds of laptops they sell.

Acronis seems to suggest it can boot from a USB external drive (unless I misunderstand) so I am very keen.

 

[brendy]

Yup anything at all, though you ideally want to make a couple copies of the bootable rescue media just in case one gets scratched or damaged. I stick to cds as they are easy to store, label and dont get buggered by water.

 

[theeaglehunter]

Cheers Brendy you are a star, that is exactly what I thought it would let me do- it is just nice to have it confirmed as I have never heard of / used the software. Time to get the plastic out and make the order me thinks! What you describe is exactly what I'm after, something where I can do a full complete system back up initially and then update parts individually as I edit them and add new folders as I create them.