DAY 93

Update: Tuesday, 14-Jun-2005 10:57 AM

Just last Tuesday I was cruising along getting my work done and getting ahead . I was actually looking forward to my 100TH day of blogging and planned on a short celebration.

Actually, in my case a celebration was going to be something like a 2 hour hike to the beach and lunch and then a hike back to work.

No parties here.

Well anyway, that was Tuesday night. I ended the day by shutting down Windows XP and got a strange situation: Windows did not shut down.

Finally, I waited long enough, so I shut it down.

On Wednesday I got the surprise of my life when the machine had locked me out of Windows XP and all my personal settings.

Then I panicked.

I entered just about every password I had on file --hard copy in my "TO DO" list where I keep such information.

Nothing worked.

I pretty much spent all of Wednesday trying to get the pc working again. Luckily, I had my laptop with most of it up-to-date since I had prepared it just a week ago for the last trip.

Anyway, the day slowed down to a crawl and ended up without any progress. Then I decided to take drastic measures on Thursday of last week.

The first was to download a program that reset the password on Windows XP.That software essentially allowed me to "hack into" my own pc and get it going again.

That worked, but the system was very, very slow. After I entered my settings, many of them didn't work. However, that allowed me to verify that all the data was in good shape and the back up drive had no problem.

The pc that I have assembled myself is a AMD processor system with 2 CPU's and 2 GIG of RAM. The hard drives amounted to half a terabit of space (nearly 500 Gigs of data) that I have used to mostly achieve all the work that I have done for over 8 years.

Anyway, the system was still dead.Now I had to go deeper to resolve the issue. All this had taken another 24 hours and now it's Friday.

All I could think about was that this was suppose to be my 100th day of blogging. And here I was just sitting around and not doing much --as in progress.

Then I gathered all the software that was in the box and a new copy of Windows XP release two. I installed it late Friday and got the pc operational. But not to original speed.

Then I tried another new installation and that only led to the "BLUE SCREEN of DEATH" when there is a hardware mismatch or something else that Windows does not like.This was a clear message that I was not headed in the right direction.

Now it was time for radical measures.

Already 72 hours had gone by and I was still at basically the same point as the start of work on Wednesday.

I decided the only thing to do now was to reformat the hard drives and start at the very beginning.This would not be a troubling experience, but the problem is that I don't have IDE drives anymore. I have a pair of SATA hard drives and those have a different way of getting recognized by the motherboard.

So, I spent a good part of Saturday reading about what I needed to do and then got the hard drive installation software from Maxtor. This software saved the day.Not only did it allow me to fully reset the hard drives --reformatted and ready for operations --it presented clear to understand directions and warnings about what NOT to do. Sometimes, in situations like this, NOT doing some things is even more vital than what you do.

So, now the hard drives were setup in a RAID configuration that allowed me to have a mirrored drive. The first drive is the only drive that shows up as a "C" drive. The other identical copy is not even seen. As I do my work, everything is written to "C" and MIRRORED "C" and IF the original "C" drive stops working the other one takes over even without me noticing.Then I can replace which ever drive that was bad and move on without the loss of data.

After all of the setup I installed Windows XP (by this time I had seen the installation screen about 30 times over 3 days) and finished a successful installation.

Then it was a matter of coping over my sole file with all the working data. I have one file that I work with and that has been the way for several years. I have about 6 copies of this file on various computers.

The working PC has one that is what I always use. Another copy is on the back up drive on my main machine. Then I have two more copies on my back up PC and lastly, one more file on my laptop. About once a month I write another copy of the "working file" to one of the machines.

So, to go over my back up method that helps prevent a grown man from crying --Yes, loss of data can do this!

Here are the steps that I have taken:

1. RAID Mirror. Behind the scenes and happens automatically.

2. Working file backed up to my laptop, about once a month.

3. Then about once a week all the files that I have go to an achieve pc that also has two hard drives.

4. The only protection that I do not have is for fire and water damage. And I suppose theft, as well, although these days a used pc is worthless anywhere, I think.

My plan is to get a wi-fi back up drive that I can hide somewhere in the house and back up all the files to that. OR I can keep doing as I have done by taking an old hard drive that I don't use and just dump the files on that and then put it somewhere in the house away from my office space.

5. The main idea behind this is to have many copies of the information so that one type of catastrophe does not cause a serious problem. As I said a complete loss is the type of event that would make me cry, and I don't want to have that happen.

6. So, life is back to near normalcy after working 'til about 2 AM on Saturday finishing things up. On Sunday I had plans with family and I knew that without finishing my work and setting up the pc on Saturday, I could not be at peace on Sunday. I pictured me being there physically, but not mentally. That is not a good way to operate with kids.

7. In the end all is well. The only part that I have left to restore is the email. I just haven't decided how far back I want to do when I restore my emails.

Lessons Learned:
A good archival method and back up method pays good dividends.

Doing the work myself helped me retain my PC self reliance. I have been doing MAC work since 1983 and PC work since 1991 and after that I have never purchased a new pc. I have always ordered the parts and built my own pc. And at times like this it pays off to know what I have.

Lastly, I got the job done. Sure I was on my belly poking my fingers and a screwdriver into the box full of wires for a while, but it got done.

And at the end of the day there nothing more satisfying as a job well done.

Ok, I said enough about my problematic days. Now back to finishing the personal success dialog and going on to other items. Later. Sam.

BACK to DAY 92 | TODAY was 93 | NEXT is DAY 94