An easy ? about rebuilding PC

[griels]

What kind of data?

Hmm, my Documents folder, various downloads (allsorts), all my VST plugin dlls and some banks and patches, etc etc.

If you want to do it the brute-force way, you could make a new partition (temporarily or permanent, whatever you decide), copy the whole shebang over to it, then re-install on the primary partition, just to make sure you don't lose anything.

Greg

Yeah, sounds like the safest plan, thanks.

[Lunch Money]

Heh! Well, it seems like you're a lot like me... only recently have I started taking better care of stuff as I download it. I now have everything categorized so that backing up will be a breeze. Well, relatively...

The new DVD writer is turning out to be better than I hoped, too. Fit "My Documents" and "My Pictures" onto one disc with 1 gig to spare!!

Now, if only I had known that my laptop doesn't seem to like DVD+R, I could have tried DVD-R instead.

Stupid formats...

Stupid incompatibility...

Grr.

[griels]

Heh! Well, it seems like you're a lot like me... only recently have I started taking better care of stuff as I download it. I now have everything categorized so that backing up will be a breeze. Well, relatively...

The new DVD writer is turning out to be better than I hoped, too. Fit "My Documents" and "My Pictures" onto one disc with 1 gig to spare!!

Aye, the new machine will have a Dual Layer DVD burner. About time too - the prospect of backing 200GB up on CD-Rs seemed a little tedious.

[Sascha Franck]

Seriously, I decided to not back up on CDs or DVDs anymore.
From my experience (and others seem to share these experiences), media quality is at least questionable, so after, say 5 years, you would just find yourself backing up old media again because the media might have become faulty allready (imagine my shock when I found out that a 5 year old CD I backed up some songs onto wouldn't be readable anymore allready, even if I never touched it and stored it in some rather dark and even tempered place).

So, all my backups will from now on go onto HDDs.
With my current USB HDD caddy it's a bit fiddly to put them disks out/in, so I'm looking for a thing similar to the G5s IDE slots (with those you don't need to connect any cable for standard sized IDE drives, you just slide them in and lock them), but apart from that, I just bought another Seagate 160GB one for 69,- Euro. IMO you can hardly beat a price of less than 50 Cent per gig - at least not in case it's that convenient!
No need to start any burning program, no need to worry about coasters - all that at an amazing speed!

Yeah well, HDDs go downhill every now and then as well, but so far, for me they have been the most reliable media (apart from streamers, but that's out of discussion).
Plus, I do OF COURSE back up my most important things twice (on another DVD or CD, or maybe even HDD).

[Lunch Money]

I agree with that. It's always important to have redundant copies.

Optical media is unreliable, but it is cheap. I've lost more from a HDD than from Optical, but that was because I wasn't smart about it. Right now, the idea is:

1 optical copy
1 copy mirrored on my laptop's HDD
1 copy on the data HDD

Now, the flaw with that, for me is that my laptop is running out of space. So a redundant optical copy might be a plan.

When I get a bit of $$, the best thing will be to use an external HDD that is storage only, and unplug it when not in use to save the moving parts, etc.

Right now, optical media is cheap. Taking coasters into account, we're getting $0.08 USD per gig. At that price, it's worth spending a touch bit of extra time to make extra copies.

But at the end of the day, I agree that HDD is the most reliable and most convenient solution.

Greg

[morelia]

Thanks Greg. I have tried different power plugs and none of them work. The SL and MA jumpers wouldn't have changed but I checked them anyway and it is DVDRom as master and DVD-R/RW as slave. That is how it was before. No sign of life at all from the offending drive. Not even an eject. Funny thing is though it shows up in the "My Computer" window. Not in the BIOS though. I tried unplugging the ribbon cable and powering up and no sign of life still. I see you are fresh out of ideas but thanks for your help. I am not sure what to do now either. Maybe try another drive. I think I have an old one lying around here somewhere. I just can't seem to grasp how this could happen.

Thanks

[Lunch Money]

I don't know what to tell ya. If no plugs worked, then it's definitely the drive itself that is DOA.

That's crappy news. Is it too old to replace under warranty?

Greg

[morelia]

No it is only about 6 month old. Still there seems no reason why it won't work. I guess if I try another drive and it is fine that will seal the deal.