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For twelve years, Rich
O'Brien worked full time at helping people
get back to work after their computers failed.
Says Rich, "I know first hand about
how many hours, days, weeks and even months
it can take to recover from a computer disaster".
Rich sent me a thoughtful email after
I was offline for a while, in case I'd had
some computer troubles. This is the email,
and Rich has graciously allowed me to share
it with you.
I had a computer disaster myself in November
and wasn't happy about the data I lost and
how many days it took to be back up and running.
So I started to try to think of how to be
prepared to quickly and easily recover from
the inevitable next disaster. I then visited
my friend's office and found that he was way
ahead of me.
Here is a description of what my friend did
and what I plan to do to be ready to almost
effortlessly recover in a few minutes from
the next computer disaster instead of working
for days, weeks or months and still never
getting back to where I was.
My friend's computer has a second hard drive
with a handle on it. Using a kit which costs
about $30, a regular hard drive is made removable.
It slides out like a drawer.
He uses what is called image software to
copy the entire image of his C hard drive
to his D hard drive. He claims that with two
fast hard drives, he can copy an image from
one drive in less than 9 minutes. It seems
awfully fast, but suppose it took an hour,
you start it and go do something else.
If his computer fails to start for any serious
reason, say it was damaged by a virus or key
operating system files somehow became corrupt,
he has it set up so he can choose to start
from his D drive. He then can copy his most
recent data files from his C drive to his
D drive and use the image software to reimage
his C drive to make it identical to his D
drive.
The second drive is removable because he
owns a third drive (and possibly a fourth)
which he keeps outside of his home. He images
the third drive once a week and takes it back
outside to where he hides it. That way if
thieves steal his computer or his house burns
down, he doesn't lose all of his valuable
data and he has everything he needs to recover
quickly and be back in business in hours instead
of months.
There are two image software programs. One
is called Drive Image from PowerQuest.
The other is called Ghost from Symantec
Norton. The best way to buy Ghost
is in the Symantec Norton SystemWorks 2003
Professional Edition which includes Norton
Utilities, Norton AntiVirus, Norton CleanSweep,
Roxio's GoBack Personal Edition, and Norton
Ghost. Instead of paying $80 for Ghost alone,
you can pay far less and get all of the above.
Lately when I'm shopping for good prices on
software, I have been going to PriceGrabber.
At pricegrabber.com, click on their software
tab and do a search on Symantec Norton SystemWorks
2003 Professional Edition. You'll find
it for as little as $30 including shipping.
Drive
Image can be purchased
for as little as $27.85 but then you don't
get Norton Utilities, Norton AntiVirus with
free updates for a year, Norton CleanSweep,
and Roxio's GoBack Personal Edition.
If you are running Windows ME or XP, you
may be aware that a utility called System
Restore is hidden under Start - All Programs
- Accessories - System Tools. Microsoft was
so impressed with Roxio's GoBack software
that they licensed it, called it System Restore,
and have included it in Windows ME and XP
as a way to greatly simplify and reduce their
costs of technical support. System Restore
actually is GoBack extra-lite. It can restore
your computer to the way it was yesterday
when it was fine.
Unfortunately, System Restore is of no value
if you can't get Windows to start at all.
Roxio's GoBack, on the other hand,
can restore your system to an earlier time
even if Windows won't start. And while System
Restore requires that you remember to make
"snapshots" of your computer, GoBack
automatically records changes constantly.
My son warned me to not put GoBack on my
computer because he feared that it would really
drag down the performance. In fact, I haven't
noticed any drop in performance. GoBack runs
in the background, is no problem at all, and
has given me more peace of mind and saved
me once already.
Even though I'm using GoBack, I still like
the idea of backing up my entire drive to
one or more hard drives. If the hard drive
hardware completely fails, GoBack is of no
help. But if everything is safely imaged onto
a second hard drive (or third hard drive),
you can be up and running in minutes even
if your C drive breaks and never runs again.
I wrote the above on January 2, 2003. Since
then I've done research on backup software,
chose a wondrous shareware program called
Second
Copy 2000, installed it
on my computer, tried it for a month and paid
$29.95 to register it. Centered's website
is http://www.centered.com
Second Copy 2000 is very easy to setup. I
have it automatically copy all of my data,
documents and email files from one drive to
another 30 minutes after I first start my
computer each day. I delay the start for 30
minutes because my GoBack software wants to
do a lot of work when I first start my computer.
The next computer I buy is going to be equipped
with at least three identical hard drives,
and two of them will be removable. I look
forward to the day.
Rich.
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