CurtPalme.com Home Theater Forum

dturco

My dell 4600 is freezing up a lot and the hard disc is making terrible noises. How do I clone it to my back up computer an Acer, I don't know wha,t but I'm really afraid I will be losing all of my info if I don't do something really soon.

No dolly the sheep jokes i'm in real need here.

Or can someone recomed a online back up site it's been rebooted 5 times and the last warning was prevoius rebots have fail and something the n the screen came back on so i came right here while it's still working

HELP.

**AnalogRocks** · Posted: Wed Jan 06, 2010 5:16 am Post subject:

Got a shot gun....no...wait...this is you.....got a phaser? Laughing

If your new computer has the same interface as your 4600 for the hard drive just swap them over and copy the information from one drive to the other.

dturco · Posted: Wed Jan 06, 2010 5:18 am Post subject:

I am damn near computer eliterate. What interface a usb?Or some other type of cable?

MikeEby · Joined: 24 Jun 2007 Posts: 5237 Location: Osceola, Indiana

Go to Walmart and buy a USB flash drive, you should be able to find an 8GB for under 20 bucks. Find a port in the back it will fit into then copy all your files to it. Pull it out and take to the other machine then copy the files from the flash drive to your backup computer. Depending on how much data you have it might take a couple trips. Better do it fast...Hard Drives that make noise tend to die quick. What type of noise is it?

Mike

macgyver655 · Joined: 22 Aug 2007 Posts: 8508

Oh man. If its that noise where your hear the arm scraping back and forth across the platters............ Shocked

Isn't it sad how people dont back up there valuable stuff. Everyone should learn how to save their stuff.

Xeus · Joined: 07 Mar 2006 Posts: 111 Location: N.E. Wisconsin

If both computers are on a network together just copy over the "My Documents" folder. I assume you can reinstall any programs from original media. Another option, if you are using windows XP you can use Backup (<START><ALL PROGRAMS><ACCESSORIES><BACKUP>) and do a full backup your drive to an external drive. Then do an "ASR" backup using the same backup program to an external drive. This will backup the operating system and hard drive structure.

Install a new drive, install windows XP using the CD and select install using ASR. After the ASR install is complete recover your original full backup using the above backup program.

Matt

dturco · Posted: Wed Jan 06, 2010 5:34 am Post subject:

It's a grinding whining noise. Sounds like it wants to lock up from friction.

dturco · Posted: Wed Jan 06, 2010 5:40 am Post subject:

MikeEby · Joined: 24 Jun 2007 Posts: 5237 Location: Osceola, Indiana

Thumb drive is all you need for your Quick Books...The data is very small probably less than 10-20 MB maybe more depending on how long you have been keeping records still small by today's standards. Don't put it off..That can be a mess to recreate. If the drive dies you could loose it all. Are both computers networked on a router?

Mike

dturco · Posted: Wed Jan 06, 2010 5:51 am Post subject:

zGman · Joined: 22 May 2006 Posts: 599

This may (or not) be helpful - but I have found the best way
out of this sort of situation is to stop trying to boot the computer.
Just stop. Take out the drive and put it in the back up pc
or an external enclosure. If this is not something you are familiar
with then go to a tech. Once you stop trying to boot from the drive,
it will be much easier to recover your files. If the data is really
important, then you should consider to follow this advice, if not
just hack away.....Once the boot sector and file location sector
are damaged you will be hosed, and it sounds like you are already
90% there....

G

MikeEby · Joined: 24 Jun 2007 Posts: 5237 Location: Osceola, Indiana

Sorry I edited my original post...Are both computers networked to the internet on a router?

Mike

Nashou66 · Joined: 12 Jan 2007 Posts: 16171 Location: West Seneca NY

I agree with Galen remove the Drive and either put in in the other comp so you can copy one drive to the other or take the drive and back up comp ro a computer tech to do it for you.

if you had macs you can easily copy from one to the other with a usb or firewire cable and its built in copy function once it detects another comp connected.

Take it to a tech, hope you recover it all.

Athanasios

Xeus · Joined: 07 Mar 2006 Posts: 111 Location: N.E. Wisconsin

If you can burn cd's I would leave the PC on and start burning all data (not programs that you have original disks of) to CDs. As a side note, after this crises is over, start a regular scheduled backup of your drive to an external drive. You can use the schedular to do this as an automated process.

I can send you some batch file examples later if you want. This assumes you are using XP.

Matt

zGman · Joined: 22 May 2006 Posts: 599

Yes - seems like we posted about the same time - if you still have
the PC running I agree with the fellow who suggested to start burning
discs or run out to 24 hour walmart for usb drive. Certainly your
post prompted me to run a quick Acronis backup. I am not young,
and have been through this cr*p many times - good luck with it....!

Definitely recomend the external drive and Acronis, which allows
you to make a full copy of your system, and put it on a new drive
when the old one fails, which it will, every so often, when you least
expect it or can afford the time needed to recreate your business.

Disconnect the external drive completely when not in use - my
neighbor just about lost her web design business to a power surge - her
backup drive was hooked up and running and went down with the main PC.

Somehow, despite Curt's proclamations, my surge strips and UPS
systems worked just fine during that little demo....!
(Thanks to Tripplite and APC)

Another thing I will share is using CCleaner and Defraggler to help
ease the load on your drives......kinda like computer hygiene.....

Again - good luck!

G

garyfritz · Joined: 08 Apr 2006 Posts: 12088 Location: Fort Collins, CO

If you want to keep that computer running, you might want to take it to a computer tech and ask him to clone the system hard drive. Then have him replace the grinding hard drive with the new clone. Presto, you will boot up with a new quiet drive in the identical environment you were running in before.

If not that, then copying the data to another computer (using the USB thumb drive or other similar ideas from above) is probably your best bet.

dturco · Posted: Wed Jan 06, 2010 4:10 pm Post subject:

dturco · Posted: Wed Jan 06, 2010 4:17 pm Post subject:

garyfritz · Joined: 08 Apr 2006 Posts: 12088 Location: Fort Collins, CO

Dave, you're probably going to want a tech to do the clone anyway, and buying a new drive in the process is cheap -- probably only about $100 or so. But if the other Dell is a virus-infested mess, you might want to consider having the tech clone to it too! Assuming your grinding-drive Vista (#1) is OK, and you're running Vista on the other Dell (#2), you should be able to clone #1's grinding drive to a new drive and replace the grinding drive, and also clone #1's drive to #2's drive. That will give you two identical systems. You would have to futz with #2's configuration a bit, giving it new hostname &etc. You would also have to re-authorize it with Microsoft but I think that should go smoothly. You should probably also give it a new internal ID# (called the SID in earlier versions of Windows but I'm not sure about Vista). See e.g. this post. The tech should know about that and should know how to do it, if it's necessary.

ecrabb · Posted: Wed Jan 06, 2010 4:37 pm Post subject:

Gary, wouldn't cloning a drive from an Acer machine and moving it to a Dell (or vice-versa) be a device driver train wreck?

SC