Dell Issue

[tinpants]

Um, having read thru this thread I've realised that none of my stuff is backed up on my PC. All my business accounts and invoices, estimates etc and all my personal 5hit.

Errm, how do you back it all up? I'm not the most computer literate person in the world so the "kiss" method would be appreciated.

Ta muchly..........

[Dave20046]

Originally Posted by Kate Moss

Laptop wont start up - says hard drive is not there

error message 0141

what to do?

It's the pink one if that helps!!

hardrive dead

Bellerophon, if I were you I'd get an external hard drive & copy all your stuff onto it.
I'd also back up using dvds/cds (use makes like Verbatim or Taiyo Yuden), make a couple of copies of the same files.
If you dont have any burning software I'd recommend ImgBurn ( I don't know what OS you run), it's free.

i got a dell issue lappy is just running really slow ive took 10 - 20 gig of crap off it, run disk clean up and de fragged it but its still very slow any ideas?

Originally Posted by Bellerophon

Um, having read thru this thread I've realised that none of my stuff is backed up on my PC. All my business accounts and invoices, estimates etc and all my personal 5hit.

Errm, how do you back it all up? I'm not the most computer literate person in the world so the "kiss" method would be appreciated.

Ta muchly..........

Roughly how much data are you looking to back up? As drummer above has mentioned there's a couple of different ways to back up which I agree with, I'd go for a so called 'portable' external hard drive which is basically a laptop drive in a USB case. They're small, light and can be powered entirely off USB making them very convenient although if you're a desktop PC and less bothered about portability then desktop drives while bigger and requiring their own power are cheaper for the same capacity. Some examples of portable drives:

http://www.ebuyer.com/cat/Hard-Drive...ortable-Drives

In terms of software there's a couple I'd recommend, the first is Microsoft's free Synctoy - you simply tell it which folder you want to back up, which one you want to back up to and how you want the action to work (I just go for copying data from one to the other). Once you've created your folder pair you can simply hit 'run' at any time and the software looks at the two folder locations, works out what has changed or been added then updates your backup. As all the software is simply kept in a standard file structure it can be read by any system as normal.

The other software I'd recommend is what's known as imaging software which takes a snapshot of your entire drive. This means if you took an image today and your drive failed tomorrow, you could just buy another one, run a restore and you'd be exactly where you were. My choice of imaging software is Acronis as I find it's pretty user friendly and works well, you can choose to take differential images so rather than going through the time consuming process of imaging the entire drive you basically just add what's changed to the image which is much quicker. This is not quite as simple to use but the advantage is that you're getting a back up of everything which you can quickly restore to which is definitely worth looking into.

John

Phil, can you take a photo of the label on the drive and upload to the .Org? I'll type out a detailed answer as to how to swap over the PCB if you/kate are really desperate for the pictures!!

Kate, moral of the story, backup backup backup!! Then this stress is avoided.

Originally Posted by Bellerophon

Um, having read thru this thread I've realised that none of my stuff is backed up on my PC. All my business accounts and invoices, estimates etc and all my personal 5hit.

Errm, how do you back it all up? I'm not the most computer literate person in the world so the "kiss" method would be appreciated.

Ta muchly..........

Tesco Online are currently doing a 1TB external drive for £70. It's stupid not to get one. Then manually copy all your sensitive data over whenever you need to. That'll get you started, and post back if you need an automated solution.

It's worth checking instore as well, I noticed my local Tescos had restocked them and they're decent drives.

John

They send me a Hitachi 250gb replacement for the Toshiba 160gb hard drive I had!

Result in one way but means I can't swap the boards around.

How likely do you think it is, that I will be able to get away with sending a different knackered hard drive back to them? (or none at all!)

Regards
Phil

Have they said that it has to be sent back recorded delivery etc?

I'd be tempted to tell them "Its in the post."

They get a courier to pick it up, however it seems with all their departments, they don't really know what is going on. When originall raised, they said to hold on to the drive for 5 days to recover the required info. The next call from dell said to return it with the courier, as did the subsequent 4 calls from dell and their courier. I keep telling them I'm keeping it for a bit and they say ok.

I will apparently get a call within 5 working days, at which time I MAY say that it was sent back with the original courier to see what happens!

If this all goes tit's up then I shall return the hard drive from my prehistoric laptop that is in the attic, it still works but I doubt I'll ever use it again as the screen backlight flashes!