PC Nightmare Averted

#1 Art Black

I'm an entusiastic "member of your club" . . . have even set your site as my "Home Page", so that I get the latest digi-news immediately, every day!

I note you use ME as your operating system. While I'm NOT a tech-gruru, everything I read and hear fron the "experts" says you better upgrade to XP before you REALLY have a problem. Everyone who seems to be qualified to judge, seems to agree and the sooner the better for your own protection!

Keep up the good work on "Photographyblog.com"

Art

2:52 pm - Friday, January 2, 2004

#2 Art Black

P.S. Intended to identify that I'm in So. California (Cyber-world is indeed small)

2:55 pm - Friday, January 2, 2004

#3 Mark Goldstein

Coincidentally I am considering upgrading to XP, as Photoshop CS will only run on XP/2000 operating systems :-( It's just that my PC is nearly 3 years old, so I'm wondering if I should just upgrade and get a new one with XP already installed. Also, there's 3 years worth of stuff on there that will need to be sorted through, backed up then copied across!

3:07 pm - Friday, January 2, 2004

#4 Damian

Mark,

Same happened to me, except I was running XP Pro. The problem is not Windows, (at least in my case) but some software I'm using that's not strictly "clean" (cracked).. Fireworks, gave an "internal error" and I had to uninstall and reinstall.. so beware, it might be some "free" software corrupting your sys... as usual better be safe and backup REGULARLY..

regards

Damian

PS : Happy New year from the Canary Islands, Spain...

4:17 pm - Friday, January 2, 2004

#5 Dutch

Three quick pieces of advice.
1) Either go back to Win98SE or go foreward to 2000/XP. WinME was a stopgap measure that never worked the way it should have.

2) Buy an external HDD and hook it up to your system.

3) Find the backup software of your choice and set it to copy your data (especially your photographs) to the external drive every night. If possible set it to just do a straight copy w/no compression so you can easily read the files if you have to take the external HDD to another computer.

Doing 2 and 3 has saved me on more occassions than I care to mention.

4:30 pm - Friday, January 2, 2004

#6 btezra

I must also send the same insofar as a comment, go now/immediately to Win/XP. Win ME, when i forst got my Dell was a severe pain to deal with, backup as often as possible and never run out of cdr's to save your work.

5:18 pm - Friday, January 2, 2004

#7 Ryan Terrell

Quite a fright! I it's always the most frustrating thing to lose work due to technical malfunctions. I'm glad you got it fixed.

5:47 pm - Friday, January 2, 2004

#8 Stephen

Mark, exactly the same happened to me this morning. I run Win XP Pro and i got the same message. The machine simply was not recognising the hard drives. When I went into the Bios. the two IDE drives were not being recognised. I simply moved them both onto the Auto setting, saved and rebooted. The system rebooted with not problem. I have to say it was a worrying moment, and I would certainly like to know the cause of the problem

11:33 pm - Friday, January 2, 2004

#9 Robert

Mark

For my two pennyworth re backing up your photos

I use a 40gb HD for the operating system and program files and two 80gb HD in a RAID Mirrior setup for my photos, so evrything I load from my flash cards is automatically copied (ie mirriored) onto a separate Hard Disc, which is in a removeable caddy that I put into a fireproof safe at night or when away from home.

I backup my finished work to CD as well, but I have had read failures on CD's in the past so prefer the security of the second Hard Drive.

For the sake of say a £100 or so for a second Hard Drive and a RAID PCI card you never have to remember to back up and if you have the bonus of fast Hard Drives you wont notice any loss of speed either.

I also have a second 40 Gb Hard Drive that fits into a removable caddy to which I make a complete copy of my system disk once a month

Better safe than sorry being my motto of course

I enjoy your site and find myself refering to it first for an overview I hope that you will continue it, 50,000 readers in twelve months is pretty good!

12:54 am - Saturday, January 3, 2004

#10 Ryan Terrell

Mark, I suggest buying a new Dell PC for around $500. You can customize it to include everything that you would possibly need for digital photos; here's the kicker, there is software that you can upgrade to (with your purchase) that sends your files and settings to your new PC.

Just a thought, (that is what I'm hoping to do when I get the cash.)

1:20 am - Saturday, January 3, 2004

#11 Mark Goldstein

Thanks to everyone for their comments and helpful suggestions. I've started looking for a new PC and will let you know what happens

11:27 am - Monday, January 5, 2004

#12 John Klein

Glad Everything worked out good - I have run into that same situation before...

1) Buy an external hardrive and hook it up to your system.

2) ALSO get a fireproof media safe to store your backup data in. There are fireproof safes on the market that hook right up to your computer via USB, Firewire, etc. It's a good feeling knowing my computer data is safe and sound AND fireproof.
http://www.klsecurity.com is where I found mine.

3) you can go backward to Win98 or jump up to to 2000/XP.

I say do all of the above!

7:41 pm - Monday, October 18, 2004

#13 Mark Goldstein

I am now running Windows XP, which is a *lot* more stable than Windows Me!

Getting an external hard-drive is on my to-do list...

8:48 am - Tuesday, October 19, 2004

#14 John Klein

Sorry to sidetrack here... but

Has anyone here ever run into the situation personally or know of anyone who has had to endure the hardship of a fire but kept their photos or other things in a fireproof safe?

I have read several testimonials and heard various stories about fireproof safes and fireproof media safes - Can any one relate more detailed info. ?

Thanks

2:03 pm - Tuesday, October 19, 2004

#15 Photo_bug

I ran a search of fireproof data storage and found this:

http://www.iosafe.com

Apparently, it's a external hard drive that can survive fires, flood, etc. The obvious advantage to this is that you don't have to remember to burn your data to a CD and then put it in a media safe. You can just simply drag/drop or have the backup software auto-backup your data into the Disaster Ready Drive. Very cool!

10:25 pm - Sunday, July 3, 2005

#16 Tobias Kruse

Photo_bug, actually you don't even have to drag/drop. There is a very small software package that runs in the background. Whenever the computer isn't doing anything the software mirrors predetermined sections of you hard drive to the DRD. Thanks for finding us!

if anyone has more questions hit me at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

3:28 pm - Friday, July 29, 2005