What an ordeal...finally got LOR II installed ( Not a LOR II issue )

[jeffandnicole]

Well, as LOR II became available just before Christmas, I decided to wait until after Christmas to install the program. On Jan. 5, I backed up my LOR files to CD, and proceeded to install, or try to install, LOR II. Thank goodness I waited until after the Christmas season.

I downloaded the software, and upon trying to install it, it said that the LORTray needed to be closed. I tried closing it, and went to reboot my system. And then, I got the....



[align=center]BLUE SCREEN OF DEATH[/align]

[align=left]Now, in reality, it wasn't THE blue screen of death, but rather a Blue screen of you're highly screwed. Basically, I couldn't even get onto my PC - it would go into a disk check mode where it would stall out. I tried going thru the BIOS menus, doing a system restore, and reinstalling windows. No luck. Called some friends that know PCs well; they gave me a "Oh-no", and they weren't very hopeful for my situation. Finally called a PC repair guy I found in the Yellow Pages. He came out on a Sunday, tried some fixes (many of which I had already attempted) without any success either. He took the computer, not sure that I would ever see any of my files again (and after a few days of not hearing from him, wondering if I would see my PC either!!!). Of course, I hadn't backed anything up either.[/align]

[align=left]To make a long story short, after about a week, he was able to retrieve everything off my hard drive. He gave me a new hard drive - approximately twice the size of the one I had - and reloaded everything onto the new drive. [/align]

[align=left]The culprite...a nearly full hard drive! The PC Repair guy said my hard drive was 96% full! What must've happened is when I went to download a program - in this case LOR II - it hit a bad sector that was floating around, and basically killed the computer.[/align]

[align=left]The cost to get it fixed, including the new hard drive.... $500 !!! Plus, with lesson learned, I purchased an external hard drive, which I believe I have now downloaded everything to from my system. That was another $150 or so. Tonight, I tried downloading LOR II, and I believe it downloaded correctly...I'll find that out over the next several months.[/align]

[align=left]In the end, my LOR II upgrade cost me $650! Do I blame LOR however? Not at all. I determined early on that LOR wasn't the cause of the problem - it just happened to be the lucky program that hit that bad sector. Besides, that pales in comparison to a nasty storm a few nights ago that blew down my privacy fence...that'll be a $4,000+ job to get me a new fence (we were going to do that eventually...but that project's been moved up now)!!![/align]

[align=left]So, moral of this story...back up those precious files...especially pictures and other stuff that you may never be able to retrieve again![/align]

[align=left]As I said, in no way do I blame Dan, LOR, or anyone else...but luckily, I'm up, running, and, well, after I get my taxes out of the way, I should be on my way to programming for 2008![/align]

[align=left]Jeff[/align]

[cmoore60]

Jeff,

Glad to hear that you were able to recover all your files.

A few years ago my wife's computer hard drive was making noise. I was able to get all of her digital pictures burned to cd just as the drive died. I now have network attached storage. This unit is configured to go out and snatch files at a set time every day. At least the files are in more than one place.

I think you will enjoy LOR II.

Chuck

[caimakale]

I use mozy to back my stuff up, it does it automatically every night. I've seen too many people lose everything because they didn't have backups of their stuff.

[rwertz]

Glad to here you recovered your files.

I have a friend that took all digital pictures of his daughter from the day she was born. He lost all his pictures when his hard drive crashed. He ended up spending > $1,000 to have his hard drive sent to a special lab to recover the files.

Eight years ago our neighbor’s house burned to the ground. Again, her biggest long term lose was her pictures. So, there are times when the only thing that saves you is an "off site" backup.

I burn DVDs of all my files ~ every three month. I rotate the disks through an offsite location, our garage, and finally back into a spindle pack for long term storage. The process is a bit of a pain. But, I've already benefited from being able to pull a two year old backup from the spindle and recover a file.

[jeffandnicole]

Talking with the PC Repair dude, your friend's situation unfortunately isn't uncommon. He has witnessed many a heartache when he tells a parent that they've lost every picture of their children from birth thru (name their age). Our children are our dogs and other pets, and it was just as upsetting to think we lost pictures of them being puppies on up (actually, I will say it was my wife that thought of that first! In the meantime, I'm thinking of her financial records of her business I would have to reconstruct!)

[JimCanfield]

Scary! I guess I better go and back up my pictures. All you do is just save them to a CD?

[rwertz]

JimCanfield wrote:

All you do is just save them to a CD?

Yes, just burn the files to a recordable disk. Because I have gigabytes of pictures (etc.), I have moved from CD-R to DVD-R. I use RecordNow, but most of the newer operating systems let you use explorer to copy files and folders to the disk. Just be sure that you tell it when you are done so it actually burns the disk. It’s also not a bad idea to pop the disk back in and make sure the files can be opened.

Edit:

Here's a link from Microsoft on how to burn CDs in Widows XP

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/setup/expert/bridgman_august13.mspx

[JimCanfield]

Thanks, that was helpful.

[caimakale]

The problem with burning everything to a CD is its only as reliable as the end user. If you guys are anything like me, your life can get pretty hectic. Remembering to back up and then move your backup offsite is a nearly impossible task (I have tried), not to mention, I do enough work on my computer that I would need to do a weekly back up.

There are a ton of online storage companies out there. I keep all of my work files backed up on mozy, they give you 2GB of space for free. With their software it checks my computer every night for new & changed files. If it finds anything, it updates it. In all, it takes about 5 minutes each night to back everything up and I have the peace of mind of knowing everything is okay if my hard drive fails tomorrow morning. I keep my pictures backed up with another online storage company that I pay an annual fee for, but I get a lot more room.

I'm not pushing any products here, google "online storage" or "online backup" and make a decision for yourself.

[cenote]

I keep a external hard drive in my 2 hour fire rated safe. I try and back up every few weeks. At least twice a month. Pain in the butt, but hopefully will never need it. Forget the pictures:( Can't image loosing all those hrs of sequencing.:shock::shock::shock:

[rwertz]

caimakale wrote:

... make a decision for yourself.

Agreed, I started burning discs before online services were even possible (dial-up). Discs are definitely a manual process that requires diligence. One reason I keep doing it is the ability to go back years and pull a file I didn't realize I deleted etc.

The most important purpose of a backup is the ability to recover from a catastrophic event. And I'm sure the services you referenced accomplish this with a lot less effort.

Another off-site backup I didn't even realize I had (at first) was our web site. Our site is more than just Christmas lights. It serves as a portable photo album for us. So we’ve got copies of most of our favorite pics up there.



cenote, I won't even embarrass myself by discussing my backup efforts I use when I’m sequencing. Let’s just say a hard drive crash would only destroy about 30 to 60 minutes of work.