The 2008 Saga Continues

If you have not read last month’s post, you might want to do so. This really is part two of my last post.

I was hoping February would be a better month then January was, but so far that has not been the case. In essence, On Tuesday, February 5 my hard drive died. I have still not recovered but have made significant progress.

I have learned a few things from this experience. Today I will share one of those lessons. Never trust MicroSoft Backup. If you have never heard of this program, you can probably find it on your computer by going to start, programs, accessories, system tools, backup. But don’t worry about remembering this.

I have been using the backup feature since Windows 95. All backup does is condense files onto another medium. I have been using zip disks since 1998 to store those backup files. I used the system successfully with Windows 95 and 98. Then in 2005 I purchased a new tower and Windows 2000. I was shocked to learn that MS had changed the backup feature in Windows 2000 and it was no longer compatible with 95 or 98. With a lot of help from other people, I managed to restore my data from the zip disks onto a computer with Windows 98, then manually transfer them to the new computer. It was time consuming and laborious, but in the end successful.

I have continued to use the backup feature figuring it will be awhile before I can upgrade to XP. The problem is I have some very expensive software that is not XP compatible. So I reasoned that as long as I am using Windows 2000, using the backup feature was still safe. Well, it was not. Even though the only thing that has changed on this computer is the hard drive, not any of the software, the backup feature is proving to be a failure. The program just simply does not work. It took a lot of prayer and analyzing what was going on but I finally realized that for some reason the computer just did not know what program to use to open the backup files. The problem turned out to be the extensions were missing.

If you notice, all files have a two part name. The name may be "letter.doc". The first part "letter" is what you choose to name the file. Your name of you file is then followed by a (.) and then a 3 letter code that tells the computer what program to open the file with. In this case, Word would open letter.doc. Well, for some reason all my backup files were missing the (.) and the 3 letter extension (bkf) that told the computer these files are backup files. Starting with a file I could lose, I tried renaming the file, adding the (.bkf) to the file. I then went to the backup program to see if I could restore the file to my computer. It worked. So I tried another and another and another-each time it worked.

Since then I have discovered other problems. Not all of the files I backed up onto the zip drive actually made it onto the zip drive. I have never had this problem before, so I am totally baffled as to what happened. I think I have some backup files still around from 2005, but that still leaves a lot of missing items. Needless to say, this is a very frustrating problem and maybe a catastrophe. Some very important documents are missing.

The moral of this story-if you have important documents that you cannot afford to lose, save them to another medium such as a CD or external hard drive, but never never never use MicroSoft’s backup program.

Before closing I want to share something else I learned. While my computer tower only had a one-year warranty from the company I purchased it from, the hard drive itself had a longer warranty. Each hard drive has a label on it that reveals who produced the hard drive and when it was produced. In my case the hard drive was produced by Western Digital in late 2005. Western Digital hard drives have a five year warranty. So I went to their web site, requested a RAM, and sent it back to them. I just checked and they have received it. If all goes well, I will receive a new hard drive in the mail in about a month or two. Since a new hard drive can cost $70 or more, what I spent in shipping is well worth it. The web site says to wrap the hard drive in Styrofoam, but since I do not have it I used a lot of bubble wrap. Keep this in mind next time you have a hard drive failure.