I think at this point, it is worth holding my hands up for your amusement, but if it saves somebody else falling into the same trap, then it is worthwhile. Are we sitting comfortably? Good, then I shall begin. (Have a pack of tissues to hand, though more for tears of laughter than anything.)
B]Prize Prat of the Week/Month possibly even all of 2005.[/B]
My main desktop, has all sorts of data that is hard to replace and a year ago, I purchased a 160GB Iomega Hard Drive. I was too smart, to just move the important data on to there and trust in the Lord, so I took the precaution of using it as a duplicate source.
After 6 months, the old 160 was filling up and I bought a 300GB Firewire/USB Maxtor HD. I even triplicated some data onto that and had everything synced up nicely.
Being a reasonably old hand, I then made sure that all of my data went to other than the C drive, in case of utter disaster. Things like Outlook/Express folders, favourites etc were all redirected onto other drives for the same reason. So far Conan, you get ten out of ten. Much data was backed up onto CD/DVD though not all (keeping track of that lot is not easy, so this was contingency plan Z)
I have been trialling a utility suite, this last few weeks and after one week, I could no longer access either of the Ext hard drives. I wrote accordingly to the suppliers, who announced a new version that would be bulletproof and I downloaded that.
Being a cynic, I tried both drives in the laptop and guess what? Nothing. They could not be read at all, but as for the data, of course I still had copies on the original drives. Yesterday, I reformatted the 160 and rewrote my music and photo collection to the Iomega, before then trying to back up the registry, defrag and create a rescue disk in case the unspeakable happened.
Whilst doing this, the machine hung mid process and that was that. On restart it would not even boot into safe mode. Attempts with the recovery console proved worthless and Muggins was totally b*ggered. The registry had gone for a long and eternal walk into the sunset. No option other than to put a clean reinstall of XP pro into place.
I am midway through this process now and initial indications are that data is ok and that although there are hours of reinstalling drivers, programs and everything else, that I may have (touch wood) got off lightly. I ain't sure yet and the butt is still puckering, but hope springs eternal.
So - How and why? I am as shocked as anyone that my reliance on the external Hard drives was so badly misplaced. I do not have the foggiest idea that two discrete disks could be so badly affected. (and on different busses, too!) Whatever happened to my system, was fundamental in the same way that hitting a brick all at running pace is fundamental.
Given this sorry state, I implore those that thought similarly about ext hard drives, that the only - ONLY - real backup is onto non volatile media and that although it is a pain, it is worth it. Those External disks are wonderful, but let the above serve as a warning that things can go horribly, horribly wrong.
I have learned a lot from this experience and will let you know if I get any sense out of the utiity people, though I suspect there is going to be a lot of backpedalling involved.
Right - Off to find my Dunces hat and stand in the corner.
Conan the (suddenly) incontinent