What is the Best Way to Maintain Your HD Apart from Microsoft's Ch

[Cytomax]

Hello all,

I am currently starting to amass a bunch of important data on my hard drive and was thinking if there was a proactive way in which i can maintain the integrity of my data. I was searching around and found a program which claims to do such a thing and more such as retrieve data and fix (certain types) of broken hard drives

http://www.grc.com/sr/spinrite.htm

I watched some of the videos and read some of the reviews and i must say i am very impressed with it

I was going to purchase it but i thought it best to ask if

1) Anyone has ever heard of the program

and/or

2) Does anyone have any recommendations on a similar program

Thanks in Advance

Eddie

[Jeremy]

Make a backup of your data?

Create a second partition for storage, so if your OS gets hosed and you have to reformat, it'll just be the OS partition and not your storage partition.

Burn to CD/DVD and handle them gently.

For data recovery software use R-Studio.

Fix a broken HDD? The only option is to buy a new HDD or get it replaced through the warranty if it has one. A Seagate SATA2 320GB 16MB @ NCIX is $100 CAD. Doesn't take long to save up for stuff like that nowadays.

Edited April 6, 2007 by Jeremy

[ripken204]

85$ USD

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16822148140

Cytomax, if you really want to back things up then get another hard drive. the one above is an amazing one.

[gamehead200]

Make a backup of your data?

Create a second partition for storage, so if your OS gets hosed and you have to reformat, it'll just be the OS partition and not your storage partition.

Burn to CD/DVD and handle them gently.

For data recovery software use R-Studio.

Fix a broken HDD? The only option is to buy a new HDD or get it replaced through the warranty if it has one. A Seagate SATA2 320GB 16MB @ NCIX is $100 CAD. Doesn't take long to save up for stuff like that nowadays.

I second Jeremy's advice. I have one partition specifically for Windows and programs and another just for data (music, videos, documents, etc.) Works out great when you want to reinstall Windows every once and a while! I also take backups of everything every so often.

[ripken204]

well that way works for just setting aside your data but its not meant for backup by any means... if the hdd dies then wheres the backup? everyone should parition and if you have very important info that should definetly be backup up. by dad back up his data on a large zip disk, so thats another option..

[Jeremy]

well that way works for just setting aside your data but its not meant for backup by any means... if the hdd dies then wheres the backup? everyone should parition and if you have very important info that should definetly be backup up. by dad back up his data on a large zip disk, so thats another option..

That's why I suggested he backup his files to CD/DVD or another HDD.

[Cytomax]

First, i would like to thank all of you for replying to my question.

Second, I agree that all of you are correct

What i didnt mention is that i do backup the things of utmost importance like documents, music, picutures, etc...

BUT

The thing is that i have over 40 full length 8 GIG DVD movies that i bought and i like to copy them to my Home Theater PC along with all the video that is recorded onto it from the TV. It would be way to costly (Double) to be keeping backups of all of this on another HD so i would just like to know if there was a program that could kinda like tell me if something is going wrong and maybe fix it...

and yes i am aware of S.M.A.R.T but i am just looking around for other possible alternatives.

Thanks in Advance

Eddie

[jaclaz]

Cytomax, are you aware of Murphy's Law?

NO program, NO software, NO hardware can foresee the event of a break up.

S.M.A.R.T only "looks" from time to time for some parameters, and if any is "strange", throws an alert. A perfectly sound (as seen by S.M.A.R.T. or ANY other technology) HD can fail a few milliseconds after the end of the scan.

If you want to be safe, backup, if you value your data, backup, and yes, it has a cost.

What you might be careful about would be the actual software and media you use to back-up.

jaclaz

[ripken204]

jeremy-i completely agree with everything that you said. thats why i even posted a link for the hdd u said on newegg. im talking about what gamehead said, it sounded like he said making partitions is all that he would have to do. but my advice is to have multiple hdds and partition each of those hdds.

[Andromeda43]

Hello all,

I am currently starting to amass a bunch of important data on my hard drive and was thinking if there was a proactive way in which i can maintain the integrity of my data. I was searching around and found a program which claims to do such a thing and more such as retrieve data and fix (certain types) of broken hard drives

http://www.grc.com/sr/spinrite.htm

I watched some of the videos and read some of the reviews and i must say i am very impressed with it

I was going to purchase it but i thought it best to ask if

1) Anyone has ever heard of the program

and/or

2) Does anyone have any recommendations on a similar program

Thanks in Advance

Eddie

You're talking about Steve Gibson's "Spinrite 6". It's a tech tool, not for use in backing up your data.

And, at almost $100, it's a pricey tool at that.

If a drive seems to be failing, Spinrite can be used to scan and repair bad sectors, recover data (sometimes) from bad sectors, etc. It's not for the common User and can take many hours to run on a large HD.

To back up your data you need an archiving or Imaging program. Something that will Image your HD in just a few minutes.

There are several well known programs on the market, including Acronis True Image and Norton's Ghost.

For various reasons, which I won't go into now, I prefer Ghost 2003, run from a DOS boot disk, to back up my entire C: drive at least once a week. That job only takes about six minutes on my SATA II hard drive.

I store the Image file on a second HD or DVD, so if C: ever goes up in smoke, I have a mirror Image of that drive which I can restore to a new drive in just a few short minutes.

If you came to me as a customer, I'd set you up with your own Ghost backup system.

Using it is a piece of cake!

good luck,

Andromeda43

[Andromeda43]

To prevent the data corruption and crashes that befall so many, HD maintenance is just as important as maintenance on a jet aircraft engine or a race-car.

M$ has always given us the basic tools to keep a HD healthy. For years, we've had Scandisk for FAT-32 drives and Chkdsk for NTFS drives. Then going clear back to DOS we've has defragmenters, to keep things neat and tidy.

Spinrite was written back in the 80's, along with Peter Norton's "Speed Disk". Both were excellent programs for their day.

Then came PCTools with their Compress program, another excellent Defragmenter.

So, let me bottom line it.

Keep your HD error free and defragmented and at least weekly, do a full HD backup with whatever program you choose.

Acronis True Image and Norton's Ghost are the most popular.

Cheers!

Andromeda43