Painful Process
Jul 29th, 2006 by Don Ray
Alex, at INFOX, was able to get in touch with Microsoft in Costa Rico for me and have Microsoft authentic my software so I could begin updating Windows XP with all the fixes. I had bought my Windows XP prior to SP1 or SP2 so it takes a long time to download all the fixes.
After that I will have to install my motherboard drivers and then I will be in position to see how much data I lost with my system failure. I am installing on a new 80 Gig hard drive. I put my old 40 Gig hard drive as a secondary drive. I have looked at the drive using Windows Explorer and most of my data files appear to be intact.
I did lose a large amount of photos. That is unfortunate. The worst part is that it looks like I am not going to be able to restore the most current Outlook data. I have most of it on my laptop that is being repaired in Panama City, but I quit using the laptop a year ago, so any changes made in the last year or emails received and sent in the last year are lost.
I may try to make one attempt to use partition Magic on my corrupt disk and see if it can recover any data. It looks like I have about 10 Gig more space on that drive than before so that is potentially how much I have lost. But some part of that will be on my laptop.
I am probably a day or so from being back on the air. I have ordered what I need to rebuild my Linux box and an external hard drive to be used for a formal backup process.
I do wish you the best in this. I had a hard drive failure before. So, I know how frustrating it can be.
Thanks Marie. I am pretty close to being back up. I just have a large amount of lost data.
Be VERY careful with Partition Magic. It toasted MDH’s new Toshiba laptop a few years ago. I spend hours fixing it. The Partition Magic support person said sometimes it doesn’t work on laptops! I would call with your exact specs before installing it.
Maybe you can use the 2nd HD for backup?
I actually wound up downloading a program from the Internet to recover the lost files. It program worked like a champ. I did use Partition Magic to set up the new portable drive I bought from Alex.
I really like the new portable drive. I can now take it with me when I am in Panama City and it is just like having my PC. It just plugs into the USB port and requires no other power.
As soon as I am satisfied that I have all the data recovered, I will reformat my second drive and I will use it to keep a backup also. I also pucked up another internal drive and will soon start rebuilding my Linux system.