Old laptop hard drive. Ideas?

I have an old Dell Latitude laptop with a 30 GB hard drive which I only am currently using 8 GB. I cannot afford to have this machine die on me. My business is based on it. I know it's getting to the age when the hard drive will wear out. I'm looking for ideas on how best to avoid or prepare for this.

I could get a new hard drive with adapters and ghost it over, keeping the old one as a backup but then I'd have to have a way of updating it that woud not become a pain. The drives on Newegg are full of bad reviews that all say they die quickly. Should I get a slow 4200 rpm Fujitsu for reliability?

I could ghost the drive over to a desktop drive that I already have and keep it as a backup.

How about USB adaptors? This Dell only has USB version 1 and would be slow.

Can anybody give me some good advice on what I should do?

Thanks

Dave kenjka:
I could get a new hard drive with adapters and ghost it over, keeping the old one as a backup but then I'd have to have a way of updating it that woud not become a pain. The drives on Newegg are full of bad reviews that all say they die quickly. Should I get a slow 4200 rpm Fujitsu for reliability?

Get ATA drive (not SATA!!!) rotating at 5400rpm... Should be OK...

I could ghost the drive over to a desktop drive that I already have and keep it as a backup.

That is something you really should do... And synchonize important data with
a least one location (desktop computer eg.)

How about USB adaptors? This Dell only has USB version 1 and would be slow.

Forget it, too slow...

Can anybody give me some good advice on what I should do?

Buy a 5400rpm drive, ATA (do not get SATA drive!!), bigger than 30GB, make a
ghost image on external drive, write that image to a new drive and keep it
as a backup... Install some synchronizing utility and synchronise important
data at least once every 2-3 days... I suggest you use AllwaySync...

Don't rely on any hard drive; rely on data that was backed up on few
locations (you could make two backups, just in case you loose one)...

--
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By runf

Damir Lukic,
http://inovator.blog.hr
http://calypso-innovations.blogspot.com/

"Dave" wrote in message
...
I have an old Dell Latitude laptop with a 30 GB hard drive which I only am
currently using 8 GB. I cannot afford to have this machine die on me. My
business is based on it. I know it's getting to the age when the hard
drive will wear out. I'm looking for ideas on how best to avoid or prepare
for this.

I could get a new hard drive with adapters and ghost it over, keeping the
old one as a backup but then I'd have to have a way of updating it that
woud not become a pain. The drives on Newegg are full of bad reviews that
all say they die quickly. Should I get a slow 4200 rpm Fujitsu for
reliability?

I could ghost the drive over to a desktop drive that I already have and
keep it as a backup.

How about USB adaptors? This Dell only has USB version 1 and would be
slow.

Can anybody give me some good advice on what I should do?

Thanks

Does the laptop have DVD write capability? If so, you could back up to that
as you have only 8 GB of data. Otherwise, you might want to get a PCcard
adapter for USB2 and a small portable USB drive for backups.

Dave wrote

I have an old Dell Latitude laptop with a 30 GB hard drive
which I only am currently using 8 GB. I cannot afford to
have this machine die on me. My business is based on it.
I know it's getting to the age when the hard drive will wear out.

They dont do that. It will just as likely carry on regardless.

I'm looking for ideas on how best to avoid or prepare for this.

Same way you should have always done that, proper backups.

Currently thats best done to another hard drive as frequently as you like.

I could get a new hard drive with adapters and ghost it over,
keeping the old one as a backup but then I'd have to have a
way of updating it that woud not become a pain.

Yep, makes a hell of a lot more sense to just backup
to another drive and change to that if the original dies.

You can just clone the current drive to an external and physically
move the external into the Dell if the original dies if you want.

The drives on Newegg are full of bad reviews that all say they die quickly.

Thats just because only those who have a drive die bother to report that.

The ones who dont, dont bother to say so.

Should I get a slow 4200 rpm Fujitsu for reliability?

There isnt much in it reliability wise with laptop drives.

I could ghost the drive over to a desktop drive
that I already have and keep it as a backup.

Yep, but that would mean that you cant come back from the original drive failing so quickly.

You may or may not care.

How about USB adaptors? This Dell only has USB version 1 and would be slow.

Doesnt really matter with that volume if you do the backup unattended.

Can anybody give me some good advice on what I should do?

One approach would be to backup to the desktop for best backup speed.

Buy a spare laptop drive now so that you can restore to that quickly if the original drive does
die, if you need to get back quickly because your business depends on the laptop working.

Just check that that works now before the original dies.

You just boot off a rescue CD with something like True Image
and restore the backup to the new spare drive.

Previously Dave wrote:
I have an old Dell Latitude laptop with a 30 GB hard drive which I
only am currently using 8 GB. I cannot afford to have this machine
die on me. My business is based on it. I know it's getting to the
age when the hard drive will wear out. I'm looking for ideas on how
best to avoid or prepare for this.

I could get a new hard drive with adapters and ghost it over,
keeping the old one as a backup but then I'd have to have a way of
updating it that woud not become a pain. The drives on Newegg are
full of bad reviews that all say they die quickly. Should I get a
slow 4200 rpm Fujitsu for reliability?

I could ghost the drive over to a desktop drive that I already have
and keep it as a backup.

How about USB adaptors? This Dell only has USB version 1 and would be slow.

Can anybody give me some good advice on what I should do?

Thanks

Well, as for copying over, this is simple. Use your desaster
recovery process, i.e. do a backup and restore to new hardware.
Since this is a mission critical system, I am sure you have this
process and test it at least once a year anyways.

Should you not be prepared in this way, please be advised that even
"reliable" HDDs can die without warning and that in fact a significant
faction of dead HDDs did not give any warning signs, see e.g. he
http://research.google.com/archive/disk_failures.pdf
Also note that notebook HDDs are in general less reliable than
desktop drives.

HDD "wear out" is not that much of a factor. True, the MTBF
increases after about 5 years of usage, but not dramatically.
HDDs just have a relatively high probability of dying dirong
their full life-cycle, when compared to electronics without
moving parts.

I would advise you to continue to use the drive, but make sure you
can survive both a catastrophic failure of the HDD as well as
the rest of the system.

If you go USB, 8GB can be fit on an USB memory stick today. However
hardware this old might not even support booting from USB or at least
USB over 1GB size. 1GB can still be done as "super floppy", but
larger ones cannot.

Arno

Thanks everyone for your ideas. Unfortunately I have never backed up. Sad but true. Even more sad is I think my inaction is quite common.

Here is what I am thinking of doing. Purchase a USB external harddrive and do a monthly full backup and daily differentials of all my data. If the laptop drive fails I will reload the OS, reinstall my programs and restore my data.

It would be nice to either ghost to a new drive now and replace the old one but as Arno points out, the new drive may be no more reliable. I still have the problem of keeping a backup of new data. How can you update a entire bootable drive image? I would have to do continual reimaging which sounds overly labor intensive and I don't really have a method to do that. The only way I can ghost over my current drive is to remove it from the laptop and attach it to my desktop machine with adaptors. I only have dos floppy based ghost.

To answer another question, the laptop does not have a dvd burner. My desktop does and I can map to it. Should I burn a dvd with a bootable image? Would that save me having to reload OS and programs. I can also save an image to a USB hard drive. Again, my ghost cannot do this so I would have to invest in more feature rich imaging software. Should buy Acronis?

I could use a USB flash ram device but for the same money I can get a hard drive based unit much larger to do both my laptop and my desktop. Also I have heard of reliability issues with the "Jump drives".

Dave wrote:

Thanks everyone for your ideas. Unfortunately I have never backed up.
Sad but true. Even more sad is I think my inaction is quite common.

Here is what I am thinking of doing. Purchase a USB external
harddrive and do a monthly full backup and daily differentials
of all my data. If the laptop drive fails I will reload the OS,
reinstall my programs and restore my data.

Since the laptop only has USB 1.1, it would be quicker
to backup to your desktop system over the lan.

It would be nice to either ghost to a new drive now and replace the
old one but as Arno points out, the new drive may be no more reliable.

Yeah, that makes no sense for that reason. In fact the old
drive may actually be a little more reliable than a new one
just because its survived the infant mortality time.

I still have the problem of keeping a backup of new data.

How can you update a entire bootable drive image?

There are a few systems like xxclone that can do that auto.

I would have to do continual reimaging which sounds overly
labor intensive and I don't really have a method to do that.

xxclone will do that auto. Its pretty slow the first time but quite
quick to do the updates, moving only what has changed.

The only way I can ghost over my current drive is to remove it from
the laptop and attach it to my desktop machine with adaptors.

You should be able to image to your desktop over the lan.
True Image can do that and ghost likely can too.

I only have dos floppy based ghost.

Its a dinosaur way past its useby date now. Acronis True Image
leaves it for dead and doesnt cost much and is excellent for
backups and for restoring the image if the original drive dies.

To answer another question, the laptop does not have
a dvd burner. My desktop does and I can map to it.
Should I burn a dvd with a bootable image?

I dont bother myself. I keep the images on hard drives and just make
a bootable CD to run True Image from if the original drive dies. Boot
that in the laptop with the replacement drive in it and restore from
the image on the desktop over the lan in that config.

Would that save me having to reload OS and programs.

Yep.

I can also save an image to a USB hard drive.

Yes, but that isnt going to be that fast with just USB 1.1 in the laptop.

Again, my ghost cannot do this so I would have to invest
in more feature rich imaging software. Should buy Acronis?

Yep, I think you should. It isnt that expensive.

I could use a USB flash ram device but for the same money I can get
a hard drive based unit much larger to do both my laptop and my desktop.

Yep, but dont forget that you only have USB 1.1 on the laptop.

Also I have heard of reliability issues with the "Jump drives".

Yep, but that isnt normally a huge problem because you usually see
the drive failure when doing a backup, not when trying to restore from one.
And they are now so cheap that you can have more than one too.

I just got a 16GB for $18 and an 8GB for $8. Much cheaper than hard drives.

Previously Dave wrote:
Thanks everyone for your ideas. Unfortunately I have never backed
up. Sad but true. Even more sad is I think my inaction is quite common.

Here is what I am thinking of doing. Purchase a USB external
harddrive and do a monthly full backup and daily differentials of all
my data. If the laptop drive fails I will reload the OS, reinstall my
programs and restore my data.

You should definitely do that. Even better would be to do that with
2 or 3 external drives used in rotation.

It would be nice to either ghost to a new drive now and replace the
old one but as Arno points out, the new drive may be no more
reliable. I still have the problem of keeping a backup of new data.

Indeed. Daily differentials are best for that in my experience.

Arno

Hey Rod,

xxclone looks good but how do you restore from a failed drive with it? You said you use trueimage and you made a bootable CD, what is on the bootable CD? Does it have networking to see the image on another machine? I don't know if image software packages come with the necessary boot disk to be able to see a usb device or a network share.




"Rod Speed" wrote in message ...
Dave wrote:

Thanks everyone for your ideas. Unfortunately I have never backed up.
Sad but true. Even more sad is I think my inaction is quite common.

Here is what I am thinking of doing. Purchase a USB external
harddrive and do a monthly full backup and daily differentials
of all my data. If the laptop drive fails I will reload the OS,
reinstall my programs and restore my data.

Since the laptop only has USB 1.1, it would be quicker
to backup to your desktop system over the lan.

It would be nice to either ghost to a new drive now and replace the
old one but as Arno points out, the new drive may be no more reliable.

Yeah, that makes no sense for that reason. In fact the old
drive may actually be a little more reliable than a new one
just because its survived the infant mortality time.

I still have the problem of keeping a backup of new data.

How can you update a entire bootable drive image?

There are a few systems like xxclone that can do that auto.

I would have to do continual reimaging which sounds overly
labor intensive and I don't really have a method to do that.

xxclone will do that auto. Its pretty slow the first time but quite
quick to do the updates, moving only what has changed.

The only way I can ghost over my current drive is to remove it from
the laptop and attach it to my desktop machine with adaptors.

You should be able to image to your desktop over the lan.
True Image can do that and ghost likely can too.

I only have dos floppy based ghost.

Its a dinosaur way past its useby date now. Acronis True Image
leaves it for dead and doesnt cost much and is excellent for
backups and for restoring the image if the original drive dies.

To answer another question, the laptop does not have
a dvd burner. My desktop does and I can map to it.
Should I burn a dvd with a bootable image?

I dont bother myself. I keep the images on hard drives and just make
a bootable CD to run True Image from if the original drive dies. Boot
that in the laptop with the replacement drive in it and restore from
the image on the desktop over the lan in that config.

Would that save me having to reload OS and programs.

Yep.

I can also save an image to a USB hard drive.

Yes, but that isnt going to be that fast with just USB 1.1 in the laptop.

Again, my ghost cannot do this so I would have to invest
in more feature rich imaging software. Should buy Acronis?

Yep, I think you should. It isnt that expensive.

I could use a USB flash ram device but for the same money I can get
a hard drive based unit much larger to do both my laptop and my desktop.

Yep, but dont forget that you only have USB 1.1 on the laptop.

Also I have heard of reliability issues with the "Jump drives".

Yep, but that isnt normally a huge problem because you usually see
the drive failure when doing a backup, not when trying to restore from one.
And they are now so cheap that you can have more than one too.

I just got a 16GB for $18 and an 8GB for $8. Much cheaper than hard drives.

Dave wrote:

xxclone looks good but how do you restore from a failed drive with it?

You dont, you use it to clone the original drive to another before it fails and
then just plug the drive you cloned to into the laptop when the original fails.

It produces a fully bootable clone of the original drive.

On second thoughts, that might not work too well with a physical
drive which has a restore partition on it like most laptops do tho.

You said you use trueimage and you made a bootable CD, what is on the bootable CD?

Just True Image and the linux it runs on. Not the image when the image is written to a hard drive.

Does it have networking to see the image on another machine?

Yes.

I don't know if image software packages come with the necessary
boot disk to be able to see a usb device or a network share.

True Image does.


"Rod Speed" wrote in message
...
Dave wrote:

Thanks everyone for your ideas. Unfortunately I have never backed
up. Sad but true. Even more sad is I think my inaction is quite
common.

Here is what I am thinking of doing. Purchase a USB external
harddrive and do a monthly full backup and daily differentials
of all my data. If the laptop drive fails I will reload the OS,
reinstall my programs and restore my data.

Since the laptop only has USB 1.1, it would be quicker
to backup to your desktop system over the lan.

It would be nice to either ghost to a new drive now and replace the
old one but as Arno points out, the new drive may be no more
reliable.

Yeah, that makes no sense for that reason. In fact the old
drive may actually be a little more reliable than a new one
just because its survived the infant mortality time.

I still have the problem of keeping a backup of new data.

How can you update a entire bootable drive image?

There are a few systems like xxclone that can do that auto.

I would have to do continual reimaging which sounds overly
labor intensive and I don't really have a method to do that.

xxclone will do that auto. Its pretty slow the first time but quite
quick to do the updates, moving only what has changed.

The only way I can ghost over my current drive is to remove it from
the laptop and attach it to my desktop machine with adaptors.

You should be able to image to your desktop over the lan.
True Image can do that and ghost likely can too.

I only have dos floppy based ghost.

Its a dinosaur way past its useby date now. Acronis True Image
leaves it for dead and doesnt cost much and is excellent for
backups and for restoring the image if the original drive dies.

To answer another question, the laptop does not have
a dvd burner. My desktop does and I can map to it.
Should I burn a dvd with a bootable image?

I dont bother myself. I keep the images on hard drives and just make
a bootable CD to run True Image from if the original drive dies. Boot
that in the laptop with the replacement drive in it and restore from
the image on the desktop over the lan in that config.

Would that save me having to reload OS and programs.

Yep.

I can also save an image to a USB hard drive.

Yes, but that isnt going to be that fast with just USB 1.1 in the
laptop.

Again, my ghost cannot do this so I would have to invest
in more feature rich imaging software. Should buy Acronis?

Yep, I think you should. It isnt that expensive.

I could use a USB flash ram device but for the same money I can get
a hard drive based unit much larger to do both my laptop and my
desktop.

Yep, but dont forget that you only have USB 1.1 on the laptop.

Also I have heard of reliability issues with the "Jump drives".

Yep, but that isnt normally a huge problem because you usually see
the drive failure when doing a backup, not when trying to restore
from one. And they are now so cheap that you can have more than one
too.

I just got a 16GB for $18 and an 8GB for $8. Much cheaper than hard
drives.