Friendly reminder to backup!
So yesterday, I noticed my backup of my files (I use a synchronization) to Backup EHD didn’t work. I didn’t have time to look into yesterday. Today, the backup fails again. Two failed backups in a row is not a good sign. During the backup today, I started getting I/O errors. I can browse my Backup EHD but it still looks okay. So far so good. So I use Western Digital diagnostic to do a quick check. It has a big red failure on it. Hmm, that’s not good. I tried to run Western Digital’s repair tool and it hung. Uh oh. Ran ChkDsk and it reported bad sectors (bad spots on the disk) and tried to fix them and hung. Definitely looking bad. In the meantime, I start shopping to see the latest deals. I am now in the process of reformatting the EHD and hoping to salvage the drive itself (during a reformat it can detect the errors and stop using them) that’s assuming that more bad sectors aren’t created. We’ll see. I am not very optimistic.
Did I lose anything? Nope. The EHD that is failing is my Backup EHD. Which means it only contains the copies of everything from the my main EHD and my laptop. What it does mean is right now I am not currently backed up. Now that scares me! If the format fails, I will be being a new EHD tomorrow.
Because of this, I do want to share a few things.
Pay attention to your computer errors. I noticed one failure and then a few I/O errors. If this was a hard drive that had important things on it, I would be busy copying files off of it. In this case, I actually could browse the drive and could have gotten all my files off if I wished. I am guessing that complete utter failure wouldn’t have happened for a few days. (By formatting I am pushing it to work or fail.) Of the hard drives that have failed in our household, most have been a slow death (start getting more and more errors) and I was able to get files off that I wasn’t sure were backed up. Only one drive failure was a spectacular crash of it just not working that day or ever. So pay attention to those errors and you might just have a chance to salvage something.
Backup, Backup, Backup! If this was my main EHD drive or my laptop drive, I wouldn’t be quite as calm but at least I know I would have backups and it would just take some time to resort things out.
Shopping
Oh and I just had to share, check out these colors from Western Digital:
They must know that there are digital scrappers that love EHD’s.
All my EHD’s have been Western Digital with 2 of them failing now. So I think I am going to branch out and try a different brand. I saw a 500 GB Seagate EHD for sale for $99 at Office Max and I have in store coupon for $15. That’s a nice deal!
I haven’t checked out the rest of the sales, so I gotta go do that.
As for how that formatting is going?? Well, let’s just say, it sure looks like I am going shopping tomorrow for a new Backup EHD.
April 25th, 2008 at 5:21 am
I got a Western too because everyone said they were great, but then I didn’t like the software. The software compresses everything into one big file and you cannot just go to the disk and individually select files easily.
I got a Seagate and I just love it so far! The software works flawlessly, yet I can access it directly through my computer on the drive too. I’ve had it for maybe 6 months now with no problems. My Western acts as a 2nd backup that I do manually about once a month.
June 10th, 2008 at 2:30 pm
Hi Connie and Heidi! Glad you didn’t lose any info! I’ve got a Seagate - 2 years old, 160G, still no problems with it, and now I just purchased a new 250G Seagate Free Agent -it’s small, portable, and only needs to be plugged into USB ports, no electrical outlets - boy do I love that! Great for the laptop and traveling - I can now scrap in the van if we go on long trips!
(Well, for as long as the laptop battery lasts anyway - I bought an adapter that plugs into the lighter and you can plug laptops into it, but it won’t fit right in my van because of the way the dashboard is designed. 
(Stinks too, cuz it was expensive - it’s a really good one made especially for laptops, so as not to damage them with surges/spikes/dips in power.)
ANYWAY… (lol!) Wanted to say thanks for the reminder - love getting your ACDSee updates by e-mail, and when I came to your site today I found the instructions for syncing my 2 EHDs and it was SIMPLE-SIMON, thanks to your great tut! Thank you!
I have been without my ACDSee since shortly after I got my new ‘puter (several months back, now), cuz shortly after I installed it started constantly crashing and having problems. I un-installed and re-installed about half-a dozen times with no difference, till I finally went to the ACDSee forum and read your instructions for doing a “Complete” uninstall, and downloaded the file there - now my ACDSee is back up and I am SO HAPPY!! YAY!! Didn’t realize how much I missed it till I started remembering all the cool stuff it does! Now I’ve got some tagging to catch up on! LOL! (But I actually love doing it! It’s fun to go through some of my stuff that I haven’t seen for a while and had forgotten about - I’m finding all kinds of goodies I didn’t know I had)
Thanks again for your GREAT resources and help for ACDSee!
Hope your summer is off to a good start!
Jill
June 12th, 2008 at 8:47 am
Hi Jill,
I reformatted my backup drive and it worked for about 2 weeks again. Then it went flaky again. I didn’t trust it for my backups so I ended up buying a 320 GB Simpletech EHD for $89. It was a good deal and a pretty bright blue!
Thanks for the compliment. I am glad that you were able to find everything you needed to and got ACDSee back working for you.
Heidi