In a recent Hassle-Free PC column, I mentioned a hard drive tip. Read it in: "Simple Fixes for Hard Drive and Folder Annoyances". It's under the title "My PC Won't boot (OMG!)". (BTW, this is the continuation of a blog I started last week. See: "Disk Not Found" and Other Hard Drive Booting Errors.)
Here's the back story to the hard drive issue that I didn't have space for in the print column. It's long, but if it saves you the grief that I went through, I think it'll be worth your while.
Hard Drive Not Found
I bought my mother a PC probably eight years ago and loaded it up with the art and painting programs she wanted, including Print Artist and PrintShop Deluxe, as well as scads of games.
Every year or so, when I gave my mom a faster, hand-me-down PC, I'd use Acronis's True Image software to clone the old drive onto the drive in the new system. I went through this process because most of the programs were ancient (as is, well, uh, never mind). With the programs on original CDs and, yes, floppies, I didn't want to go through the horror of reinstalling everything. And I'm not joking about prehistoric: A few of the Hoyle card games had file dates of 1999; Print Artist was even older.
Daily Backups
I had a system: Once a week I scheduled Acronis True Image to automatically perform an incremental backup to a second drive in my Mom's system. She didn't create many new files, so the incremental files were small. Then once a week (when I was a good son), I'd stop by and bring along a small, portable Maxtor USB external drive. I'd create a fresh backup on her second drive and delete the incremental; I'd also do a full backup on the Maxtor and take that home with me.
Life was good. Until her drive stopped booting. The message: "Hard drive not found."
I checked her PC and tried for a quick fix. I'd hoped my mom had just deleted a critical boot file, perhaps a drive cable had come loose, or maybe the PC battery was dead. (A weak battery can create all sorts of problems. See Time Inaccurate? Change Your Battery.)
No such luck, so I brought the PC home to work on it. I couldn't get the fool thing to boot, so instead of wasting time, I decided to reformat the drive, grab the backup, and do a restore. I'd have her system back up lickety-split.
Hey, Bass, The File's Corrupt
In the 90s, before CDs and external drives, I backed up to a Conner TapeStor. I knew tapes were flaky, so I always used the program's Verify switch. It took forever, but that way I could be assured the backup was reliable.
Since I've been backing up to an external hard drive, I've felt comfortable that the data was reliably backed up. In fact, Acronis lets me map the imaged backup -- making it act like a virtual drive -- so I'm able to access every file. I often view the files on imaged backups, including my Mom's, so I've never even thought of verifying the actual image.
Boy, did I make a mistake.
But this blog's running long, and I don't want to lose you. So tomorrow, more on the corrupt Acronis backup image and why it was (and wasn't) Acronis' fault.
