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And we’re back!

We got almost everything of importance off the dead drive!

The only file that was MIA was Microsoft Outlook’s PST file. Teaches me for using Outlook without a backup… Another email app that didn’t keep email in a single file would have survived the crash better. How often do you go into email archives, anyway?

I’ve now got two 80 GB drives. The Western Digital Dell sent me and a new Seagate Barricuda I bought today. Scott asked if I was going to mirror them, but it doesn’t appear that my motherboard has a RAID controller. Or maybe it’s controlled by the BIOS? I have no idea — I’ll have to check the BIOS again. For now I will do nightly backups to the 2nd drive and see how that goes.

The hero of the day is Tom and OnTrack‘s EasyRecovery software.

Hopefully, this is the last post I ever have to write about data loss and recovery.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 10th, 2005 at 8:42 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

4 Responses to “And we’re back!”

  1. Dave Says:
    February 10th, 2005 at 10:20 pm

    You can use software RAID (slower) or you’ll have to buy a hardware RAID controller. Recommended reading from the wiki.

  2. Scott Says:
    February 11th, 2005 at 12:22 am

    Personally, I’ve always detested Outlook. I think it’s the worst product Microsoft have ever made (after all the others). I’ve been using Eudora since I got my first POP account (I was living with Dave if that gives you a timeframe). I still have archived mailboxes dating from that time, as Eudora saves each mailbox as a pair of files (.toc/.mbx). Eudora has its issues, but that “feature” alone has made me so thankful everytime my boss, friend, or father loses their entire Outlook mailbox.

    Thanks for the info about RAID, Dave, I’ll probabaly do a similar setup with my old Mini-ITX.

  3. Jay Says:
    February 11th, 2005 at 12:45 am

    I got sick of Eudora for reasons I’ve forgotten. Outlook 2003 is much improved and if you use it all the time (like I do for work), you get used to it.

    Anyway, you guys almost had a Preview button thanks to a hack I found. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work very well, so it’s gone.

  4. Dave Says:
    February 12th, 2005 at 12:13 pm

    I’ve started using Thunderbird since it was in beta, and I’m pretty happy with it for home use at least. Outlook 2003 is OK, but all I have at home is Outlook 2000 which is a bit sucky. I use IMAP and Outlook’s IMAP support is pretty lame.

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