Saving Personal Data

Data on disks can make one totally insane. I haven’t had a good solution for many years, always “waiting” for the time when I can have a nice setup with a desktop, a laptop AND a great backup and backup of backup and … so on.

So now, with not having said desktop computer, only having a really very old Win XP computer from the mid-2000’s I’ve had my oldest, most precious, photos on a hard disk inside that machine, and though I truly believe in separate disks, time and action have forced me to use my 1TB for storing all that stuff to be partitioned to run Win XP AND store all my stuff.

Backtrack to last year. I had a 320gb drive that was partitioned for Win XP and All My Stuff, two partitions. Something went sideways and Windows wasn’t starting, and I couldn’t even see my files via connecting to anything else. I got an external Sata dock and Win 7 said the drive was empty, nothing, noninitialized, etc.

Win XP Wouldn’t recognize it, and eventually it worked out that I found this thing called TestDisk … which I thank God for since I needed it AGAIN … OK, what it does is allows you to get into a drive that Win thinks is broken … it is, and TestDisk will go deep and find your stuff. Yes, you can fix a drive. But man if that’s what I want, it’s always about … save the data. I don’t have extra stuff around … lets see, back then it was … sigh, the 1TB drive was new and I had to put all that stuff on it and through the means of trying to get things to run Win XP I ended up having no choice (recent drive and sata dock purchases) but to use the 1TB drive to host Win XP AND My Stuff.

So then we had internet problems the half of the year. Not really, only on that one machine. Ethernet, drivers properly installed, but I had to System Restore many times, then I ended up recently having to reinstall Win XP. Great, Fresh … got everything in line and no internet. It was #$@.k#$@dkald#$@ Anyhow I finally figured out SOMETHING to make it work, but I didn’t like it since “Automatic” wouldn’t work at all.

Plus that Win XP was ON MY Terra-byte drive and I didn’t want it there … and then the wonky started, I realized that one of those times of Sys Restore or reinstall… Win XP marked my My Stuff partition as Active and … I was toast.

It was too late. Missing NTLDR … akdjfklasdlkjfjkladsfjklaslk;dflk;adjflkjadlkfjlk;ajdf;lkjdslk;fjasdkljf (that’s how I felt) … so then, flip flopping things around I found my OLD 40GB drive actually WORK and such, as long as it’s level it doesn’t make horrid sounds, so I put WIN XP on that and right out of the box, with SP3 then drivers … bam! Fast internet without fiddling.

So … something was wrong before. Anyhow, I was taking the drive tray off of the 1TB drive and I dropped it. #$@%#%#%@ Yeah, the drive.
From there, it wasn’t a simple “repair” of WIN XP it was now, OH My …. DATA!

Test Disk to the rescue. Actually I tried “System Rescue CD” which was laying around. Crap for me. Test Disk was lying in my old downloads on my Win 7 laptop. I finally remembered that and listened as it tried to scan and do something. Basically it didn’t work with it inside the system. Once I had the Sata dock up and running with the right electrical cord it fired up the drive and Test Disk took forever but finally produced something, and Win XP went bonkers with Auto play windows for all these new drives it recognized. Wow!
I mean, I didn’t change anything in the Test Disk program, but something changed enough for Win XP to see that stuff. I moved the newer stuff only. I don’t have the space to move the old good stuff, plus I still have the 320GB drive that it came from which may or maybe can’t be fixed … but it can give up more data again, I do believe (it’s in a pretty good state via the Sata dock, I can use xcopy in cmd and it’s pretty good, very little of what it didn’t get. But now I am able to use Windows to look at stuff on it. It’s not as flaky as it was last year. Anyhow, it’s stable enough I can re-acquire that which I acquired before, again.

That means I can hopefully wipe the 1TB drive and start over, is it OK or not? We’ll find out. Also, that 320GB drive, have to do something with that too. I know, I need two more new drives so I can make it all work out safely. No three new drives. There’s a 3TB external thing I’d like to archive my video and photos and such on. Then a nice 500GB or so for the XP Computer, and … oh forget it. Just something has got to give so that I can build my powerful system, then I can rebuild the Win XP machine in a new case and MB setup … and then get an all in one computer for the Family room.

Why do I want an XP computer? Why not? It seems useful at times. It’s nice to keep old stuff in working condition. But I don’t work too well on that. I like my higher resolution, beautiful Win 7 … yes, I do like it, as bad as it is, it’s their best so far. I’ve also used Fedora & Ubuntu and looked at other distros. I am a PC, but I like my stuff to look good and run easily, but I want to fix it if I have to. I like coding and commanding and stuff, but it’s not something I have gotten to very much, only if I’m in the mood for it. So when I just want the internet and programs on my computer to WORK, I choose Win 7, for now.

So it’s a day of hoping to deactive that 1TB drive partition and see what happens.