New Hard Drive

[Tom Hamilton]

Did you ever lose a hard drive? Not good. So, the question is: how should one proceed to re-load a computer.

The Toshiba repair facility installed the new hard drive and Windows XP today.

Tomorrow I will tackle restablishing internet connections, loading Office, printer, wireless connection, re-establishing the wireless network etc.

Any particular order of battle? Any thing to "watchout for"?

I look forward to your suggestions.

Thanks, Tom...in Houston with a old computer with a new hard drive.

Oh, did I mention that regular backups would have been a good idea. DAMHIKT

[Chuck Wintle]

Tomorrow I will tackle restablishing internet connections, loading Office, printer, wireless connection, re-establishing the wireless network etc.

No particular order needs to be followed. just have all the necessary cd's handy as you will need them.

[Doug Shepard]

I would take advantage of Windows XP's ability to create multiple restore points as you go (accesories->System Tools->System Restore) just so you can roll things back if one of your installs mucks things up. Once you get the internet connections re-established, I'd also download any OS updates from Microsoft before you start loading any application software. I'd also visit the sites for any of your hardware and make sure to download the latest drivers/utility software too.

[Tim Armstrong]

Yup - I would say Doug has got it right. Go out and run the Windows Update in full before you do much installing of anything. Doing Office early on is probably a good call but doesn't really matter - don't forget to do updates after you install office too. The new Microsoft Update will do both or you can just go to the microsoft.com/office to scan for Office Updates alone.

[George Kretschmann]

No order and no woodworking for a good day. Mine went out a few months ago and loading all of that stuff is a pain in the backside, it's not hard but time consuming.

[Tom Hamilton]

Well, I'm sitting in the family room, reading the Creek, wirelessly, on the new laptop, so it guess this is computer gloat.

Thanks to all who responded, the new hard drive accepted the restore discs and we are good to go.

The wireless works, I can print SMC remotely and now it is just cleanup and tweeking to make Mr. Gates computer, my computer. You know, get Robo Form working, delete the stuff that was included with a new computer, (I'm not going to subscribe to ..fill in the blank) and get pics of the granddaughters into the wallpaper and screensaver.

Oh, and put SMC in the top of the favorites.

Thanks for the help with this non-woodworking project.

Tom, headed back to the shop tomorrow to work on dovetails.

[Andy Pedler]

While I do work in the computer industry, my wife is the real computer guru (former IT worker). Anyway, we set up our home computer with two hard disks and a RAID controller. RAID stands for Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks. The two drives work together but look to the user like a single drive. Any time data is written to one of the drives, a mirror image is created on the other.

While that may seem wasteful, it is the best way to protect against a hard disk failure. In 3 years, we've had two drives fail. When one fails, the computer still works just the same as always, just running off the one remaining functional drive. Then we buy a new drive, replace the failed one, and viola, we're back in business. Since hard disks are so inexpensive these days it is a cost effective solution.

If you get someone to help you set this up, ask for a Mirror RAID setup. There are lots of different flavors of RAID configurations. You want mirrored. The other RAID configurations have their benefits, but they don't solve the data loss problem.

Good luck!

Andy Pedler

[Lee DeRaud]

If you get someone to help you set this up, ask for a Mirror RAID setup. There are lots of different flavors of RAID configurations. You want mirrored. The other RAID configurations have their benefits, but they don't solve the data loss problem.

RAID setups can be useful, but they're a trifle difficult to install in a laptop.

[Tim Armstrong]

Tom, Congrats on the new set up. Glad everything worked out for you. Cheers.

[Jerry Olexa]

3-4 months ago, my HD fried. I considered installed a new one (they are pretty reasonable). Ended up w a new PC (good excuse). Glad yours turned out so well.