Trusting Technology With Your Important Files

[Philippe Cordier]

I'm posting this personal experience to warn about the risk of keeping your important documents solely as electronic files. Even having a backup, like an external drive, is not fail-safe.

In my case, my important files included a lot of DS material, especially copies of discussions on this forum, and also various typed notes, photos, and other documents related to DS. All of these were saved on my computer hard drive and also on a Seagate external drive. My DS files were not the only documents involved, but a small part of all the things I had worked on over the past several years, including five years of genealogy research and writing projects.

A few days after Christmas, the hard drive on my 5-year-old Dell laptop gave out without warning. Having to buy a new computer was not something I would have wished to do, but that seemed almost a small price to pay in comparison with the thought of losing five years worth of files. (I brought in my hard drive to a tech squad and was told it wasn't readable and even caused their equipment to freeze up.) Fortunately, I had backed everything up on the Seagate device (considered one of the best manufacturers in the business), except for the past month. My greatest concern in the next few weeks, in addition to buying a new computer, was to reconstruct the work I had done and now permanently lost in the past month.

I thought I could breathe easily about all my old files, and didn't even take time to try accessing them for a few weeks. When I finally did, I found that my Seagate drive was not recognized by my new computer. I spent several days in near panic phoning tech people at computer stores and searching online forums for people having similar problems. The tech squad at one large retailer had no clue as to why this should be. At another store, a sales person told me that the problem was the difference between XP - which was the operating system on my old computer - and Windows 7, the new operating system, and the only one available on any new computer now sold (except for Apples). He suggested I might try to install Windows XP on my new computer as well, which he said allowed a dual-boot, and that I would then be able to access my storage device. I searched online and found instructions on how to install XP as a dual boot, but found that I would need the original disk from my old computer having the XP operating system on it. Then I remembered that I had thrown out the disks and things from my old computer, having seen no reason to save anything from a system now considered obsolete.

I tried many suggested fixes I read about on forums, but none worked.

Luckily, I remembered that my local library has some old computers and was able to obtain permission to bring in my external drive. Unbelievably, my storage device was not recognized on the old computers running Windows XP either.

In the meantime I had been e-mailed with Seagate's support for several days, answering dozens of questions and asking many of my own, which always seemed to be only partially answered.

Eventually Seagate gave me a code to download software from their website which would allow my device to be recognized on the XP computer. I was then to make some configuration changes to the device and would be able to access my files on my Windows 7 computer although without full functionality. Now it sounded like the problem was not only an XP - Windows 7 incompatibility, but the fact that my new laptop is 64-bit, where the storage devices are made only for 32-bit computers (whatever that means).

To draw this long story to a close, I was eventually able to access my storage on my new computer and transfer all my old files to the new computer.

My question remains now: how should I backup up all my important files this time? The external drives seem a good bet, but obviously technology can fail or not work, as I had experienced. Jump drives are pretty risky; I've had more than one turn out to be defective, and if they're not used regularly, they can lose their electrical charge and everything stored on them (funny they don't tell you that on the package). There's also a risk of making a mistake with these devices (such as re-partioning them), which instantaneously deletes everything stored on the device. Last year I had looked into a company that backs up your system, but I read of countless problems and complaints from people who paid for this service, including problems with their computers slowing down and freezing from the software that is installed remotely. There is Google docs, which apparently has some glitches, and it appears you have to save one document at a time - not very practical when you have hundreds of documents. Plus they wouldn't be organized in the folders the way you have them on your computer. It's also impractical (for me, at least) to print everything out - that would be thousands of pages, and many of these documents are continually being added to or revised.

So at the moment I have a new Seagate device that I had bought last fall but never used. (The old one cannot be used to store documents on a 64-bit computer.) Low and behold, wouldn't you know, but when I plugged it in, a message popped up saying that this $70 device purchased late last fall is only for a 32-bit computer. Now Seagate has sent me a code to download software for this device, which will allow me to use it (hopefully) with limited functionality.

I don't know of a foolproof answer, and there may not be one.

I just hope no one else has to go through what I have gone through these past few weeks.

Backup your DS files and everything else that's important - but remember that technology has its limits, and there is usually no warning when failure happens.

[Mysterious Benefactor]

Then I remembered that I had thrown out the disks and things from my old computer, having seen no reason to save anything from a system now considered obsolete.

Never throw out old disks because, as you learned the hard way, one never knows when one might need them.

I still have my Win98 installation disk because the automatic screen capturing hardware/software that I use only runs on Win95/98, and I've never fond automatic screen capturing software/hardware to better it. (And it's amazing how well it works with a Pentium 4 3.2GHz processor even though no such processors were even dreamed of back in the Win95/98 days.)


As for backup storage, I like to save all my important files on DVD. DVD-R, DVD+R, DVD-RW or DVD+RW work fine. It all depends on what your preference is and what your drive supports.

[Philippe Cordier]

I appreciate your taking time to comment, MB.

I didn't realize that people were still using discs for backups. For myself, I would prefer having everything saved on one storage device – though I see now what a risk that is. I'll have to check to see how much can be saved on the DVD disks – I bought some a while back for some unknown reason, and they came in handy when I needed to copy my new laptop's Windows 7 operating system onto disks (it took three or four). I think I'll pass on Norton's online backup system after reading this: http://www.backuphowto.info/backup-with-symantec-norton-360

[Mysterious Benefactor]

People most definitely use DVDs for backups.    Single layer disks store 4.7GBs while dual layer disks store 8.5GBs. And, of course, if one wants to really be cutting edge, there's Blue Ray. Though, because you have a laptop, you would probably need to buy an eternal read/write drive - and I honestly have no idea what one of those would cost (I have an internal drive). But for what it's worth, with Blue Ray, single side disks store 25 GBs and dual layer disks store 50 GBs.

[MsCriseyde]

I'll second MB on using DVDs for backup. I use an external drive with Acronis software, but you have to remember that the drive stays hooked up to the computer and, because of this, can fall victim to a power surge or virus that affects your PC, so you can still lose everything in a flash.

Also, some of the backup software will not save your files in a format that is easily accessible in a pinch. For example, if my desktop PC won't boot, I can do absolutely nothing with the Acronis backup files on the external drive on a computer at work because I don't have user rights to install the Acronis software to access the files.

DVDs, on the other hand, you can pretty much use on any machine anywhere.

Having said all of that, if you're looking for a freebie program that will automatically back up files on a schedule that you set, visit Karen's Power Tools and check out her Replicator:

http://www.karenware.com/

There are some other useful gadgets there as well.

[Philippe Cordier]

Thank you ... with two knowledgeable people both recommending DVD disks as backups, I think I will go that route. It sounds like these external storage drives like I have are often problematic when transferring to another computer or computer system. With the figures you provided on the storage available on DVDs, MB, it looks like I might even be able to fit everything on one DVD, which would be very convenient. A few questions remain, which I'll note here, although I can research these on my own, too ... but here I go thinking aloud: the DVDs I have now are readable but not writable. I'm guessing that I would want the writable type. I would possibly need to transfer the files to another computer at some point, and would then need to be able to actually use the files, not just have read-only access. Secondly, I'm wondering about changing software formats - for example, different versions of Word. Right now my old documents are in Word 2003, I think it is. They easily convert to Word 2007 on my new operating system, but that must be done one at a time as I use them. I wonder how these would store on the DVD since I would have some documents in Word 2003 and some in 2007. And then when it came time to transfer the documents to a new computer, would they be transferred in those two different Word programs? Finally, each time I update a document, when I go to backup everything on the DVD, would the new document simply replace the old? Or would I need to use a new DVD every time I wanted to back up my files (even though I would not need to save old versions of documents). If these questions go beyond the scope of what this page is for, I understand!