Catastrophic Failure

[FloridaOrange]

Had my hard drive take a dump on me this afternoon, I really hope I can recover my data. After I rebuilt my machine about 6 months ago I pulled everything off of my external backup so I could reorganize stuff - never got around to it. :mad:

In the course of getting things straightened out I somehow managed to fry the power supply - I mean I actually fried it; sizzle, puff of smoke and a smell that the wife shortly started to yell at me about.

Also realized my wife accidentally threw my debit card out. Hasn't been a good day.



Let this be a reminder for all of you - back your stuff up!!!

[Cookie]

Ah, sorry to hear about all of that, tomorrow will be better.

[FloridaOrange]

Eh, I've got some work to do this weekend so tomorrow won't really be better. I've got to either recover my cad or borrow the bosses cad for a job that is supposed to be done on Monday. Right now I don't have word or excel either which I need.

[Cookie]

Too bad, but at least you are making me ( and I think others) too, smile with that avatar, I love that one. It is just too funny. Right now, it makes me want a glass of OJ. :)

[FloridaOrange]

Just remember, somewhere an orange gave up it's short life for that glass of OJ.

[Ian Gills]

I'm backing up mine as we speak....for the first time in 2 years. :eek:

I hate doing backups. I have at least 40 gig to put over and it takes so long.

[FloridaOrange]

I'm backing up mine as we speak....for the first time in 2 years. :eek:

I hate doing backups. I have at least 40 gig to put over and it takes so long.

I have used in the past a program called Second Copy, it's inexpensive and does it on schedule. Unlike most free programs it only backs up new and updated info in the set range, once it does its first copy the rest happen relatively quickly.

Getting back my data from my old hard drive is a little beyond my skill, I'm going to ask a friend to take a look at it this week.

[Scuba_Dave]

I have a spare 160g hard drive in my PC that I use for backups
Its an automated incremental backup - only changed files
I also backup to CD/DVD's
I want to add another external Network drive for storage & backup

[jimbo]

... sizzle, puff of smoke .....!!!


It is not well known that all electronic devices are built with a smoke chamber locked inside. If you do something which unlocks the chamber and allows the smoke to escape, the device can no longer function.


For a couple of years, I have subscribed to Carbonite, on line backup. It works continuously in the background, and has saved my butt once already.

[FloridaOrange]

I have a spare 160g hard drive in my PC that I use for backups
Its an automated incremental backup - only changed files
I also backup to CD/DVD's
I want to add another external Network drive for storage & backup

I have on-board RAID but it sucks. I meant to add on a dedicated RAID controller but like everything else it remained a thought rather than an actual task.

External drives are soooo cheap these days.

[Scuba_Dave]

Yeah, my wife's PC I setup using the on-board raid, (2) 160g drives
My system has the ability, but I need to add another 500g drive & then re-install everything

[FloridaOrange]

Is it an ASUS board? I just haven't had luck with 3 computers and the ASUS RAID.

[Scuba_Dave]

It's actually a Dell, not sure who makes their MB
The last system I built had the ASUS Raid, sold that one

[Ian Gills]

In the old days there was something called Norton Ghost that would create an image of your drive (even the software and the settings).

Vista put a nail in the coffin for that one for me.

So now I just backup my user files and software. If things ever go real bad it will be a lot of work getting things back.

[Scuba_Dave]

You just need a newer version of Ghost
$70 & yer back in biz

[FloridaOrange]

I think the Second Copy and a handful of other backup programs will ghost the drive also.

[Ian Gills]

If you hadn't sold the Mustang then none of this would have happened.

You have only yourself to blame.

I would never sell a car like that.

[Scuba_Dave]

Mustang? I had a '66

Custom roof

http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y105/Daveywb/Vehicles/RebelFlag.jpg

[Ian Gills]

I bet that went quicker than Florida's old orange Mustang.

[FloridaOrange]

I bet that went quicker than Florida's old orange Mustang.

Doubt it, unless it was worked on a bit. :cool::D

Just kidding Dave, specs on your old one? Mine was a Competition Orange '04 Mach1. Would pull upper 12's with a good driver on street tires. Pretty quick for no forced induction.

Ian - you should get an 03-04 Cobra, that would make you stop feeling so bad about the tea thing. Best bang for the buck modern hotrod.
http://i176.photobucket.com/albums/w187/fly4navy117/SonicCobra3.jpg
Hopefully that's next for me -- can easily be a 600 hp monster.

[Scuba_Dave]

I put all my $$ into the paint job :D, not the engine
That was scanned in from a pic (dirty), paint was clean

I painted the flag one drunken Saturday, finished about 2am
Big square taped off & painted red
Then you tape off a big X & paint the white
Then create the stars & stripes along the X & paint blue
So at the end you can't tell what it looks like until it dries & you start peeling everything off

[Ian Gills]

I don't know if that Cobra would have enough oomph for me. Remember, I often travel with my wife and some shopping.

And where I live is quite hilly. It looks like it might stall out trying to get up the hills.

[FloridaOrange]

I don't know if that Cobra would have enough oomph for me. Remember, I often travel with my wife and some shopping.

And where I live is quite hilly. It looks like it might stall out trying to get up the hills.


More than enough oomph for you, your wife and a cat or two. It'll only stall going up a hill if you drive it like an MG. ;) Haven't you figured it out Ian? The real american dream is a V8 powered sports car, not plumbing....unless you plumb a custom twin turbo intake. :D

[Ian Gills]

Matt, V8 muscle cars are fine for the young family with a baby.

But for mature families with two kids, 600hp is just not going to cut it on the school run. School books and lunches all add weight and that Cobra would struggle, especially on some of the shorter interstate ramps.

I can see it now. You're in the Cobra. It's rush hour. You're on the ramp. Put your put to the floor to get up to Interstate speed and whack. Rear-ended. That 600hp could just not deliver.

For a family car, I prefer something like a German-made Bugatti Veyron. It's a modest car, nothing too special with the 8.0 litre W16 engine I have come to like in mid-size saloons like this. It generates about 1000 horsepower, which is really what you need come winter in the snowy North East.

http://concours.smugmug.com/photos/55849713_DKxDy-M-1.jpg

But you can make a Mustang into a family car.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqbZscI8aFE&feature=related

[FloridaOrange]

Oh a Bugatti is indeed a fine car, but it does nothing for the American experience. A Bugatti needs to be able to wind out it's gears on the german roads, very few US roads could do a car like that justice. I'm pretty sure UK roads couldn't do it justice either.

Interesting read regarding the Veyron:

But buying a Bugatti Veyron is a lot more tricky than you would imagine. To get your name down on the list, you have to pop down a £200,000 deposit, and sign a contract. The contract´s fine print contains quite a lot of interesting tidbits, including the fact that the whole deposit is non-refundable. So there will be no changing your mind, then.

DIY servicing? Nope.
Even after you would take delivery of the vehicle, you can´t do whatever you want with it - the contract has a series of rather strict rules in them: For one thing, you have to agree to let Bugatti do all the servicing and repairs. Which means that either do engineers have to fly in from France, or you could, of course, drop the car off at the factory yourself: There will be no tinkering around with the engine on a lazy sunday afternoon then.

Mind you, a simple oil change takes 42 litres of oil (yes, the oil sump takes as much oil as the volume of fuel an average family saloon stores in its petrol tank), so you may not want to do any of that in the first place. Of course, if your car needs a new clutch, you would be rather upset if you happen to live in Rio de Janeiro, and have to ship your car 5700 miles - practically to the other end of the world. But such is life of a supercar owner.

And when you are sick of it...
In a few years, when you are tired of the most powerful production car the world has ever seen, you may wish to sell it. And if you do, you are - once again - out of luck: Bugatti have a clause in their contract which means they have to approve of the buyer before the car is sold. If they don´t like them, Bugatti reserves the right to buy the car back themselves, as they do not wish to ´delude the reputation of the brand´. In other words: they don´t want a lot of **** stars, drug dealers and bling-toting gangster-rappers cruising around in their cars.

Poor drug dealers. I guess they are stuck with the BMW M5s, Koenigsegg CCs and McLaren F1s of the world, then.


http://image.hotrod.com/f/9255386/113_79878_Large_Rod_Test+2003_Mustang_Cobra+Rear_B urnout_View.jpg

This is the American dream. :D

[Dorrough]

Well, I don't have a Mustang, but can offer some backup advice. Unless you just enjoy doing it, don't try to do RAID at home. RAID is great for business data centers and network file servers, where you can't tolerate any downtime. The advantage of a RAID array is that the system can tolerate the complete failure of any of the drives by reconstructing data on the fly, and keep running while you "hot swap" the bad drive - the enclosure is made so that you can pull the old drive out, plug the new one in, never have to shut down, and then the software will rebuild the data on the new drive. Works great - but it is complex. For home use, I would never do it. I have an external hard drive that is about three times as big as my laptop drive. I back everything up to it: operating system and all, so that if I had to I could boot off that drive and have all my data there. It backs up every night. Then I use the rest of the space for iTunes files, photos (which are also copied to CD or DVD), whatever. If there is a fire, I can grab that drive on my way out of the house. And it's dead simple: the simpler the process, the more likely I am to do it.

On a side note: you can download (for very much FREE, although it is nice to donate) a program suite called OpenOffice. This is an open-source product that gives you a spreadsheet program, a word processor, and a presentation tool, much like that expensive one which comes from Redmond. I have the real MS Office on my system, but for anyone who can't shell out the big bucks, or needs something in an emergency, OpenOffice can open, read, and save MS Word, Excel, and Powerpoint files. Did I mention it's free?