Re: Disk drive damage continues even in Windows 2003


"Norman Diamond" <ndiamond@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:eDz8ykJyFHA.3856@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Thank you, I did have a good laugh over your posting, but after a few more
> minutes I'm going to remember that disk drive again.

I'm sorry for not being able to provide more pain relief.

> I have ordered another 250GB USB disk drive as planned, and will copy
> everything that can be rescued. After that I will do hand-operated
> mirroring using Windows Explorer to write backups to both drives, just as I
> have been doing with this one, and just as I used to do with two or more
> under Windows 95 after I finally learned how to get that much working under
> Windows 95[*]. I still wish to find out which files won't be rescued so I
> can back them up from some other source instead.

If that's what you want to do, I may be able to help. Download my
WinTools package from http://www.mvps.org/ArcaneIncantations/wintools.htm. In
it, you'll find two programs which I wrote for just this purpose along with a
sample of how to set it up. QBack does the file copying and RegistryBackup
exports the Registry files that can't be copied. I use this to do a back up
of each of my machines to my file server every night (and it will also work
with USB drives). If you want to use something else to do the copy, you can
still use RegistryBackup to back up the Registry.

> Oh, there is an exception though. I used Windows Explorer to give
> Administrator access to the System Volume Information directory on the USB
> drive. And guess what was there. I don't think Windows 2003 or 2000
> creates restore points, so it must have happened when the drive was attached
> to a Windows XP system. Windows XP must have seen a new drive letter that
> it hadn't seen before, so it hadn't been told not to put restore points on
> that drive letter that hadn't existed before, so it put some on it. Restore
> points are so useful on USB hard drives, right? Well, one of the files in
> one of the restore points is inaccessible. Even a right-click and selecting
> Properties can't get its properties. I'm not going to cry over the loss of
> that file. But that's not the only lost file. When NTFS structures are
> corrupt, I wonder if I'm going to lose the entire contents of the partition,
> just like Windows 95 used to do to FAT partitions.

I don't know how useful these files are. Even Win2k creates a System
Volume Information folder but it doesn't seem to do anything useful with it.
I don't rely on anything I don't have control over.

--

- Gary Chanson (Windows SDK MVP)
- Abolish Public Schools


.

Relevant Pages

  • Activation window dead
    ... I think part of Windows got dumped during the BSOD. ... Restore wouldn't work. ... That brought back one of my internal DVD Drives. ... I bought a new video card to replace the buggy one but don't want to start ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.help_and_support)
  • Re: STOP on shut-down, optical drives or drivers?
    ... Windows update loose. ... thought that this could be a different type of driver issue dealing with the ... the PCI Bridge that is used to connect to the CD-ROM drives. ... Some malware can restore themselves, and to prevent it, System ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.help_and_support)
  • Re: Help. Toshiba Equium L40 series !!!
    ... it says English (windows vista) so i press next again and a pop up says ... Windows Complete PC Restore ... Restoring The Complete Windows Operating System does ... HOW DO YOU FORMAT THE HARD DRIVES? ...
    (microsoft.public.windows.vista.performance_maintenance)
  • Make the Most of Your New PC
    ... mint Windows Vista computer this holiday ... the Workgroup name is exactly the same for all the computers in the ... that doesn't support USB 2.0) and low-capacity portable hard drives. ...
    (microsoft.public.windows.vista.general)
  • Re: Lsassl.exe
    ... No Windows disk came with the notebook, ... boot the target computer with either a Bart's PE or a Linux live cd such as Knoppix and retrieve the data that way. ... You will need a computer with two cd drives, one of which is a cd/dvd-rw OR a usb thumb drive with enough capacity to hold your data OR an external usb/firewire hard drive formatted FAT32. ... As for returning your wife's computer to factory condition, most HP's have a hidden partition on the hard drive with a restore image. ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.general)
Loading