"John H." wrote in message
...
On Thu, 10 Jan 2008 19:50:54 GMT, "JoeSpareBedroom"
wrote:

"John H." wrote in message
. ..
On Thu, 10 Jan 2008 19:07:37 GMT, "JoeSpareBedroom"
wrote:

"John H." wrote in message
m...
I have a 160 GB external hard disk to which I tried to back up my
documents
and settings using the Windows backup system.

After about a half hour, I get a message saying there's not enough
room
for
the backup, and that if the hard disk is FAT 32, the backup can be no
larger than 4 GB. So I checked, and sure enough, the external HD is
FAT
32.

Now what? I already have about 50 GB of stuff on the external HD that
I
don't want to lose by reformatting (if that's what's required).
--
John H


When you get this working properly, where will the external hard drive
be
kept most of the time?

Same place.
--
John H


Then, you are protecting yourself against only one type of catastrophe: A
computer hardware failure. Storing both drives in the same building means
that when the building burns to the ground, you lose everything. Got a
safe
deposit box at the bank, or is there another location where you could
store
one of the drives?


Good idea. I wouldn't store a drive anywhere else, but putting some data
on
CD's and into the safe deposit box is an idea I hadn't thought of.

Thanks.
--
John H


You should "freshen" those, too, occasionally. They don't last forever.

wrote in message
...
On Thu, 10 Jan 2008 19:48:28 GMT, "JoeSpareBedroom"
wrote:

wrote in message
. ..
On Thu, 10 Jan 2008 19:21:58 GMT, "JoeSpareBedroom"
wrote:

wrote in message
m...
On Thu, 10 Jan 2008 19:07:37 GMT, "JoeSpareBedroom"
wrote:

"John H." wrote in message
news:dp5co3do346t5dedeton6q6s2rrat5mhgt@4ax. com...
I have a 160 GB external hard disk to which I tried to back up my
documents
and settings using the Windows backup system.

After about a half hour, I get a message saying there's not enough
room
for
the backup, and that if the hard disk is FAT 32, the backup can be
no
larger than 4 GB. So I checked, and sure enough, the external HD is
FAT
32.

Now what? I already have about 50 GB of stuff on the external HD
that
I
don't want to lose by reformatting (if that's what's required).
--
John H


When you get this working properly, where will the external hard drive
be
kept most of the time?


One step at a time, Doug. That issue was part of why I suggested the
idea of buying another drive for this project to John. :')



Small enough to fit his safe deposit box at the bank, right? :-)


Probably, but that wouldn't be such a great spot for it. As I'm SURE
you know, the biggest failure of any backup plan is that if it is too
inconvenient, it won't get done. A backup stored onsite is 1000%
better than a backup that doesn't get done.

I do my backup onto an external drive and bring it to the office.


John doesn't have an office. So, when his "onsite" burns to the ground,
there goes his backup hardware, too. I'm in the same situation. I have a
choice to make: Two sets of media, one of which I can't get to if the
bank
is closed. Or, no off-site media, and then I'm phuqued if the place burns
down.


John may or may not have an office, but I'll bet that unlike some
sourpusses around here, he probably has a friend or friends who
wouldn't mind being the offsite storage. I know many people who do
this for each other. I even know one guy who keeps his backups in his
pickup truck parked outside. Tupperware is a beautiful thing!

Off site doesn't mean the backup doesn't get done. Use the one at home for
a
week, then take it to the the safe deposit box and swap for the other one.
Or, someone else's house. Anything's better than storing all your backup
media in the same building. No sane corporation does that, unless they
have
a storage arrangement like a bank's.


For the overwhelming number of home users, having to go to the bank
and get a safe deposit box to swap disks would be enough of an
obstacle to make the plan fail. You can always improve on any backup
system in some way. The worst backup is NO backup, and I hear about
those tragedies all the time. A backup stored onsite is better than
that by a country mile, even though it's not "as good as it gets".

And major corporations generally hire a service that comes and swaps
backup media on a schedule, and takes the fresh backups offsite. They
also have a contract with a hotsite to use if they lose their
building. That way, they can load their backups at the hotsite and
have a place for the staff to work in a matter of hours, rather than
going out of business. John probably won't need that level of
security, either.



I guess it depends on how much value you place on years' worth of digital
pictures.

There's a response to this issue that I haven't seen yet. It's one I know
you're too smart to write. Let's see how long it takes before we see it. You
know the one I mean. :-)

wrote in message
...




For the overwhelming number of home users, having to go to the bank
and get a safe deposit box to swap disks would be enough of an
obstacle to make the plan fail. You can always improve on any backup
system in some way. The worst backup is NO backup, and I hear about
those tragedies all the time. A backup stored onsite is better than
that by a country mile, even though it's not "as good as it gets".



I keep it very simple. There's virtually nothing stored on my computer that
so important that it even needs to be backed up. I've occasionally burned
some CD's with stuff I'd like to keep like pictures or special music, but if
the computer died tomorrow, no big loss.

I also don't have a clue what I'd do with a huge hard drive, internal or
external.
My 3 year old HP laptop has a 90 Gig hard drive. After 3 years 72 Gigs are
still available.

Eisboch

"Eisboch" wrote in message
...

wrote in message
...




For the overwhelming number of home users, having to go to the bank
and get a safe deposit box to swap disks would be enough of an
obstacle to make the plan fail. You can always improve on any backup
system in some way. The worst backup is NO backup, and I hear about
those tragedies all the time. A backup stored onsite is better than
that by a country mile, even though it's not "as good as it gets".



I keep it very simple. There's virtually nothing stored on my computer
that so important that it even needs to be backed up. I've occasionally
burned some CD's with stuff I'd like to keep like pictures or special
music, but if the computer died tomorrow, no big loss.

I also don't have a clue what I'd do with a huge hard drive, internal or
external.
My 3 year old HP laptop has a 90 Gig hard drive. After 3 years 72 Gigs
are still available.

Eisboch



Highly technical answer: It all depends.

On Thu, 10 Jan 2008 20:10:35 GMT, wrote:

On Thu, 10 Jan 2008 19:48:28 GMT, "JoeSpareBedroom"
wrote:

wrote in message
. ..
On Thu, 10 Jan 2008 19:21:58 GMT, "JoeSpareBedroom"
wrote:

wrote in message
m...
On Thu, 10 Jan 2008 19:07:37 GMT, "JoeSpareBedroom"
wrote:

"John H." wrote in message
news:dp5co3do346t5dedeton6q6s2rrat5mhgt@4ax. com...
I have a 160 GB external hard disk to which I tried to back up my
documents
and settings using the Windows backup system.

After about a half hour, I get a message saying there's not enough
room
for
the backup, and that if the hard disk is FAT 32, the backup can be no
larger than 4 GB. So I checked, and sure enough, the external HD is
FAT
32.

Now what? I already have about 50 GB of stuff on the external HD that
I
don't want to lose by reformatting (if that's what's required).
--
John H


When you get this working properly, where will the external hard drive
be
kept most of the time?


One step at a time, Doug. That issue was part of why I suggested the
idea of buying another drive for this project to John. :')



Small enough to fit his safe deposit box at the bank, right? :-)


Probably, but that wouldn't be such a great spot for it. As I'm SURE
you know, the biggest failure of any backup plan is that if it is too
inconvenient, it won't get done. A backup stored onsite is 1000%
better than a backup that doesn't get done.

I do my backup onto an external drive and bring it to the office.


John doesn't have an office. So, when his "onsite" burns to the ground,
there goes his backup hardware, too. I'm in the same situation. I have a
choice to make: Two sets of media, one of which I can't get to if the bank
is closed. Or, no off-site media, and then I'm phuqued if the place burns
down.


John may or may not have an office, but I'll bet that unlike some
sourpusses around here, he probably has a friend or friends who
wouldn't mind being the offsite storage. I know many people who do
this for each other. I even know one guy who keeps his backups in his
pickup truck parked outside. Tupperware is a beautiful thing!

Off site doesn't mean the backup doesn't get done. Use the one at home for a
week, then take it to the the safe deposit box and swap for the other one.
Or, someone else's house. Anything's better than storing all your backup
media in the same building. No sane corporation does that, unless they have
a storage arrangement like a bank's.


For the overwhelming number of home users, having to go to the bank
and get a safe deposit box to swap disks would be enough of an
obstacle to make the plan fail. You can always improve on any backup
system in some way. The worst backup is NO backup, and I hear about
those tragedies all the time. A backup stored onsite is better than
that by a country mile, even though it's not "as good as it gets".

And major corporations generally hire a service that comes and swaps
backup media on a schedule, and takes the fresh backups offsite. They
also have a contract with a hotsite to use if they lose their
building. That way, they can load their backups at the hotsite and
have a place for the staff to work in a matter of hours, rather than
going out of business. John probably won't need that level of
security, either.


I like the truck idea!

Damn, you guys are full of ideas.
--
John H

"John H." wrote in message
...


I like the truck idea!


It's a terrible idea.

wrote in message
...

On Thu, 10 Jan 2008 12:17:29 -0500, HK wrote:

I am not running XP yet but I have a shrinkwrapped "pro" sitting here
for when I need to. 98SE still seems to be doing fine for what I do.


Hmmm. Have you considered MS DOS 1.1? :}

I used PCDOS 1.0 on my PC1 but I kept upgrading as long as I saw
benefit. 6.3 is about as good as DOS got. I haven't seen the benefit
in XP yet and Vista is a virus.

I have Windows 98SE on an older laptop that I use for a midi interface and
sequencer for the keyboards. It runs fine, but I haven't used it on the
'Net for a long time. The other computers, (this one on the boat) and my HP
both run XP.

I am no computer guru, but XP Pro has been the most stable Microsoft OS
since Windows 3.1, in my experience.

Eisboch

On Thu, 10 Jan 2008 15:35:04 -0500, "Eisboch"
wrote:


wrote in message
.. .


For the overwhelming number of home users, having to go to the bank
and get a safe deposit box to swap disks would be enough of an
obstacle to make the plan fail. You can always improve on any backup
system in some way. The worst backup is NO backup, and I hear about
those tragedies all the time. A backup stored onsite is better than
that by a country mile, even though it's not "as good as it gets".

I keep it very simple. There's virtually nothing stored on my computer that
so important that it even needs to be backed up. I've occasionally burned
some CD's with stuff I'd like to keep like pictures or special music, but if
the computer died tomorrow, no big loss.

I also don't have a clue what I'd do with a huge hard drive, internal or
external.

My 3 year old HP laptop has a 90 Gig hard drive. After 3 years 72 Gigs are
still available.

I lost all my photos and still had them backed up on a seperate hard
drive when I had the computer crash last year when the power supply
blew up.

Add insult to injury, I had the photos backed up online and guess what
happened there - the company had a fire and I lost 90% of what I had
backed up online.

When I get around to it, I'm storing everything on hard DVD or CD as
it comes in and I process them - immediately.

On Thu, 10 Jan 2008 15:52:43 -0500, wrote:

On Thu, 10 Jan 2008 13:39:29 -0500, John H.
wrote:

Well, I tried. I'm getting told I have a 'dirty drive' and to run chkdsk,
which I do with the 'fix' option. Checkdisk comes back and tells me
everything is great, so I run the convert program again. Get told the same
thing.

Maybe a new drive and reformatting is the way to go.
--
John H

Have you tried Norton NDD? It fixes lots of stuff CHKDSK and ScanDisk
can't.

No. I don't have anything Norton. For some reason, from many years ago, I
got a bad taste in my mouth from Norton. Don't remember the details.
--
John H

wrote:
On Thu, 10 Jan 2008 14:47:03 -0500, John H.
wrote:

On Thu, 10 Jan 2008 18:48:22 GMT, wrote:

On Thu, 10 Jan 2008 13:43:15 -0500, John H.
wrote:

On Thu, 10 Jan 2008 09:14:08 -0500, wrote:

On Thu, 10 Jan 2008 08:41:43 -0500, HK wrote:

wrote:
On Thu, 10 Jan 2008 08:07:52 -0500, John H.
wrote:

I have a 160 GB external hard disk to which I tried to back up my documents
and settings using the Windows backup system.

After about a half hour, I get a message saying there's not enough room for
the backup, and that if the hard disk is FAT 32, the backup can be no
larger than 4 GB. So I checked, and sure enough, the external HD is FAT 32.

Now what? I already have about 50 GB of stuff on the external HD that I
don't want to lose by reformatting (if that's what's required).
You have a couple of options.

If there is enough room on your computer's harddrive, copy the
archives there temporarily while you work on the external drive. Then
you can use a program called "Partition Magic" to do the
reconfiguration without risk to your archives. Partition Magic "could"
do the conversion with the files in place, BUT: No matter what method
you use to convert the disk to NTFS, the only way to guarantee your
files will be safe is to back them up somewhere else.


The other option is to buy another external hard drive. They are dirt
cheap these days. Newegg is very reliable to deal with and has a ton
of external drives to chose from. They even have a no name 160gb drive
for less than $70 including shipping. I've got several Maxtor's and
they have been great. Still relatively cheap.


I also HIGHLY recommend that you do NOT use Windows Backup for
anything you care about. The reason is simple: When you want to
recover those backups a couple of years from now, you will find that
every new version of Windows has a new version of windows backup, and
they are NOT compatible! Use a separate backup program.



Jesus. This is overkill. It is a relatively trivial task to convert a
drive from FAT32 to the New Technology File System, aka NTFS. There's a
simple procedure to accomplish it, which I posted here. You can do it
without losing the data on the hard drive. I've done it a few times
without any problems.
I don't care if you've done it a thousand times with no problem. It's
HIS data on the drive, and he said he doesn't want to lose it. I
believe him, and took that into account.

You have firmly established your lack of computer expertise in many
previous posts. Now you are recommending that he risk data he said he
doesn't want to lose. Guess what? You could cross the freeway
blindfolded as many times as you've converted drives while they have
data on them, and you might survive every time, as well. Please try
THAT experiment and get back to us.

One more time:
"No matter what method you use to convert the disk to NTFS, the only
way to guarantee your files will be safe is to back them up somewhere
else"
Which is the same advice Microsoft gives.
It's also just plain common sense.

The difference between me and HK is that I am presently employed by a
medium sized city (one of the larger cities in Connecticut) to oversee
the entire city network, which includes all city departments, Police,
Fire, Utilities, school system and libraries. A few more than 40
servers, and 2500+ desktops.

And this is my "retirement job"!

Just keep in mind that Harry's probably managed *two* large city networks
(LA and NYC, for example), with at least 100 servers, and well over 5000+
desktops.

I rode in a lobster boat a few times... Does that count for anything?



From what I have seen here of you, I doubt you could tie your shoes
without help. In that regard, you and Herring are well-matched. He's
pretty helpless, too.