Contingency Plan Alpha!

[Binary Ranger]

Hello! Before I begin, I just want to say I am a huge fan of Batman. I also rather enjoy Iron Man. Why does any of this matter?... Because I CARE!!!

Also, I am using Batman and Iron Man as an example for myself. Both of them have contingency plans in the event of a crisis. (Batman more so I think) Rather it is a plan to take out the entire Justice League should they go rogue, or in the event some evil genius takes control of your power armor, contingency plans are an important part of success and preparation.

My contingency plan in this case is what to do if my computer is inflicted with the dreaded blue screen. I've had this happen to me a couple of times before when I was much younger and had no knowledge of the PC.

I couldn't fix it and I couldn't buy a new one so I had to go without a computer for many years. Those were the darkest in my life... *shudders*

Now, I do have a portable hard drive that I use to back up my files quite frequently. So if a blue screen should occur, all I would have to do is re-install windows and then reload the lost files right?

If it is right, could someone describe to me how to go about doing it? Step one being my computer suddenly gets blue screen. Where do I go from there?

Any help would be much appreciated!

 

[Matt77]

In case of an emergency, you should have ALL your data backed up onto another HDD. What I've done in the past is have 2 HDD's, one main, one occasional. Once a week, I would copy the old HDD's data onto the new one's, and unplug the temporary HDD for a rainy day. Or you could just use Emergency Linux

 

[Binary Ranger]

Yes, but I don't know what to do if the computer gets the blue screen. Literally, I have no idea what the next course of action should be. Do you set it on fire and watch it burn? Do you type in "Lyoko" and then return to the past?

 

[Matt77]

If you're doing what I did,
Put in the emergency HDD, boot off that, and copy the data off the temporary HDD and overwrite the original HDD after formatting it. Voila.

 

[Binary Ranger]

If you're doing what I did,
Put in the emergency HDD, boot off that, and copy the data off the temporary HDD and overwrite the original HDD after formatting it. Voila.

...And that will restore Windows on the computer?

 

[Matt77]

Ye.

 

[Ethereal_Dragon]

My suggestion, set up your computer so that you use a small drive as a BOOT drive, and for applications. I have identical 64Gig SSD drives in my desktop & laptop. I use them only for Windows 7 Ultimate, and any installed applications. I then have a 500 Gig drive in my desktop for file storage, so that if something DOES happen to my desktop, I have my files on a secondary drive so they won't be lost.

In addition to this, I have a Network attached storage device (see sig) from D-Link. It has 2x WD 2.0 TB drives in it, and I use it to store ALL of my files, audio, video, pictures, computer back ups, etc. etc. To protect against failure there, I have another 2TB drive in my desktop that holds a back up of the NAS box. At some point, I am going to bring a back up drive to my bank to put in a safety deposit box. Off-site backup is a good idea too if you can afford it, as a fire or bad flood or something that would destroy my home would render ALL back ups in the house useless.

 

[office politics]

All advice here is well and good. But this is not how i would troubleshoot a blue screen message. Actually, now that i think about it 'K' has a post regarding common blue screen errors; see link below. Usually, you want to record the short description, and file referenced (usually a dll), and the error code. Cross reference that with 'K's list or search the internet. Be sure that your windows install is not set to auto restart after system failure. This is found in system properties.

http://www.techist.com/forums/f9/how-troubleshoot-specific-stop-errors-193301/

 

[tech4life]

What is a good backup software I can use? I have a 4TB NAS WD Sharespace which I using to save all my files, picture and etc. I would like to backup my hard drive

 

[office politics]

microsoft mesh worked well for me. it allows you to sync data between any two windows computers connected the the internet. optionally, you can also sync to 2gb skydrive but i dont think you'll use that. ... Hmm, internet transfers maybe slow. in this case sync center maybe able to speed them up.

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-vista/How-to-keep-your-information-in-sync

i would buy one of these and stuff it with 3 2TB drives. You should be able to add a 4th drive later. You may need to recreate the storage volume to add the drive though. Use RAID 5. You'll lose the space of one drive but you will still have access to data if one drive crashes.

Newegg.com - Sans Digital 4-Bay eSATA RAID 0/1/10/5/JBOD Tower Storage Enclosure w/ 6G PCIe Card TR4M+B (Black)