It's that time

**abachler** · 03-13-2009

Had to reformat and reinstall windows today, took most of the day to install all the updates. And it inspired me to write a bootable disk that will fully restore my hard drive to its current condition. Currently my drive takes up just over 7 GB of space, so I think I can easily fit the whole restore program on a single bootable DVD.

**happyclown** · 03-13-2009

Norton Ghost could create a restore DVD for you.

Maybe even Nero.

**cpjust** · 03-13-2009

I used the Microsoft backup that came with Vista... I'll never make that mistake again. Sure it backs up, but does it restore? No. After my drive died, it tooks me weeks to extract my files from the MS backup image (which is also a MS Virtual PC image) by hand.

I bought a copy of Norton Ghost and tested both the backup and restore, and I feel very secure now.

**cyberfish** · 03-13-2009

Or boot into a Linux Live-CD

Code:

dd if=/dev/sda1 of=backup.image

And to restore

Code:

dd if=backup.image of=/dev/sda1

Gets a bit more complex if you want to compress it, though.

**brewbuck** · 03-14-2009

Originally Posted by abachler

Had to reformat and reinstall windows today, took most of the day to install all the updates. And it inspired me to write a bootable disk that will fully restore my hard drive to its current condition. Currently my drive takes up just over 7 GB of space, so I think I can easily fit the whole restore program on a single bootable DVD.

So, you put the Windows 7 beta on it right?

**brewbuck** · 03-14-2009

Originally Posted by cpjust

I bought a copy of Norton Ghost and tested both the backup and restore, and I feel very secure now.

But do you keep your backups in the same building as the system you're backing up?

I know a guy who made meticulous backups of a PC he kept out in his barn. He also kept the tapes and other backup media in the same room. Then the whole barn burned down. D'oh.

**laserlight** · 03-14-2009

Originally Posted by brewbuck

But do you keep your backups in the same building as the system you're backing up?

Heh, I recall this quote, attributed to Linus Torvalds, that says something like "real men don't make backups - they upload it via FTP and let the world mirror it". Mailing your backup DVDs to relatives or friends overseas is probably overkill, and you probably would need to encrypt the backup unless you want your "sensitive data" to be leaked.

**brewbuck** · 03-14-2009

Originally Posted by laserlight

Heh, I recall this quote, attributed to Linus Torvalds, that says something like "real men don't make backups - they upload it via FTP and let the world mirror it". Mailing your backup DVDs to relatives or friends overseas is probably overkill, and you probably would need to encrypt the backup unless you want your "sensitive data" to be leaked.

I store my most important backups in triplicate -- one copy at my house, one copy at someone else's house (usually a parent or friend), one copy in a safety deposit box at the bank. Seriously. Stuff like my wedding photographs, backups of my source code library, my master password list...

(EDIT: If some event actually eliminated all three of these backups... Well, the only thing I can imagine that could do that would be a nuclear explosion, in which case I'd probably be dead anyway, or at least I'd have much worse things to worry about)

**abachler** · 03-14-2009

Well, it appears the hard drive is in teh early stages of failure. When I run the following code, it does great up to about 512MB, then it slows to a crawl and pauses after every 3-8 writes.

Code:

#include <windows.h>
#include <stdio.h>
BYTE Info[65536];
int main(){
 
 DWORD BytesWritten = 1;
 for(int x = 0;x<65536;x++) Info[x] = 0;
 DWORD Sector = 0;
 DWORD SectorsWritten = 0;
 DWORD BytesRead = 512;
 DWORD ByteCount = 0;
 DWORD Start = 0;
 HANDLE hFileTemp = CreateFile("C:\\temp.temp" , GENERIC_WRITE , 0 , NULL , CREATE_ALWAYS , FILE_FLAG_DELETE_ON_CLOSE , NULL);
 while(BytesWritten){
  Start = GetTickCount();
  WriteFile(hFileTemp , (LPVOID)Info , 65536 , &BytesWritten , NULL);
  Sector += BytesWritten / 1024;
  printf("%d\n" , Sector); // actually reports kilobytes written so far
  if(GetTickCount() - Start > 55){
   printf("Pausing...(%d ms)\n" , GetTickCount() - Start );
   Sleep(1000);
   }
  }
 CloseHandle(hFileTemp);
 Sector = 0;
 return 0;
 
 
 HANDLE hFile = CreateFile("\\\\.\\C:" , GENERIC_READ , FILE_SHARE_READ , NULL , OPEN_EXISTING , FILE_ATTRIBUTE_NORMAL , NULL);
 HANDLE hFileOut = CreateFile("D:\\HardDrive.bin" , GENERIC_WRITE , FILE_SHARE_WRITE , NULL , CREATE_ALWAYS , FILE_ATTRIBUTE_NORMAL , NULL);
 BytesRead = 1;
 while(BytesRead){
  ReadFile(hFile , (LPVOID)Info , 512 , &BytesRead , NULL);
  if(BytesRead){
   ByteCount = 0;
   for(int x = 0;x<512;x++) ByteCount += Info[x];
   if(ByteCount){
    SectorsWritten++;
    printf("Sectors - %d\n" , SectorsWritten);
    //WriteFile(hFileOut , (LPVOID)&Sector , sizeof(DWORD) , &ByteCount , NULL);
    //WriteFile(hFileOut , (LPVOID)Info , 512 , &ByteCount , NULL);
    }
   }
  Sector++;
  }
 CloseHandle(hFileOut);
 CloseHandle(hFile);
 return 0;
 }

**Elysia** · 03-14-2009

Maybe. Maybe not. Faults can appear without the hard drive beginning to fail.
Checking the SMART status and surface scans should keep one safe.

**abachler** · 03-14-2009

performance on the drive has degraded to the point where its obvious there is somethign wrong. A properly functioning drive wouldnt take 40 minutes to write 1GB of data. Maybe if it was made in the 80's, but not a modern drive. Not this drive, which normally performs at 3.0 Gb/s per second. There is obviously something wrong. Even after disabling write caching, thinking per haps the 512MB was the maximum cached write size, it still bahaves like that, the first 512MB goes through very fast, then it bogs down to nothing, always at the same spot too, so there are obviously errors that chkdsk isnt finding.

**cpjust** · 03-14-2009

Originally Posted by abachler

Not this drive, which normally performs at 3.0 Gb/s per second.

I don't think there are any drives in existence that can read/write that fast. That's just the max theoretical transfer speed for the SATA interface, not the actual drive itself.

Run HD Tune to check the performance along the entire disk as well as doing a surface scan & checking the SMART log.

**abachler** · 03-14-2009

even so, this drive is exhibiting write speeds measured in kilobytes per second.I coudl see if it were running slower than normal by 50% even, but this is rediculous.

and HD Tune only tests read performance, not write performance unles I delete all partitions, in which case I cant run the program because theres no drive to boot from...

even the read speed is beign reported at 3 MB/s, which is increadibly slow.

**brewbuck** · 03-14-2009

Originally Posted by abachler

even so, this drive is exhibiting write speeds measured in kilobytes per second.

Sounds like it's ECC'ing like crazy due to media being totally screwed. I suppose you could have a problem on the controller board, too...

EDIT: I still think you should throw Win7 on there

**cpjust** · 03-14-2009

Try a difference HD and that should narrow it down to the HD being the problem. By the sounds of it, I'm pretty sure it is a drive problem.
Then check if it's still under warranty and get a new drive.

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