New
#1
Sort out HDDs and establish backup plan
When I bought my current system with a 1TB HDD, I had files on several USB key devices, more files on a 200GB laptop HDD ( ~ten years old ) now in a portable USB enclosure, and still more files on the 640GB HDD (~five years old ) from my last system that ended up with a failed motherboard. Without really thinking about it, I took that 640GB HDD and plugged it into my current HP desktop where I would occasionally poke through it or any of the other backup sources for files I needed.
After six months of progressively worsening problems with the current out of warranty system, I have finally realized that I AM the IT Department for this enterprise, that it's up to me to figure it all out, and that the sooner I do so, the better my life will be! My plan is to consolidate all my files in one place, figure out a sensible backup and maintenance plan, and stick to it.
Plus, I've got to resolve the BSOD problems and suspected hardware issues that brought me to this moment in time, but I'll save that for another thread. For the moment let me just say that I've reinstalled Windows 7 from the HP Recovery partition, run all updates and reinstalled Norton IS, and the system appears stable although I am still seeing HAL error 12. I mention that because I don't know if its a hardware-related problem or not. I haven't reinstalled any other software or tried to do my real work because I have my heart set on understanding my system and setting it up correctly with a clean install.
So my step zero has been to find all those files scattered about and create a sensible file structure of user data which I now have on two separate 1TB WD external drives. Current backup size is +250GB, but doesn't yet include all the program downloads and emergency drivers I know I'll need to gather before clean reinstalling. Not counting USB keys, I've now got five HDDs and somehow I need to figure out what to do with it all.
Is there any point to keeping the 200GB or 640GB HDDs? Would it make sense to use one or both of those drives to archive some of the data that I obviously don't access very often (photos, Word and Excel documents)?
My current HP system is RAID ready, but I don't really understand that so should I put the time into figuring it out? What happened when I plugged that 640GB HDD into my motherboard? Even though the system is RAID ready, without doing something specific it wasn't operating in RAID mode, was it? (I'm guessing the system just thought it had two separate hard drives with no relation to one another.) Did it confuse my system? (The HDD had various Windows versions installed on two separate partitions besides all the user data. You can tell it confused me!)
The two new portable drives are Western Digital My Passport Ultras. Should I use the WD software programs for backup management? (I got two thinking I should keep one backup offsite after the neighbor's house burned down.) Instead of WD software, should I use the built-in Windows backup? Should I look into something like the Acronis Total Image that is recommended sometimes on this site? Does it even matter which method I pick?
Sorry to be so long-winded; clearly I'm having problems figuring out what's important so I've just dumped it all out there. I feel like I have a bunch more questions but I better stop and reflect for a while. Meantime, if you read through to this point, Thank You! Any comments/advice would be much appreciated.