What if my hard drive goes bad? Are my external usb hard drive archives useless?

Just wondering if I had to buy a new hard drive, will the new hard drive not accept the archives from the old different hard drive? I know microsoft xp software will detect if it's on a new hard drive. I have my archives on an offline usb hard drive and some on dvd. Will there be chaos?

 

I can't guarantee you anything but i recently changed the harddrive in my desktop from a seagate 160gb ide drive to a western digital 160gb sata drive. I was able to restore archives with success.

 

don't worry you would be good to go if the new is of the same type [sata/ata/scsi] as the old one.

 

diskcontroller changed from Ide to Sata. no problems ?

 

I have to tell you fellas, FD-ISR! by Raxco as far as i ever known of it, is never been mentioned as possessing Universal Restore capability, but it has just pulled my tail out of another jam i got into.

While dabbling with IDE electrical wiring harnesses and switching things around in the box last couple of days, not to mention Flashed my BIOS again with Honey X, i majorly lost FD-ISR functionality in my snapshots again and this time a FD-ISR program uninstall/reinstall didn't help at all. I'm of the mind that this only works if you perform it on the "FIRST" snapshot we created? I'd like to hear more on this, maybe from Pete. I was stuck in a different snapshot when it happened and couldn't get to the "Main" Primary. I was up a creek, or at least confused what to do next.

Then wouldn't you know it, as misfortune would have it my archives partition plus another simply vanished off the radar screen completely.

I must have run thru several ER cd disks including Hiren's & ERD Commander plus Paragon's Undelete CD, nothing was identifiable by any of these except a single snapshot i was left on so i moved all material off the Anchored Folder and salvaged again what i could from that snapshot.

After 2 days i was ready to wipe out the entire drive and start over again but i turned one last time to another CD named PartedMagic.

WHEW! I fired it up and don't you know the TestDisk program on it not only found my other 2 partitions but also correctly identified them (Label) (File System) etc. and rewrote them back on disk, in effect, ressurrected these "apparently deleted" partitions from the dead/presumed missing for good, and that's all that was needed to now format & run XP cd install disk on the fudged partition, reinstall FD-ISR yet again, successfully i might add, and since the archives partition was recovered, proceeded to rebuild ALL snapshots back to perfectly working order again.

I get myself into the wackiest of messes lately, but each and every time, even after you undelete a deleted partition with FD-ISR Archives! THIS AMAZING PROGRAM PROVES IT'S RECOVERY ABILITY IS LEGENDARY!!!

Those archives were PRESERVED 100%. Thanks in large part to PartedMagic i guess, which came through when other of my ER disks failed miserably to even find anything except *unallocated. Pfftttttt!

In keeping more with topic, i turned to another DIFFERENT hard drive entirely and these same archives built perfectly working/bootable snapshots as though they were taken in the Maxtor, where they came from to begin with.

I AM COMPLETELY BLOWED AWAY..........after all this time. FD-ISR is truly a work of art and life preserver like none other, except maybe your images

 

No, windows simply updated its hardware profile then i restarted my system and all was fine.

 

Wise advice if followed. I been pretty content and satisfied to keeping them on the same drive, especially when that drive is still fairly new, but you're quite right, get those archives over to other drives no matter what because in Murphy's Law, if something can go wrong, it will, and especially when you're least prepared for that.

Still, this proves yet again, that FD-ISR's archives can prove just as valuable/stable/ and reliable as images from the best backup programs in the business even though it was never intended as such.

You can cremate your snapshots or even lost a hard drive, and these archives reconstruct again with amazing accuracy.

I don't know a single other ISR that could ever have pulled this off and all the other issues i been thru over the past months, turn around and completely refit the same drive, or another one again with 100% accuracy.

 

As I said so many times, FDISR is brilliant in design and programming. I sincerely hope I can find a similar software within 5 years and I don't have to replace it with a simple boot-to-restore solution, because that would be a step back.

Of course I keep my archives on another HDD. The location of the "Freeze Storage.arx" doesn't matter, because you can re-create this at any time. Freeze Storage is more a matter of enough space on [C:] or not.
Archives of snapshots is something else, those must be saved on another internal or external HDD.

 

This just had to happen to me but just when things looked their bleakest with no chance for light again, PRESTO! and we're right back in the biz again.

I dunno how it happened exactly, all i know is that "ALL" my Maxtor archives on one of the partitions plus another storage location partition dunked and went underwater for 2 days while i worked hour for hour throwing one ER cd then another in a frantic attempt to at least pull them up from the depths of wherever they went.

Only PartedMagic with it's TESTDISK app was able to surface then revive these 2 partitions again by re-writing them to disk. I must have run half a dozen different other Partition Undelete programs from CD and they either crawled like a snail or found nothing, including Disk Commander in ERD Commander & Paragon's latest undelete utility which has worked for me in the past.

With that major success aside, and sigh of relief complete, it then made way the window of opportunity for FD-ISR to finish the task just as brilliantly as always. This app folks has never failed me once. Something else might dislodge FD-ISR snapshots or even the program itself, but once you clear away that debris and give FD room to work, the rest is automatic.

Tomorrow is a day reserved for archiving these snapshots to a Seagate disk just to side on caution, but today was another master success story.

 

Wow,what a beautiful piece of software-hope I never have to use it.

Thanks,Easter

 

I wholeheartly recommend downloading it and burning to CD just to keep in your ER collection in case one day something as outlandish as this vanishing act i experienced ever leaves you wondering where to turn to next.

It was my last resort before wiping the entire drive. I knew those partitions had to be there because i did not delete them by mistake, i only ran HDDRegenerator to check for Bad Sectors and a number of other Hard Drive tools on Hiren's Recovery CD just to try to see them again with no luck. Persistent and patience paid off.

 

thanks,good to know that !

 

But in the real world, how many people have internal/external hard drives? In fact, how many people actually partition? None of my friends and family do, but I do because I go on forums like this.

 

One of he first things i learned from the great IMATCH moderator/developer,Michael Westphal is firstly BACKUP your stuff and secondly.....BACKUP your stuff !!

 

So can we definately say that if my hard drive goes bad( useful life of typical hard drive is 3 yrs) I can safely reinstall xp onto the new hard drive, install FDISR 205 then import an archive that had a snapshot from a different hard drive and it will still function correctly? Xp has a way of sensing when it gets transferred to a different hard drive because of piracy. How does that affect our archives? Does it perform like a universal install?

 

Knocking on wood, in ten years, on several different computers I've never had a HD go bad.

 

@ farmerlee & huupi

That is a remarkable interchange of utterly critical information

Has anybody else tried this ?

I've done similar ( restored from .arx after XP and FDISR install) to a blitxed primary HD that I formatted, but it was the same disc.

If farmerlee's experience can be confirmed somehow on other systems
= phenomenal.

FDISR: what a loss.
Lbd

 

IDE/ATA is a standard electronic interface and serial ATA(SATA)is a continuation.

SATA controllers typically operate in "IDE emulation" mode and Windows device drivers that are labeled as SATA are usually running in this mode ,so what was experienced is not so surprising.

The cabling and plugs are quite different but apart from that, all from the same family!

Only if the mobo supports SATA of course.

 

There shouldn't be any problems. It's just a harddrive.

 

Indeed this is a failsafe operation that does not go wrong from all my experiences with it, and from the results of others who redeemed their systems via archives in same manner.

Anything else as in reconstructing fully operating snapshots via these archives from a different disk, is but a life restoring feature simply not found in any other ISR's.

My archives have now been moved into a new bay drive for emergency provision in event of any problem with system snapshots or even some corruption itself on the fd-isr program. A true spectacular work of the highest order i have ever experienced since plugging in my first PC. And mind you this is a recovery app, not expected to serve as a image backup program, but so far it's serving that exact purpose to my own amazement.

I said it times before but still bears repeating, FD-ISR has revolutionized exceptionally the reliably it provides in preserving your system/data back again to original prime functioning condition, no matter the circustance.

The KEY is in the archives and storing them as mentioned to separate hardware HD for rebuilding snapshots to their original state & settings.