Tino, you crack me up. Big time. Anybody who sends in his laptop for
repair, anywhere, had better have a backup. I don't care if it's just
because there is a screw missing or a keyboard that sticks, the HDD is bound
to be reformatted. But that is beside the point. You claim to work in IT
and yet you use a laptop without ever doing a backup. How can that be?
Laptops are amongst the most fragile things in the known universe. They are
also the object of desire of thieves and they do not subscribe to the
universal law of gravitation, or rather, they over-subscribe to it, heavily.
:) I have just had the tremendous pleasure of replacing the HDD in my
laptop. Returning from a recent trip, the 48GB drive went haywire, happily
scrambling the directory and writing over selected files. I could hear the
heart-breaking snick-snick-snick of the drive when reading a file. Finally,
the drive just gave up and I got the most frightening messages coming up
while booting Windows 2000: Can't find NTOSKRNL. The drive was toast!
Thankfully, I had backups out the ying-yang. It took longer to get a
replacement disk drive (20 elapsed hours) than it did loading the system and
restoring the data. A very helpful colleague on this list suggested that
you did not have 15GB of data to backup. A suggestion that you simply blew
away. What he meant to say was simply that your disk drive did not contain
15GB of your USER data. As with the VAST majority of laptops and desktops,
the lion's share of the bits on the drive come directly from a series of CD
and/or downloads. Your data, your documents and spreadsheets, your emails
and you JPEGs make up only a fraction of the data on your drive and that is
what you really need to backup. That is the irreplaceable data. If instead
of railing at HP, you took a few minutes to figure out that with a CD-R, you
could backup your personal data to one or perhaps two CD-R blanks, you would
do yourself (and us) a tremendous favor.
Several other people suggested great strategies for backups. Some of them
were elaborate. I submit to you that you only need a CD-RW. Some XE3
models have a DVD/CD-RW drive built-in. But these are the more expensive
models. Knowing you, you probably bought the F3466 model, the one with the
Celeron processor, the CD-ROM drive and the NiMH battery. It doesn't look
like you can upgrade the optical drive after the fact. I know very little
about the HP laptops, except that I like my Compaq Armada. At any rate, you
can buy an external USB CD-RW device for a miserable $150 to $200 and get
CD-R blanks for 0.40 a pop. Yes, I pay more, because I get the quality
blanks. My data is worth it.
I am a great fan of Plextor products and I would recommend the Plexwriter
24/10/40U ( http://www.plextor.com/english/products/24_10_40u.html (they
have pictures there for you) ) ($199 street price) as the device you want.
And again, do spend a few more pennies per CD-R blank and buy a known brand
like Imation, Sony or Maxell, not CompUSA. I buy Memorex Black CD-R.
Over the last 14 years, the few times I have had to get my laptop(s) fixed I
either shipped them without the drives, or I took them in for repairs and
pulled out the drive at the repair station. I have never surrendered a
laptop with a drive in it! (It was more complex to take out in the early
days. Almost voided the warranty.) My CD-R is in my laptop at all times and
I am now considering doing nightly backups of my .PST file while on the
road. That was the only thing I lost 2 weeks ago, a few days worth of
messages.
For ad hoc backups at the office, I placed an 80GB disk drive in the docking
station and I duplicate some files and the .PST file on it. Since we are
backup product vendors, when my laptop is in the docking station, it gets
backed up to the corporate DLT library at night. But note that I only
backup MY data, not the stuff that comes on a CD.
I wish you good luck with your next Dell laptop made with DESKTOP,
battery-eating components du jour and if I sound condescending, it's because
you deserve it. I still can't believe someone, especially someone in IT
would never have a backup for his laptop. Maybe you just started in IT 6
months ago. What would you do if you dropped the device or if it got
stolen? HDD are machines, fragile ones at that. They do go bad! Spend the
$200 and get a CD-RW.
Denys
-----Original Message-----
From: HP-3000 Systems Discussion [mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf Of
Tino
Sent: Tuesday, April 09, 2002 6:17 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: BEWARE: HP format PC HDD's for the sheer fun of it.
> Tino <[log in to unmask]>@RAVEN.UTC.EDU> on 04/08/2002 10:32:08 AM
>
> Please respond to Tino <[log in to unmask]>
>
> Sent by: HP-3000 Systems Discussion <[log in to unmask]>
>
>
> To: [log in to unmask]
> cc:
> Subject: [HP3000-L] BEWARE: HP format PC HDD's for the sheer fun of it.
>
>
> To owners of HP hardware who are concerned for their data.
>
> I sent my laptop to HP for repair who, "advised" that I back up my
> data. I didn't do this since the problems I was getting had nothing to
> do with my HDD - I had a faulty screen, a faulty keyboard, and it
> would power off when handled from the base. It is a 6mth old Omnibook
> XE3.
>
> My laptop arrived back with a report saying that they had changed the
> screen, keyboard and upgraded the bios. Guess what, my HDD had also
> been formatted too.
> Telephone support did not care how or why my HDD had been formatted
> but they made sure that I was reminded of the standard "advice" that
> it is up to me that I back up my data.
>
> I'm sorry but short of spending a wad full of $$$ how the hell am I
> going to back up 15GB of data....? I have no network, no tape device,
> no other computers - nothing! Not their concern, they said.
> Even if I did have a method to back up 15GB of data I couldn't even
> see what was on my screen to be able to perform the backup!!!! Not
> their concern, they said.
>
> All I can imagine is that in their airy-fairy land of support they
> formatted my HDD as a "precautionary" measure, but forget to omit it
> on the report. Well blow me HP but I think that as a precautionary
> measure I would like to warn potential customers not to buy your lousy
> laptops in the first place as a "precautionary" measure not to receive
> the worst level of support I have ever seen with an attitude to boot.
>
> Oh and thanks for cutting me off the line as well.
>
> * To join/leave the list, search archives, change list settings, *
> * etc., please visit http://raven.utc.edu/archives/hp3000-l.html *
>
> * To join/leave the list, search archives, change list settings, *
> * etc., please visit http://raven.utc.edu/archives/hp3000-l.html *
Thanks all for your help and hindrance, after losing my life's data at
least I can begin rebuilding my data starting with the text from
theses posts. I posted this to numerous news groups and I got some
mixed responses, which is fair enough I suppose. They are:
OK:
"it's your fault, go elsewhere for sympathy"
I wasn't looking for sympathy - whining, call it what you like. I was
looking for justice. If my post stops this from happening again to
someone else then it was at least worth the stroppy post. If it
results in a loss of a few potential customers, even better. Let's
hope for 15 - 1 for every GB I lost.
"Buy NIC's, connect up systems to back up data"
Thanks for the advice but that is not the point. Why should I spend
$2000 on a new laptop, have it fall to pieces after 6 months, and have
to spend even more $$$ to back up data which I shouldn't have lost in
the first place. I'll let you in on a secret here - I work in IT
support and I have the facilities and the know-how to back up the
data. I also know that the problem had nothing to do with the HDD so I
guess took an educated risk. Wrong I know but we all do it from
time-to-time, and especially justified when you can hedge your bets
your own knowledge of the problem tells you that blatting the HDD is
no where near the solution - I had a faulty keyboard, screen and
battery connector for Pete's sake. What get's me is that the format
wasn't even on the report!!! Sounds to me like a support team that
cover their own incompetance by covering their ass.
AND a big *THANKS* to David T Darnell & Spider for their support. Yes
I agree that manufacturer should have initiative to remove hardisk
prior to taking pc away as Gateway do and I agree that hp should not
assume that the user should accept responsibility to back up data.
Maybe they should even have contacted me to say they were going to
wipe.
...and who is the guy that wanted to know why I had 15GB of data on my
mmachine?? How is the nature of the data going to stop my HDD from
getting blatted??? All I'm asking for a *little* effort and
understanding because I took an educated risk that I thought was worth
taking. Now I'm paying because HP took me as a sucker thinking that I
wouldn't figure that deleting the HDD was part of the diagnosis. Well
maybe that sums up what HP think of their customers.
Regards to all HP customers who like me are moving to Dell.
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