Re: Empty Documents and Settings folder after missing or corrupt windows error

At home I have Windows Home Server handle the backups. It does an
incremental every night. And because it uses VSS it only backs up changed
disk clusters. Nightly backups only take a minute or two per machine. And
restores are painless. Example:

A few months back I took one machine that was running Vista & installed the
Win7 RC on it. The other day I decided to go back to the Vista install so I
could upgrade the machine to Win7 using the Win7 Family Pack. I booted from
the restore CD that comes with WHS, picked the machine image to restore, and
went shopping. When I got back it was done & sitting at the login prompt.
Totally painless.

I really think Windows Home Server is one of the best consumer Windows
products MS has ever released.

On Fri, Nov 13, 2009 at 9:49 AM, Jerry Adams <Jerry@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

I had a similar issue at home. I was installing SP3 for XP when the PC
decided to reboot. Nothing would get it to come up again. I too called a
professional, who ripped out my hard drive, copied the files to another PC.
He tried all of the tricks in his arsenal, but after three hours threw up
his hands and re-formatted the drive and installed XP. Since the files were
on a drive on the home LAN, I was able to recover.

If I had tried to do this. I would have been SOL.

At work my boss is pretty good with the PC's and Windows servers, but he
calls professionals in when he's over his head.

Jerry C. Adams
IBM System i Programmer/Analyst
--
B&W Wholesale
office: 615-995-7024
email: jerry@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx


-----Original Message-----
From: pctech-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:pctech-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On
Behalf Of John Jones
Sent: Friday, November 13, 2009 8:42 AM
To: PC Technical Discussion for iSeries Users
Subject: Re: [PCTECH] Empty Documents and Settings folder after missing or
corrupt windows error

Agreed. The data is most likely still on the drive but using the PC might
cause it to be overwritten since apparently Windows thinks the disk
clusters
are free for re-use.

After that, do three things.
1. Get a second drive for backups or back up to a server.
2. Update your backup strategy: a) Switch to backup software that
understands the concept of grandfather/father/son backups and doesn't
overwrite the most recent backup each time. I'd suggest Acronis True
Image:
http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/trueimage/ b) Do a monthly
full backup with daily incrementals (differentials).
3. Get a UPS for the PC so it can run for at least a short while during
power outages. That way you can leave the PC on long enough for the backup
to finish.

If you buy a Seagate or Maxtor as your second drive, you get a rebranded
version of True Image:

http://www.seagate.com/ww/v/index.jsp?locale=en-US&name=DiscWizard&vgnextoid=d9fd4a3cdde5c010VgnVCM100000dd04090aRCRD

On Fri, Nov 13, 2009 at 8:03 AM, Lukas Beeler <
lukas.beeler@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

wrote:

On Fri, Nov 13, 2009 at 14:45, Diana Hicks <DianaH@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Does anyone have any suggestions for recovering my documents and
settings?

Turn everything off immediately and contact a professional data
recovery company.

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--
JJ
"I'm in no condition to drive...Wait! I shouldn't listen to myself, I'm
drunk!"
- Homer J. Simpson
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