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Backups can be so vital.

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GabeU
Distinguished Professor IV

Backups can be so vital.

I was updating my three computers, which consist of my desktop, my laptop and my "test bed" notebook, so I could perform my monthly system images.  The desktop and laptop went as expected, updating fully, then performing said images.  I keep three of each computer, one per month, for a total of nine, and keep them all on a 750GB Western Digital external USB drive.  When I got to the notebook, which is an Acer Aspire V5-122P-0889, the last thing to update was the video card driver.  As many know, the video driver can be one of the most aggravating things to update, as if something goes wrong, it can be hard to fix due to not being able to see anything. 

Well, sure enough, in the midst of updating, the screen went blank, which it often does during a video driver update.  Normally this is temporary, but not in this case.  Needless to say, after about twenty minutes I started to try various things to jog the screen back to life, to no avail.  Finally I forced a shut down. 

I started it in safe mode, but that didn't work, as it affected the video in that, as well (although that's a little odd).  I was able to see the basic startup things, but once it got to the desktop, zilch.  I tried to fix it using the tools on the emergency disk, but again, no luck.  Months earlier I had created a restore drive on a flash drive, so I knew that I could restore it with a fresh copy of W10, but then that would mean downloading all of the updates from the beginning, plus reinstalling and updating all of my other programs.  But, if the restore didn't work, I would be back to square one, installing the original Windows 8 it came with, upgrading it to W8.1, then to W10, and again updates and reinstallation of programs.  Not only does this take hours on a slower computer like the Aspire V5, it also uses gigs of data to do it all.  Even if I could have restored it with a clean copy of W10, it would still use a lot of data to reinstall and update everything. 

Luckily, I had the system image I made at the end of May, and about ten minutes after starting the process, I was right back to where I was before I had started updating it for the monthly system image backup an hour before.  Possible hours and gigs saved due to doing a simple ten minute system image backup. 

The lesson here?  Do your backups because they can really get you out of a jam.  I'm not one to backup on the fly, save for copying important programs or other files I have downloaded or created onto a flash drive.  I do the whole kit and caboodle with the system images.     

2 REPLIES 2
Amanda
Moderator

Hey GabeU

I agree that backups are very important. I have an HP desktop that automatically backs up data into a recovery drive using my HP Assistant. Not sure how much better than using a seperate HDD or SSD and manually doing incrementals or differentials, but I have it just in case. I don't do much to my computer in terms of big changes that could upset it, but it was a scary edge to walk on when I updated to Win 10 ! What a nail biter 🙂

Amanda
GabeU
Distinguished Professor IV

That's why I love having the notebook for a test machine.  Anything big like that gets tried on that, first.  It's slow as molasses, but it's still worth it to save me from a headache on my desktop.  And I agree about it being a nail biter.  I'm not really sure why, but of all the OS upgrades I ever did, Windows 10 was definitely the most unnerving.  LOL.