Crashed Hard Drive

[kapterb]

Good morning, 

I had a fun Sunday, my hard drive crashed and I had to erase everything and restart from scratch. Luckily I had just finished a fresh backup Saturday of my system so nothing was lost. The pain part was starting all the way over again. However it was not nearly as bad as I thought it was going to be. Baller Installer is the M'n F'n Bomb!!!!  Made getting up and running soooooo much easier than the last time i did it almost two years ago.  Thank you to David and everyone involved in getting that program together. Now I'm about to head down the rabbit hole of DOF and PinEvent all over again, wish me luck   Special thanks to Terry for extensive video tutorials, very appreciated, without those I would be really screwed. 

[JerseyJohnny]

On 3/28/2022 at 9:49 AM, kapterb said:

Good morning, 

I had a fun Sunday, my hard drive crashed and I had to erase everything and restart from scratch. Luckily I had just finished a fresh backup Saturday of my system so nothing was lost. The pain part was starting all the way over again. However it was not nearly as bad as I thought it was going to be. Baller Installer is the M'n F'n Bomb!!!!  Made getting up and running soooooo much easier than the last time i did it almost two years ago.  Thank you to David and everyone involved in getting that program together. Now I'm about to head down the rabbit hole of DOF and PinEvent all over again, wish me luck   Special thanks to Terry for extensive video tutorials, very appreciated, without those I would be really screwed. 

 

I've been in your shoes atleast 5 times since owning a vpin cabinet.  Haven't had one hard drive fail, but I updated this or messed with this setting and everything was just F'd up.  I don't know vpinball as well as lots of the members here, but I do know PC's.  

 

I recommend everyone do this, but everyone has their own preference.  I do not use windows backup because you will find even when you load your backup state, that your vpinball stuff, still won't work or have the same issues you had before using windows restore from a backed up state.  

 

Another problem with windows backup is, you may have spent 3 months adding media and tables to your build and you then lose it all.

 

What I recommend is to CLONE your drive that has your popper install on.  Hopefully its your windows drive because then you will never lose anything again.  

 

Every month, or even if its a week where I worked on tons of media, Ill Clone my C drive which for me has windows and my pinball programs.  (my steam games are all stored on a seperate drive but that is ok).  I just plug in a 2TB SSD drive (if you have a 1tb windows drive then use a 1tb ssd drive), and just make a full CLONE of your drive.  I open my case and plug it right into a sata port, but you can use a external drive if you don't mind waiting alittle longer for it to finish.

 

After you clone your system to that external/extra drive you could actually take out your old drive and boot right from your clone and it will be like nothing ever happened.   Thats why cloning is better then a regular backup.  A regular backup isn't going to do you any good if you can't even boot into windows. 

 

A cloned drive is a windows drive so your system will boot up and everything will be working just as it was when you made the clone.  Then you can replace the broken drive with a new one and you basically clone in reverse.  You would clone the copy you made onto the new working drive you installed and everything will be as good as new.  

 

If you need a simple tutorial on what software to use and how to do it let me know and ill send you a link showing you how.  

 

Hope it helps.  If you do it this way, you never have to worry about messing up anything ever again.

[DannyDodge]

On 3/29/2022 at 6:12 PM, jtravapd said:

 

I've been in your shoes atleast 5 times since owning a vpin cabinet.  Haven't had one hard drive fail, but I updated this or messed with this setting and everything was just F'd up.  I don't know vpinball as well as lots of the members here, but I do know PC's.  

 

I recommend everyone do this, but everyone has their own preference.  I do not use windows backup because you will find even when you load your backup state, that your vpinball stuff, still won't work or have the same issues you had before using windows restore from a backed up state.  

 

Another problem with windows backup is, you may have spent 3 months adding media and tables to your build and you then lose it all.

 

What I recommend is to CLONE your drive that has your popper install on.  Hopefully its your windows drive because then you will never lose anything again.  

 

Every month, or even if its a week where I worked on tons of media, Ill Clone my C drive which for me has windows and my pinball programs.  (my steam games are all stored on a seperate drive but that is ok).  I just plug in a 2TB SSD drive (if you have a 1tb windows drive then use a 1tb ssd drive), and just make a full CLONE of your drive.  I open my case and plug it right into a sata port, but you can use a external drive if you don't mind waiting alittle longer for it to finish.

 

After you clone your system to that external/extra drive you could actually take out your old drive and boot right from your clone and it will be like nothing ever happened.   Thats why cloning is better then a regular backup.  A regular backup isn't going to do you any good if you can't even boot into windows. 

 

A cloned drive is a windows drive so your system will boot up and everything will be working just as it was when you made the clone.  Then you can replace the broken drive with a new one and you basically clone in reverse.  You would clone the copy you made onto the new working drive you installed and everything will be as good as new.  

 

If you need a simple tutorial on what software to use and how to do it let me know and ill send you a link showing you how.  

 

Hope it helps.  If you do it this way, you never have to worry about messing up anything ever again.

hit me with that link for the tutorial sir! thx

[JerseyJohnny]

On 5/23/2022 at 1:54 PM, DannyDodge said:

hit me with that link for the tutorial sir! thx